Jill Singer author page
1 puzzle by Jill Singer
with Constructor comments
| S | U | P | E | R | B | S | E | A | M | S | A | W | ||
| O | H | I | S | E | E | A | L | T | A | T | W | O | ||
| B | U | T | T | E | R | F | L | I | E | S | E | A | R | |
| A | H | A | K | N | E | E | T | U | R | K | S | |||
| B | E | E | I | N | M | Y | B | O | N | N | E | T | ||
| P | A | R | A | D | E | D | A | U | D | I | ||||
| A | C | E | S | E | N | T | O | B | R | B | ||||
| W | H | A | T | S | B | U | G | G | I | N | G | Y | O | U |
| N | E | D | I | O | N | O | E | M | U | S | ||||
| E | C | R | U | A | B | I | L | I | T | Y | ||||
| A | N | T | S | I | N | M | Y | P | A | N | T | S | ||
| T | O | W | E | L | A | P | R | S | T | I | P | |||
| L | I | E | I | N | M | Y | S | T | O | M | A | C | H | |
| A | R | E | A | S | I | A | A | L | T | K | E | Y | ||
| S | E | T | N | A | T | S | B | E | S | E | T | S |
This theme came to me on a hike in Bryce Canyon, Utah. It's not that there are a lot of bugs there, but on a long hike, my mind wanders and empties, which seems to create fertile ground for theme ideas. Once I started along the bug path, I was delighted to realize how many good expressions there were, ones that I had often used myself. Ants in my pants when I sit at a desk working on theme ideas too long, check. A bee in my bonnet when I am trying to find a grid that works, check. Butterflies in my stomach as I open an email from the NY Times Crossword editors to see if this might finally be an acceptance, check, check, check.
As a fairly new constructor when I made this puzzle, I thought that there were fixed tradeoffs in good fill — that once a grid and themes were in place, you could make a word or a section better, but another section would suffer. So I submitted the puzzle with quite a few problem areas, thinking it was the best it could be. Thanks to the many iterations with Wyna Liu, I was delighted to learn that this wasn't the case — a grid can almost always be improved!