Jeffrey Wechsler author page

It's always nice to see one's work published in the New York Times, but I was especially gratified to see this one appear — it had been accepted on January 21, 2017! Well, as they say, good things come to those who wait. For those of you who found 2-Down to be difficult, please note that the event mentioned in the clue was less than a month in the past when the puzzle was accepted.

The puzzle theme is similar to one I published in the Chronicle of Higher Education several years ago entitled "Made in Japan". I noticed that several Japanese words commonly known to English speakers have literal translations that are rather surprising or intriguing. For example, "sayonara" means "if it must be so" and "karaoke" means "empty orchestra". More recently, I noticed the same thing sometimes occurs in the names of French food items, and the presence of the inimitable Julia Child on American television offered a revealer that would lead to such theme entries. In devising the grid, I was fortunate in the letter length of the selected entries; they allowed me to use a progression of terms that become, to a degree, relatively harder to spell or less familiar as one proceeds down the grid.

And a pun hangs in the air that I can't resist — the French terms are all theme entries, but not all entrées. Despite that comment, I hope you enjoy the puzzle.

This puzzle uses a tried-and-true gimmick: removing one letter of a two-letter set (here, removing the O from OU) to create a new word. When submitting a puzzle like this, the constructor risks rejection by not offering an utterly fresh concept. It then becomes a matter of whether the editor thinks the transformations in the theme entries are clear, clever and, of course, funny. That latter quality is the hardest to attain.

In this puzzle, the first three theme answers provide, I think, the most humor (FUR ON THE FLOOR is my favorite). They also were able to elicit terse, natural-sounding clues, which makes the overall experience more satisfying. The last two are, in my opinion, perfectly fine but a bit more standard.

I was interested to see that the editorial process set the cluing at a rather easy level; for the New York Times, it seems like a Monday or Tuesday puzzle to me. Perhaps the gimmick itself was deemed not appropriate for early-week crosswords. Anyhow, I hope solvers enjoy it.

The origin of this theme probably duplicates the thought processes of many crossword constructors. A phrase is noticed or comes to mind, and suddenly the crossword section of the brain lights up, and one thinks "That could be a crossword theme!" This nearly involuntary reaction is both a boon and a bane to the constructor's life as one tries for a balance between normal and crossword-based brain function. "Sure," the brain says, "I might be able to find phrases including FORT, and then both figuratively and literally HOLD DOWN that word by placing it vertically within other words." And then the work begins.

There are only a few short or medium-length words that contain FORT (long words would have created problems with placement within the grid), so that put a constraint on the relevant connecting vertical entries. Their ultimate placement also necessitated the added "cheater squares," whose presence I sought to compensate for using the somewhat low word count.

As I look at the clues for this puzzle — as always, a combination of original submissions and clues created by Will — it seems to me that the overall result is a puzzle that is somewhat easier than usual for a New York Times Thursday crossword. I suppose I will see if that evaluation is accurate when solvers' commentaries start appearing on the crossword blogs. In any event, I hope most people enjoy the puzzle.

The theme of this puzzle arose in a manner that I suppose is common for many constructors — a word (or a word in a phrase) suddenly triggers a thought process that ultimately leads to a crossword. Here, I noticed the one-syllable word English word SAKE can be transformed simply by a variation in pronunciation into the two-syllable Japanese wine SAKE. When applied to FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, the standard English phrase becomes re-defined into a rather amusing concept by using the Japanese meaning. With this revelation, the essence of a constructor's "aha moment" had taken place, and the hunt for other words that could offer parallel transformations began.

It turned out that there aren't many relevant choices. In the completed puzzle, the letter E is the consistent transformative focus, shifting in pronunciation, with the E changing from a silent to a voiced vowel in three of the entries. This is nice, although it is partially a side effect of the apparent dearth of options. In the end, three of the key words referred to food or drink. There is another edible option — PATE — but the English meaning of PATE (the top of the head) did not offer any common or reasonable phrases. Thus, LAME might be considered the outlier of the group, but I like the humor of LAME's altered meaning in the puzzle, so the thematic set seems OK to me.

The length of the theme entries was a bit awkward — two 14s and two 10s — with letter positions leading to the stepped wedges that bracket the grid. But the layout did allow symmetrical pairs of relatively long downs — 8s, 9s, and 10s — giving the opportunity for a few interesting entries.

Finally, when one submits a slightly lengthy quote as a clue, it's never certain that it will be retained through the editorial process. So I'm particularly gratified that the trenchant quote from Mark Twain is present.

