Doug Peterson author page

SAM: Doug and I have collaborated on many crosswords over the years (Lisa Loeb and I have the same Peterson Number!). This one pretty much followed the usual process: I came up with the theme idea and revealer and pitched it to Doug; he kept one of my theme entries and came up with three replacements that were better; he constructed the grid (in this case, being careful not to include the letter I anywhere in the grid); I nodded and said to myself, "yep, this is pretty much perfect;" I wrote the clues (in this case, it was only at this stage that I thought of the gimmick for cluing the theme entries); and Doug corrected the errors in my clues.

I vividly remember receiving the acceptance for this puzzle last summer while on my first trip to the Napa Valley. That's a nice place to celebrate an acceptance!

DOUG: It's always a blast to work with Sam, and not just because he's way too nice with his constructor comments. This puzzle wouldn't exist without his creative spark. Hope you enjoy solving!

DANIEL: Like many new constructors, I began in earnest during the 2020 lockdown since all of opera went on an extended hiatus. My first mentor was Brad Wilber, who in addition to being a terrific teacher is also a huge opera fan. With his help, I had my debut publication this year. Through Brad, Doug and I were introduced virtually last year. I was eager to learn more, had innumerable questions, and wanted to collaborate when possible, and Doug and I hit it off beautifully. His generosity and willingness to help me hone my constructing chops has been a wonderful gift. We still trade theme ideas and chip away at them in a glacial way.

I approached Doug with this idea after coming up with a fun clue in a themeless puzzle for TRIP ADVISOR [Personal injury lawyer?] and wondering if there might be a theme worth exploring. We went back and forth with an ever-expanding list, had to kill a few darlings (CROSS TRAINER [Catholic school teacher?] ), and came up with this very fun theme set. Doug's experience in refining a theme set was incredibly valuable.

Given all the alternative careers and side hustles people have had to adopt due to the changing times, it seemed very timely. Performers, in particular, have had to reinvent themselves and develop new skills, and many have faced the grim reality of how quickly their livelihood can be taken away. The stigma of having side jobs and parallel careers has been torn down, for the better. Those in the arts have had to be immensely creative and improvisatory. Fortunately, that is all part of the training.

DOUG: So glad I got to work with Daniel on this and a few other projects. And I'm very much looking forward to a time when we can sit down together with Brad in person. Enjoy the puzzle and the rest of 2021

ACME: A couple of months into lockdown, I began cleaning up and clearing out files that had accumulated over decades. Decided to see if I could turn some partial ideas/rejects into something salvageable now that I had an extra ten years of experience.

This puzzle was originally 13 15 13 themers before four became the new three! The original set:

HAVEITYOURWAY 13
HERCURDSANDWHEY 15 (partial!)
ANCHORSAWEIGH 13

I changed it into three 12s and added an 8 (AIWEIWEI) and thought I could try mirror symmetry but didn't know how to do that. So I approached the genius, zen puzzlemaster Doug Peterson who added another 8 (ZIMBABWE!). We dreamed up new ideas and wrestled back and forth between his wonderful suggestions of "PROJECTRUNWAY" 13 or "GOYOUROWNWAY" 12. An instant earworm (and a puzzle) was born!

I'm truly blessed to be able to worship in the "Way of Doug".

DOUG: It's always a treat to work with Andrea, and I love salvaging a theme that's "almost there." It's hard to believe that this is our first NY Times collaboration. We're a regular team on the Crosswords With Friends app, so if you enjoyed this one, look for many more of our puzzles there.

BRAD: I started out simply intending to put 22D and 27D at opposite ends of the grid. When you discover your seeds can be adjacent entries instead, things are looking up. Then Doug placed lively first and last Acrosses — 1A is my favorite clue of his this time. Did you know William Shatner made a horror film with dialogue entirely in 54A (Incubus, 1965)? I mean, are you sitting on that set thinking, "Geez, I was in 'Judgment at Nuremberg'?" No, I can't claim to have seen 'Incubus'; it's just one of the many bits of trivia lint you pick up in a crossword life.

DOUG: Brad mentioned 1-Across, and yes, I had a MOOD RING when I was a kid. It was purchased from an ad in a comic book, of course. I also had a pair of x-ray specs (rip-off!) and a jar full of Sea-Monkeys (awesome!). Anyway, my mood ring never seemed to change color, so I borrowed my mom's lighter one day and tried heating it up. (Don't worry. This was the ‘70s. Kids were allowed to play with lighters.) The ring changed color all right! The whole thing turned black and got that burnt plastic smell. So I never got to try my other experiment of putting it in the freezer.

PATTI: I've been waiting a long time for a New York Times byline, and I love that it's on a collaboration with Doug — even though this is our first NYT together, it is the ninth themeless we've co-constructed. Subscribers to Crosswords Club, which I edit, may know our joint puzzles appear under the name "Helena Buchanan," a pen name that hints at one home state and one favorite novel.

