Jack Mowat author page
2 puzzles by Jack Mowat
with Jeff Chen comments
See the 20 answer words debuted by Jack Mowat.
Jack Mowat is a Civil Engineering major at the University of Notre Dame, planning to pursue a master's degree in that same field.
Jack is originally from the greatest city in the midwest: Omaha, Nebraska. His senior year, Jack was the project manager for the concrete canoe team, a club that designs and builds a 20-ft canoe out of concrete, and, yes, it does float!
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Not much macro-level technical interest in this one. Some micro points that might help other constructors:
As is often the case with Sunday 140 word-puzzles, the middle is the hardest to get right. We tested out so many arrangements of black squares, so many options where GADSDEN now sits, but nothing was working. You start off with your most desired entry at a critical spot, test the heck out of it, then if it doesn't work out, move to the next highest. Suffice it to say, GADSDEN was not at the top of our list. Still, I'm hopeful that it at least sounds familiar from history class.
We had a good back and forth with Will Shortz on several entries. IRL (in real life) was tough for him to accept, since it's not uber-well-known yet. I use it all the time, but I can see how some might scratch their heads.
We made concessions to Will in the NE, where we had MURICA where PALACE now is. What is MURICA? What are you, a commie pinko? ‘Murica is the good ol' US of A, damn straight! Okay, maybe Will made the right call there.
Jack and I went back and forth a dozen times on the southwest corner. I tend to err on the side of cleanliness, but the trio of DITHER + ORNERY + TOUPEE made for such an evocative image. Calling Donald Trump!
Our first draft had too many names for Will's taste, and he had a point. If you don't know SCARJO (player of Black Widow!), GEENA DAVIS (Thelma! Or was it Louise?), LEILA, LESLIE Jones (hilarious on SNL), Julian ASSANGE, and of course James GADSDEN (you didn't know him? infidel!), our first draft would have irked you even more.
I enjoy working with constructors who keep an open mind to feedback, and who are willing to put in the time and hard work required to get a theme and a grid to an appropriate level of quality. Jack's one of the good ones.
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Jack's NYT debut! I've had the pleasure of working with him on a few crosswords now, including his debut in the WSJ two months ago. Hard working, with a drive to improve, Jack is going places in the crossworld. He was even featured in a local TV interview!
A few months ago, he sent me a draft of this themeless, asking for my opinion. It's one of the questions I dread the most — not for my sake, but for the constructor's. Themelesses are so ultra-competitive, why would you want to get into them? I usually try to nudge newer constructors toward better using their time; brainstorming themes, where the supply/demand balance is more favorable.
I like that Jack had a goal in mind, though, and he stuck to it, no matter how much work it was going to take. I gently pointed out some of the weaker spots of his draft, a couple of slots that wanted more pizzazz (FOOT BRAKES, PRECIPICES, OSTINATOS, and EL ROPO), along with some clunkers (ABM, RIN). All in all, it was decent, but I guessed it wouldn't pass Will's bar.
A few weeks later, he sent back a revision. Some improvements! FOOTBRAKES became SNOWFLAKES. OSTINATOS became US CAPITOL — but that forced a strong entry, I WANNA SEE, to morph into the weaker BRENDA LEE. And EL ROPO had twisted into PELAGE. Not great, to say the least.
Round three: no PELAGE! And TIE BREAKER + ITS ALL MINE = fantastic! But: OTA. ERL. ESSO? Just so-so. So we prepared ourselves for round four.
Not many people last past three rounds of freedback (that's not a typo; take freedback for what it's worth).
I rolled up my sleeves and got in the trenches at this point, tearing out the SW to see if we could smooth things out while still retaining enough sizzle. Took a while, and it sacrificed ITS ALL MINE, but the overall result (what you see today) was much better than before. Jack agreed — progress!
We tried to do the same with the NE, trying to squeeze more out of the BRENDA LEE slot and replace PUT BY, but everything we tested felt weaker in comparison.
Themelesses are so competitive that my assessment of whether one will get accepted is usually "low" (read: fat chance, buster). After all this work, I upgraded my guess to "medium." It was great to hear Jack's excitement a few months later when Will took it.