Erin Rhode author page

I'm very excited to show off my second ever New York Times crossword puzzle, just over one year from my first one. Perhaps I will make this an annual tradition. It has been pointed out to me that I am the first female constructor to write a Saturday puzzle since 2014. For those who are excited because a female constructor surely means fewer sports references... sorry. I was really excited when I got "AL East" in there as an atonement for including "ALers" last time, which I am well aware is a term that has been used in the real world by pretty much zero real baseball fans, of which I am very much one. Additionally, as an Oakland resident, my clue for 32-across was also sports related (and probably too hard): "Curry, for one."

The seeds for this one were FOOD COMA and BABY BUMP (which morphed into BABY MAMA when I decided that ESPNS was too much of a stretch) in the northwest and southeast and ALONE TIME (which would have been a debut at the time I submitted) and I CAN'T EVEN in the northeast and southwest, with I CAN'T EVEN probably being my favorite thing in the grid. I have mixed feelings about BABY MAMA, since, as a phrase, it reduces women down to pregnancy vessels, but I'm happy to see it clued with the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler movie, since they are both awesome (even if the movie wasn't that great).

After the seeds, I was pretty happy that the middle section gluing the four corners turned out some nice entries as well. I hadn't attempted a grid quite this open in the middle before, and was delighted to get the aforementioned sports entries, as well as ROT GUT and PEN NAME to fall out. And I hope I gave at least one person an ear worm with 36-across.

Finally, as I wrote the puzzle last fall, my clue for 46-across was obviously different. (I believe I referenced the Curious George authors.) But I'm pretty excited that Will went the Star Wars route here. Rey is easily my favorite of the new characters.

It's been on my bucket list to construct a crossword for the New York Times for a few years. In fact, in 2013, I made it a New Year's resolution to figure out how to submit a grid and possibly get one accepted... only then my MIT Mystery Hunt team won the event in January of 2013, which gave us the dubious prize of spending our 2013 writing the 2014 Hunt. And bonus for me, I got to be the director of the whole thing, which meant no time for trying to construct one measly crossword when I had so many other puzzle writing responsibilities on my plate that year [my favorite being the one where I dressed up like a bee to perform a bunch of songs bee-capella]. But in a weird way, I did achieve my New Year's resolution that year via my hunt teammate, Kevin Der, who convinced Will to let him use the New York Times puzzle to hide a Mystery Hunt answer. [Incidentally, crossword origami really should be more of a thing than it is.]

Once we had finished with the 2014 Mystery Hunt, I slept for about a month and then decided it was time to get back to that dream of constructing a puzzle for the Times myself, and I went about asking Kevin for advice, which was invaluable. Around this same time, the crossword blogosphere seemed to blow up around the topic of female constructors... particularly female themeless constructors.

So, obviously, I decided that my only option was to tackle a themeless. And if I could give it a bit of a feminist flavor, all the better. And thus my first seed entry, MANSPLAIN, was dropped into an empty grid at 1-across.

The other seed entry that I was deadset on including was SORRY I'M NOT SORRY, inspired by my friend Laura. This phrase called to me only after I had made the stack in the upper left, and the combination of that one 15 letter entry and the MANSPLAIN/I'M AT A LOSS/LUSITANIA stack more or less led me to the grid shape, with two other 15s spanning the grid. NASAL CONSONANTS aren't super flashy and IS IT GOING TO RAIN? isn't going to knock anyone's socks off, but I quite liked that HAVE IT ALL, with its female empowerment overtones, was able to slide next to CONSONANTS.

And SALT SPRAY, HIT A NERVE, and ONE PLAYER made up a pretty nice triple stack in the bottom right, buoyed by SWEET PEA. (Incidentally, have you ever tried to use SALT SPRAY? I have, and it just turned my hair into a sticky mess, with very little in the way of waves. The bottle lied.) TAKE A LOOK (at my first NYT crossword!) and PUP TENT closed out the long entries I liked — plus the bonus of the U BOAT clue sitting atop the LUSITANIA clue. I normally don't like cross-referenced clues, but when the clues are adjacent, I don't mind.

A few bits of crosswordese snuck their way in: DANAE, STERE, ODESA, BINET, OYER... ugh. I took German in high school, so ALTE and EIN don't bother me nearly as much as they might bother some people. I'm pleased to see that Will left the two references to my home state in the clues, (Minneapolis to Duluth and Senator Franken), but was sorry to see "They're high in Manhattan" for RENTS go. Will actually kept the majority of my clues — including the one where I snuck my first name into the puzzle, but his trivia for RARE and "Space race?" for EWOKS were definite improvements.

In general, I don't love the center of this grid and don't love the aforementioned crosswordese, but for the rest of my life, I will get to say that I debuted MANSPLAIN in the New York Times crossword, and that is a pretty awesome claim to fame.

For those keeping tabs on the "women writing themelesses" phenomenon, I wrote this one with a hybrid approach of by hand and onelook and grep. I could have used some more mature software, but that just seemed too easy.

Also, 31-across was a complete freak accident and I have no idea how that happened. But that one's for you, Dad. Happy belated Father's Day!