I'm sad our clue to 1A didn't survive, which was [One who has no brand loyalty?]. And I'd clued 37A to reference an actress on The Magicians, which is my favorite train wreck of a TV show. That ... was probably a good clue change.

DOUG: It's always a pleasure to work with Patti on a puzzle! She loves the part I don't love (writing the clues), so we make a great tag team. We're like the original Hart Foundation, but with 95% fewer suplexes.

Patti and I are both baseball fans, so we referenced the infamous PINE TAR Game in our original clue for 38D. I love the image of George Brett barrelling out of the dugout with steam almost literally coming out of his ears.

BRAD: With this puzzle, my New York Times tally draws even at 27 solos and 27 co-writes. I have more collaborations in the queue, too, so the total will soon tip in favor of shared labor. It's nothing I ever planned, but I've come to see the crossword community as very familial, and co-writes are one of the ways that plays out for me. Doug was my first constructing partner ever, and we made our debut as a team ten years ago. This puzzle took shape in January 2020, and I like that the ROSE PARADE is in here, given that Doug lives in that vicinity. (Did you know that the early days of the Rose Parade included ostrich races?) The clue for HUMAN ERROR is one of two I submitted; I'm sure the other one had to do with the use of Hawkeye in pro tennis.

DOUG: I'm always thrilled to share a byline with Brad! I love the clue for PELE at 43-Across. And now I want to be the Extraordinary Minister of something.

Brendan approached me about this project months ago, and I loved the idea! But the trick was to make a puzzle that would work for Brendan and also work as a normal New York Times crossword that would be solved by millions of people who weren't proposing to a woman named Amanda.

We went back and forth, brainstorming ideas. Song titles? Top places to propose? Adding IDO to phrases to make wacky entries? Then Brendan's best friend Mark (also a crossword enthusiast) suggested the rebus angle. We hit on "rings in little boxes," and it all clicked.

One of the funniest moments occurred when Brendan and I saw each other at the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament last month. We'd been exchanging emails for months and had bonded over crosswords and our shared love of Marvel movies. But of course, Amanda, who named the tournament, was there too, so Brendan and I had to pretend that we barely knew each other. I think we pulled it off OK. Thank goodness Brendan's an accomplished actor.

And to add a touch of poignancy, Amanda's love of puzzles was passed down to her from her father Gilbert, which she wrote about when our puzzle was published in 2012. He passed away in July but not before Brendan thought to share his proposal secret, to which Gil, knowing he had days to live, tearfully responded: "Thank you for giving me something to look forward to."

Many thanks to Will and his team for helping to put this all together. And congratulations to the happy couple!

With the publication of this puzzle, the two of us each have one more Saturday NYT appearance (1) than every woman constructor combined (0) in 2018. Here's hoping that will change in the coming weeks — if not, it could be the fourth time in eight years that the NYT has gone ohfer on publishing women on Saturdays.

You can find more stats on XWord Info; additionally, if you're a woman seeking a constructing partner, feedback/test-solving on your puzzle, or perhaps just someone to yell with about how low the number zero is, you can contact us and many other constructors through the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory.

And one last plug: it's not too late to throw your support behind The Inkubator, a forthcoming weekly puzzle from crossworld stars Tracy Bennett and Laura Braunstein.

Also, we're very proud of this puzzle! Thanks to the NYT team for having us, and for the brilliant clues at 17-Across and 9-Down.

Meeting Lisa and working with her on this puzzle was an absolute blast. Many thanks to Will for setting it up.

After a little brainstorming, we were leaning towards a theme involving music or something to do with glasses. (People who were "framed," maybe?) We couldn't resist working Lisa's signature song into the theme, so we checked out a list of #1 songs with one-word titles. (What did constructors do before Wikipedia?) We eventually came up with a fun set that spans decades of popular music. And we guarantee that at least one of these songs will give you an earworm! The best potential theme entry left on the cutting room floor could be clued as [Botching the lyrics to a 1997 #1 Mariah Carey hit?] (11 letters).

We had difficult theme entry lengths to work with, but the grid gods smiled upon us. No ugly clumps of black squares, and a great set of four long downs, the highlight being BOBBLEHEAD.

Working on the clues together was my favorite part of the collaboration. And I ordinarily hate writing the clues. I especially like what Lisa came up with for JODIE at 29-Down. Using the initial capital letter to disguise a surname is a veteran move.

Lisa's a natural. If she ever gets tired of writing songs and touring, she has a bright future as a crossword constructor.

Doug: Sam came up with the theme concept and a great entry in DIRTY CHERRY, but we couldn't find another 11-letter theme entry to pair with it. CHEVYWEIGHT was a possibility, but we felt it had a couple of strikes against it.

