Christopher Adams author page

Indie crossword constructor with a recently-released pack of freestyle crosswords here, with a puzzle that dates back to about 2018 or so, which is when it was previously accepted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Unfortunately, it never made its way into print before they ceased running their crossword, but I'm glad it still found a home.

That said, if I was making this puzzle today, I probably wouldn't make it like this (which is not to say that I don't like it). With a theme like this, getting intersecting theme answers isn't too hard (since they all have shared letters), so I decided to do just that. But the theme density and interlock puts a lot of pressure on the grid; as a result, the layout is rather defensive, and there's a lot of shorter fill (some of it kinda meh) with minimal opportunities for bonus fill.

The middle, especially, was tough, with four theme entries poking in and very little flexibility w/r/t black squares. Plus (and I can't believe that I only noticed this now) two of the theme entries use the same permutation of BOOTS, despite me explicitly trying not to do that — I don't know how I didn't notice that, but I blame the extra S in SOB STORY.

Anyway, again, I still like this puzzle, and am glad to see it in print, but I hope the above at least shows why considering grid decisions such as these and how they impact the puzzle is something worth doing in making your own puzzles.

CHRIS: Long story short: I emailed Adam to congratulate him on his NYT debut and say I'd be down to collab with him sometime. And then we did.

ADAM: Short story long: I first had the idea for an "867-5309/Jenny"-themed crossword back before my NYT debut last January. That's right, this zoomer came up with the ‘80s song theme. Music is the thread that ties generations together or something. Anyway, fitting seven theme entries and a JENNY revealer into a 15x15 grid proved basically impossible, especially for then-noobish Adam.

So when Chris swooped in and proposed a collab, I knew he could help realize the idea. We shot some emails back and forth, played around with different theme entries and grid layouts, and crucially decided to expand the grid to 16x15. And somehow, through some combination of collaboration* and luck**, we managed to eke out a crossword.*** Irrefutable evidence that teamwork makes the dream work.

CHIRS: *e.g. Adam suggesting we put JENNY in the lower corner rather than in the center, Adam suggesting we go 16 wide, and/or Adam suggesting US TOO in order to open up the lower corner and remove six three-letter words.

**Adam being good at what he does.

***Our email records have a bunch of stuff about theme entries, placement, grid layout, etc., but there's a mysterious one week gap where the puzzle suddenly went from an idea to the completely-filled grid you see today. I blame Nixon's secretary.

Indie crossword constructor here with what was originally an attempt to make a nice, easy puzzle; it still is, but it's also quite different from the original submission. In particular, the seed entry (VELVET ELVISH, inspired by Kacey Musgraves) isn't in the grid at all. But it's still a pretty good set, and I'll note that the tweaks that the editorial crew made to the theme entries and their clues made them somewhat funnier, easier, and more on point (imagery-wise) than what I originally had (and I appreciate edits like that that make us constructors appear better than we are).

Speaking of edits: Speaking of edits: those who know me already know that 5D wasn't my original fill in this grid; instead, it was FURSONA, with a clue like "Portmanteau for an anthropomorphic animal identity". Unfortunately, even with a straightforward clue and fair crossings, Will and Joel didn't like that entry; this led to a long back and forth conversation that (even though I didn't, and still don't, agree with the outcome) I'm glad to have had with them, especially in the context of having more diverse representation in crosswords.

And with the chance to review the puzzle before publication (a change to the editorial process that I'm a massive fan of), we were able to continue such conversations and make the puzzle a bit fresher and more diverse, and hopefully more enjoyable as well.

Indie crossword constructor here with what is now my fifth puzzle for the New York Times. Somewhat surprisingly, it's the first one with normal symmetry; it's also the first one that's a freestyle, rather than a themed puzzle. And I'll be honest, it's not my favorite of the bunch. Nothing wrong with that; not every puzzle can be the best. And this doesn't mean that it's a bad puzzle either; I certainly don't think so. But I'm always striving to make my puzzles better, and I do think there's some things I could have done better when I made this (and would do better if I was remaking it today).

That said, I really like the center here, which (unsurprisingly) is where this puzzle started. This puzzle came from a period of playing with common layouts, and I liked how the two stagger stacks came out here. Sure, some of the stuff is a little iffy: TEENTSY, I MUST, and ANI with a cluing angle that (as both a solver and a constructor) I hate, and doubly so because it could (and, IMO, should) have been clued as a name. But the long answers are great; at the time of construction, all but MEAN STREETS would have been NYT debuts (though I got scooped on FASHIONISTA), and all but RESTRICTIVE are pretty interesting and add a lot of flavor to the puzzle.