This puzzle has a relatively simple theme concept that I think turned out nicely (YMMV). Either the word TRICYCLE or PENTAGON occurred to me initially (I don't recall which) as a basis for repeating the latter part of the word as many times as its numerical prefix suggested — thus creating a "literal" variation of the word. Despite the standard 15-square width of a grid, it was immediately apparent that a "quad" prefix would force a 16-square width, with the latter part of the "quad" word comprising four letters. The word QUADRANT was chosen.

It's unusual to have only three theme entries, especially in the New York Times, where some puzzles seem to strive to fill the thematic level to near bursting. That can be dangerous! Such ventures are occasionally called out for substandard fill by the ever-vigilant squad of bloggers and commenters. But the "tri" prefix could provide a 15-letter entry, as could the "penta" entry. With one 16 and two 15's, that was that. "Hexa" couldn't work, and a six-letter ending for a "bi" word would yield a 16-letter entry, which wouldn't allow standard symmetry among the theme entries, following the logical progression of bi, tri, quad, and penta. So, three was the limit.

On the whole, I thought this concept might produce a reasonable "aha moment", and since it was accepted by Will, I suppose it did so.

The seed entry for this puzzle theme was DREI MARTINIS. I simply noticed the homophonic relationship of the word DRY to the German DREI, and took it from there. I'm glad that I could find enough foreign language numbers that really are extremely close (and occasionally, just about perfect) homophones to English words. For example, the French HUIT provides the initial H sound that most dictionaries indicate should be voiced for words starting with WH. (In my Webster's, the primary pronunciation of "wheat" starts with a HW sound, and the secondary pronunciation starts with just the W sound.)

I'm anticipating some commentary on the inclusion of the foreign language numbers DIECI (at 6-Down) and EIN (at 36-Across) in the grid. There seems to exist a certain notion of grid purity, suggesting that words relating to the theme (or even letter combinations) should be purged entirely from the fill. Otherwise, a degree of "inelegance" intrudes. I can understand that to some extent, but I don't see it as compelling in all cases. In fact, I mentioned to Will that I could probably get rid of DIECI if necessary. But this was apparently not a problem, and I'm happy to be on the same side with Will on this. As for "EIN Heldenleben", the translation is "A Hero's Life", so one can argue that this EIN is not a number, but an indefinite article.

And finally, I was delighted that my clue for 1-Across was accepted! I hope solvers find the puzzle enjoyable.

The humble Spoonerism is such an endless source of wordplay — often unexpected, sometimes wildly funny — that it's no wonder that it has become the inspiration for so many crossword constructors. I presume that my puzzle developed as had many other such puzzles — a random thought "spoonerized" a phrase, and the phrase was intriguing enough to encourage a search for other related phrases. Once I saw that TRAY DIPPER had the same letter count as THE BEATLES, the challenge was irresistible.

I literally looked through a list of every song by the Beatles to find the three remaining Spoonerisms. The viable options, through sheer luck, provided a matching letter-length set, plus a 15-letter center, and I was fortunate that Vivien LEIGH's last name does indeed rhyme with "Lee", not "weigh".

For me, it is interesting that the seed entry here, TRAY DIPPER, is not (in my opinion) the most elegant (I vote for PAPER RACK BITER with its clue), the funniest (SHE'S HEAVING LOAM, I'd say), or most successfully wacky (to me, LEIGH SHOVES YOU) of the theme entries. However, the overall combined result pleased me a great deal, and I hope solvers enjoyed it too.

For some reason the phrase "LOOP DE LOOP" came to mind, and I thought it might become a valid puzzle theme by means of setting the letters of LOOP within an actual loop of some sort. But a few random LOOPs by themselves didn't seem adequate. Then LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP occurred to me. By extending the concept into a repeated loop, things became interesting.

I realized that I needed to double the action — to create two "simultaneous" types of looping motion. Thus, the four-square units containing LOOP go around in a large circle within the grid. Then, as one follows the units around clockwise, the letters in LOOP are also "internally" shifted clockwise from unit to unit, so that L-O-O-P itself loops progressively, and does so twice in a circuit of the eight units. If you imagine this as an actual stunt by an aerobatic ace, the flyer is executing two full tight loops as he continues along the path of a large loop. Is this even possible in reality? I don't know — but it looks good on paper!

The puzzle had to be 16 squares wide to accommodate LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP, and the letter positions of L-O-O-P were almost entirely controlled by the circular arrangement, the symmetry of the units, and the letter combinations that arose as L-O-O-P was shifted. Thus, unsurprisingly, and despite a revision from my first grid, there are various entries that I would otherwise strive even more determinedly to remove. Among them are the crosswordese fellow Mobotu SESE Seko, plural ALOES, and of course HERAT (aargh!). But given the intransigence of the fixed letters, I think things resolved reasonably well, and I presume Will was lenient given the evident constraints.