Sam: One problem, we felt, was that some solvers would give CHEVY the soft, "sh" sound instead of the hard, "ch" sound, even if we clued CHEVY with reference to Chevy Chase instead of the car make. The bigger strike, though, was that it was the only one-word theme entry.

Doug: We considered putting DIRTY CHERRY in the center of the grid, but when I tried squeezing in that 5th theme entry, the fill got fugly. Would it have been worth it? My grids usually end up on the "less theme, better fill" end of the spectrum. Thinking back to my wasted youth in front of the TV, I can envision two groups facing off in the bar at the Stamford Marriott: "More theme!" "Better filling!" "More Theme!" "Better Filling!"

Sam: This is one reason (among many) why I like working with Doug. I probably would have ended up in the "More theme!" camp, but the acceptance email from Will and Joel specifically mentioned that they liked the fill. And what's not like to like with SHAMWOW and...is that, is that HAIR GEL? Doug's craftsmanship with the grid is likely what sold this puzzle.

BRAD: So it falls to Doug and me to refute the dire promise of yesterday's puzzle! HOORAHS for us. Will provided delicious tweaks to clues for 19A (GENE) and 56D (HARE).

I think this is one of the few times we've placed a seed entry at 1A. I usually try to tuck them in a few rows down. I always think of David Letterman when I think of the 1A descriptor, but Doug came up with two different cluing options — the one you see here and also Chaucer's Wife of Bath.

DOUG: I'm going to predict that Jeff comments on ALTERATION at 63-Across because it's a bland sort of entry in a long slot. And, assuming he does, he's got a good point. I like the rest of our longs, especially the HOGWARTS stack in the lower left. After placing DRACO MALFOY in a 2014 New York Times grid, Brad and I were taken to task because neither of us has read the Harry Potter series. Well, I recently bought the entire jillion-page series for my Kindle, and I'm planning to dive into it soon. I can't wait to find out what the heck a HORCRUX is.

BRAD: The seed entry at 57A (SHRINK RAY) was in an early draft of the grid that appeared on 2/21/15, but I pulled it out of there when the stack you see here presented itself. The editorial tweak to the clue eases up considerably on the original [Facilitator of filmdom's "Fantastic Voyage"], but it makes sense looking at the general degree of difficulty in that corner — Doug's great clues for DENVER, ART FORGER, SOUTH POLE, my definition of REGIFT, etc.

We started the opposite corner with EXOTIC PET, and it was cool to have several Scrabbly entries settle in around it. Totally random that UNIBROW has made its way into 3 or 4 puzzles I've been involved with…I'd better take care not to develop one. I still have a few clues for it in the bag; the one here is Doug's, who I feel had a particularly inspired day when he sat down to work on this set (SWINE!).

DOUG: Brad mentioned that SHRINK RAY came from a draft that looked quite different by the time it was accepted. We've become quite adept at repurposing discarded entries, and sometimes we're even able to build a grid around an orphaned stack. I like to think of our grids as starfish. Because you can whack off an arm and use it to grow a whole new starfish. That really works, right? I think so, but bear in mind a lot of my starfish knowledge comes from comic books. Starro the Conqueror is one of my all-time favorite super-villains. (You think I'm joking? Look him up.)

DOUG: Remember the recent kerfuffle about whether or not HELLO KITTY is actually a cat? I've done some research on the topic, and she is indeed a cat. But here's where it gets weird: Hello Kitty has a pet cat named Charmmy Kitty. Charmmy Kitty basically looks like a smaller, more catlike version of Hello Kitty. Somehow this is even more disturbing than the Goofy/Pluto dichotomy.

BRAD: I don't know what Doug's talking about; I've kept a couple of smaller versions of myself as pets for years. One of them actually edits the Chronicle of Higher Education puzzles.

This puzzle went through a couple of drafts before we arrived at this fill. Between versions, I actually pulled one of my seeds to use in a different collaboration with Doug, which you'll see here eventually. But we preserved Doug's nice seeds at 33D and 17A. His HELLO KITTY clue is great, as well.

Brad::

I had the stack in the SW and was struggling with the "J" in JOE CAMEL. Neither any 15s nor any 7s with J in that position spoke to me. Enter Doug, who really got us unstuck with O.J. TRIAL. Lots of the fresh stuff here you owe to him. Some of my favorite clues include the ones we had for TRIX, OFFAL, and NEC. It might be worth noting that 25A is a terrific scene from Don Carlo, my favorite Verdi piece and quite possibly my favorite opera, period.