But RESTRICTIVE kinda sums up what this center did to the rest of the puzzle. It was rather hard to get the ring of sevens (BAT NEXT / BEER HAT / TEENTSY / TACITLY) to work, since all four of those entries have to cross three elevens and still work with two of the other sevens. This, in turn, constrains the five letter answers: four of them (SPARE / I MUST / BEGAT / CHRIS) must cross a stagger stack while also working with the sevens that are right next to them, and then the other eight five letter entries now have two letters locked in place, with four of them (LOTSA / EBERT / JUNTA / LSATS) still needing to work with the ends of the stagger stacks so as to feed into the corners.

The point being, each of these constraints further constrains the next entries out, and that's how things like LSATS get forced into the puzzle. And having that then constrains the corners; EV?????? has a lot more possibilities than EVA?????, which allows for more flexibility and freedom and makes it much more likely that you can have sparkling fill / interesting entries in the corners.

Still, for the most part, it wasn't too constraining, but I definitely feel like there was a lot of unmet potential for those corners. Even with interesting things like MATHLETE, SKYNET, BANK ON IT, FUN HOME, ARIANA Grande, and LIL KIM, there's things like ATS, RETAGS, SONARS, and I PUT; is it worth it? Maybe; some solvers won't mind, some solvers will. But as a constructor who takes pride in prioritizing clean fill, I definitely think I could have done better.

In any case: I'm not trying to beat myself up here; like I said, I don't think this is a bad puzzle. Mostly, I'm trying to explain to solvers (and especially non-constructors) how this was made, and offer a look behind the curtain at some of the hidden challenges of construction that aren't always apparent in the finished puzzle. But I also want to make it clear that constructors (myself included) should have high standards, and that they should always strive to do better, even if the puzzle's already good enough.

BRIAN: After a few years of constructing, I am thrilled to have my debut puzzle in the NYT! I started constructing in 2017, so this was a few years in the making.

The idea for this puzzle came after seeing the tremendous "Lady Bird." I thought a literal interpretation would make for a fun puzzle, and after some brainstorming/googling, I discovered there were a plethora of women with birds for last names that fit the bill.

Knowing my original 15x version needed something else but unsure what, I reached out to Erik Agard through the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory and asked him to connect me with a constructor to bounce ideas off. Thankfully, he connected me with Chris, who provided superb feedback on several puzzles, including this one. Our emails on this puzzle naturally turned into a collaboration I'm proud of. After a few months we finished it and sent it in.

Happy solving!

PS: Greta Gerwig—if you need some custom puzzles for any reason, feel free to reach out!

CHRIS: After being e-introduced, Brian floated some ideas by me; I particularly enjoyed this one, especially since Lady Bird was one of my favorite films that year.

I figured there'd be enough theme answers to warrant making this a 21x, but also thought that I'd seen something similar before. And after searching XWord Info and Crossword Fiend, I came across a Peter Gordon puzzle from 2018. Similar, to be sure, but with a different enough focus that we both felt OK proceeding with our idea.

For elegance, we decided to only use last names, and we strove to strike a balance between well-known real and fictional people (hence why Robin Wright and Jennie Finch, among others, didn't make the cut). Length was also considered in picking theme answers; thankfully, the lengths mostly matched up, and we could have gone with normal symmetry. But everything fit together very nicely in this layout, which gave us a lot of flexibility in filling. And after a few fits and starts, we figured out the grid and filled and clued it together (coincidentally, right around the Oscars).

And now, here we are. Definitely a fun collaboration, and if you are an aspiring constructor, I'd love to collaborate and/or help in any way possible; contact me via my personal puzzle site.

One of these days I will have a puzzle in the NYT that doesn't use left/right symmetry, but today is not that day. As with both previous puzzles, the symmetry was pretty much dictated by the lengths of the theme entries. In addition, since all of the theme entries are of even length, the grid ended up being wider than usual to accommodate this. Neither of these changes bother me (in fact, I often use unusual sizes / symmetry for puzzles on my own site), but together, they did pose some challenges.

In particular, this means that every across entry straddling the middle columns has to be at least four letters long. Coupled with the fact that every theme entry has to be centered as well, it was a bit of a challenge to find a grid layout that allowed me to keep things clean and fresh while not being too constrictive. It's no wonder, then, that most of the long fill is out on the edges of the puzzle, where there are fewer constraints. But I was pleased to be able to work in some long downs through three theme entries apiece.