Doug:

Why would anyone want a JOE CAMEL shower curtain? And yet, back in the heyday of Joe Camel, that was one of the promotional items you could get for turning in proof-of-purchase slips called "Camel Cash." I'm not sure why I know or remember that. As for the O.J. TRIAL, I remember almost everything about that. I lived in Southern California in 1995, and it was impossible to escape the wall-to-wall coverage. Let's see what else is in the grid: DRACO MALFOY? I know a little about him, even though *gasp* I've never read a single "Harry Potter" book. I don't think either one of us has. So, no spoilers, please.

DOUG: This is the first time, in the NY Times puzzle, that the entry DOGSIT (39-Across) has been clued as "dog-sit" (take care of a pet) instead of "dogs it" (loafs on the job). We went that route because the entry crosses ITS at 42-Down. And Brad came up with some stellar clues for dog-sit, including the one that Will used in puzzle. Here's a nice one from the cutting room floor: [Keep an afghan around you, perhaps]. I have cats, so I don't have to worry about finding a sitter. Cats are easy. If I'm going to be gone for a couple of days, I just leave a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and they're good.

BRAD: Every time I do a puzzle with stacks of 11s, I say it will be my last for a good while. But ever since Doug and I did our puzzle of last August 3, we've had orphaned stacks that we couldn't quite mesh with the grid of the moment but that we felt had the kind of panache solvers like to see — maybe enough to launch a new puzzle. Each new grid has left us with a tempting discarded scrap. I've joked to Doug that we will have an endless loop of 11-heavy puzzles and we'll just try to space them out judiciously and use other grid types in-between. I thought this one turned out especially clean. I liked Doug's clues for 34A and 57A. And the nice SE he did led to some fun digging on my part — research-based clues that Will liked and used in the final edit.

Mangesh:

Frankly, I have grown up solving Doug's puzzles. So it was a privilege when he accepted to collaborate. This is my first themeless. The best learning, when working on a themeless, is the stretch it gives to your imagination. Not just in filling the longest entries of 15, but others like DEAD ON (which Will appreciated in his "Yes" mail). I wanted to improve on BALINESE to something more exciting.

Doug and I divided (or rather halved) the cluing. He went for Across and I for Down. I prefer cluing over constructing. Again, imagination and creativity get a wide canvas. The thrill is multiplied when you can come up with a cute clue and it tickles Will enough to retain it in the published version.

Doug:

This is a grid pattern that I've found is good for themeless collaborations. One constructor fills the top (or bottom) and hands it off to the other constructor to complete. Sometimes it works, and sometimes you have to go back to square one (pun intended). If I remember correctly, I filled the top half and then sent it intercontinentally to Mangesh. It was a pleasure to finally meet him at the ACPT last year!

Brad:

Doug and I usually achieve something close to a 50/50 split on the fill in our themeless puzzles. The kind of balance we're looking for is helped along by grid patterns that are fairly modest in their demands — whatever progress I make somewhere should leave Doug lots of flexibility. What I like about grids that Doug picks (like this one) is that they are manageable but they usually present some extra degree of difficulty, like a pair of 10s feeding into the center or reaching into the corners, when we could have bailed out with cheater squares instead. Doug plunked down a nifty new 1A here and worked to 32A. We took turns on the other corners until we were done. We've got movie trivia, history, gastronomy, and baseball here — all elements we both like. I humbly submit a fresh clue for 16A. Doug has concocted some crafty ones for a couple of the 9-letter entries.

Doug:

1A is an example of my favorite type of themeless seed entry. It may not be familiar to most solvers, but the entry is quite figure-out-able. And most importantly, it's an interesting phrase to learn. You can use it to impress your easily impressed friends at your next cocktail party. I try not to use unfamiliar names as seeds, because they're quickly forgotten once the puzzle is solved. And let me add that I always learn something new (a cool word, some fun trivia, etc.) when constructing a puzzle with Brad.

BRAD:

The old adage of "good longer stacks start with the stacking of useful shorter stems" was especially true here, as I realized ONLINE went nicely atop GOLDEN, and what remained was to pick compatible tails. Doug liked LIE DETECTOR in the stack and added MALL COP; he's also responsible for those two great clues.

We tried a few design configurations in the middle and realized we'd have to have some long vertical entries too or the word count would tip over into 72 or 74. BOXER BRIEFS won out over other –EFS we tried. I had just been doing some work in the trenches at the end of the alphabet on my word list, so new addition WAX TABLET helped matters a lot, facilitating ___ FAMILY.

And we had to decide whether or not to have the vertical 15s, rather than going with SEWELL or NEWELL or LOWELL or whatever. TO A FARE-THEE-WELL had actually been on my list of possible seed entries. But did we ever take some ribbing for it (fewer people seemed to recognize it than I expected) — and since the puzzle appeared the Saturday before Lollapuzzoola, some of the ribbing was in person! Still, I think this was a grid most solvers were quite happy with.