The longer across entries were also a nice bonus; KARAOKE BAR, in particular, is a favorite. Even though it's the same length as one of the theme entries, it was too good to leave out. My original submission had shading in the theme entries, both to avoid this confusion of what was and was not theme as well as making it easier to figure out which letters are involved in the theme; that said, the title and the clue for 105-Across spell things out pretty well, I think.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this one—a few more black squares than I'd like, but most of them are forced by the symmetry and the lengths of the theme answers, and the ones that aren't forced either helped immensely in filling around the overlapping theme answers or in working in some interesting answers. And, of course, keeping fill clean and crossings fair—to me, that's the golden rule, and if it takes a few extra black squares to do that, then I'll do that any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Back in 2017, George Barany and I had a puzzle in the Minnesota Crossword Tournament whose reveal was MINNESOTA WILD and whose theme answers were EXPANSION TEAM, NOMINATES, EXILE ON MAIN ST, and ANTIMESON. That puzzle was 17 rows by 13 columns. At that tournament, we were talking with Jeffrey Wechsler (who also had a puzzle in the tournament that year), who told us that he also had a puzzle with nine letter anagrams coming out in the near future; it was eventually published in the LA Times in 2018 with the reveal CHOCOLATE SWIRLS. That puzzle is 15 by 15, and Jeffrey noted that he managed to find all of his theme answers by hand (whereas both the MINNESOTA WILD and MIXED METAPHORS puzzles used computer assistance for the majority of it, although in both cases some potential theme answers were found by hand).

As far as I am aware, these are the only previous puzzles with anagrams of nine or more letters, although I'd be delighted to learn of any others. And I'd be remiss not to point out this absolute gem from Erik Agard, which has an OUT OF ORDER elevator (so, eight letters) in every theme answer (and, appropriately, has them all running up/down).

This is my second NYT puzzle, and it was made about when my first NYT was published. And like that puzzle, this one utilizes left/right symmetry, again because of the lengths of the theme answers. But as an indie constructor, I enjoy doing unconventional things to get themes to work, and I'm always pleased when they do.

The hardest part of this one, by far, was fitting FACE/OFF in. Because it's an even length answer, I couldn't run it horizontally, and so it had to go in the center column. And the left/right symmetry meant having two answers of (at minimum) eight letters flank it and intersect with whatever entry went through the slash. It took lots of trial and error to get it to work, but I'm pleased with the result. That said, the shape of the center largely forced the rest of the grid, including making 7-Down six spaces long (more on this in a bit). I could have broken the top two rows up into three answers each, but I try to avoid too many shorter answers when possible, and I'm pleased with how these corners came out.

That said, I am a bit conflicted about 7-Down. As clued, it's a perfectly reasonable answer, in that it is unquestionably a third-person pronoun. Many people will see no problem with this clue/answer combo and move on without a second thought. But some people won't. I, for one, had some reservations about it then, and I don't think I'd use this answer if I were making this puzzle today. When the puzzle was accepted, Will et al. agreed with me that this was a clue to handle delicately. After all, as a pronoun, it's restrictive and (needlessly) excludes non-binary people, and has largely been supplanted by the singular they anyway.

There was a fair bit of discussion on how to address such concerns without being awkwardly worded, overly wordy, or calling too much attention to the answer; in the end, we agreed that the clue as written would work best for the previously mentioned reason that the clue works without distracting from the rest of the puzzle. Still, even though it's not discussed in the clue, I'm glad that Will et al. took the time to discuss this issue carefully and consider multiple viewpoints and suggestions.

Proud indie constructor here, and proud to be making my NYT debut with this puzzle. The theme is straightforward, for sure, and it's a bit lucky that the theme worked out to allow left / right symmetry. The fill also comes in reasonably simple, including a fair amount of baseball-related answers (some clued that way, some not). Overall, though, it's pretty clean, I think, and that's something I strive for in every puzzle I make, whether it's a simple one like this or a fifty-eight-word freestyle.

A good chunk of my constructing philosophy, in fact, comes from my experiences as a solver. But I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that constructing for my own site, and receiving feedback from solvers, has influenced me as well. (There's too many to name here, but: you know who you are, and it's always appreciated.)

In any case, here's hoping that y'all enjoyed solving this puzzle as much as I enjoyed making it.