Jon Olsen author page

It's great to have a third puzzle in the Times! This one underwent a few iterations before arriving at the finished product. I was tossing around a few famous phrases in my head, and realized that "All for one and one for all" would make an interesting crossword theme, and lend itself to some sort of substitution. I knew I would need a revealer, and since the phrase itself would be tough to work in, I noticed that luckily, THREE MUSKETEERS made for a tidy 15-letter entry.

Initially, I wanted to create four other theme entries that would have one substitution each (two would swap ONE for ALL, and two would swap ALL for ONE), each making a new phrase. So, CALL OF THE WILD would become CONE OF THE WILD or something of that nature. I wound up deciding against this structure because most of the viable theme words would be pretty short (CALL/CONE, BALL/BONE, THRALL/THRONE...), and that seemed a little redundant. So, I decided to find some interesting phrases that had both ALL and ONE therein, and swap them in each.

Since the resulting theme lines would no longer yield coherent phrases, I geared the puzzle to a Thursday difficulty level, making the nature of the substitution the gimmick that one would need to unpack. Somehow, that felt more interesting than just having some punny phrases, like my first idea would have yielded. I submitted the idea with the option of including or excluding the circles, depending on how nasty the finished product should be. I think including the circles was the right choice, and probably made for a more enjoyable, less frustrating solve.

Regarding cluing, I like to make late-in-the-week puzzles, so I can sprinkle in some trivia clues and some misdirections. My favorite trivia clues were the ones for MALARIA and DOLPHIN. I thought "They might appear in cameos" was a fun bit of trickery for ONYXES, and avoided a more boring reference. As a cryptic crossword fan, I knew I had to throw in a cryptic reference for SILENT R, so "February 4th" felt perfect. Sadly, "Where to watch the big game?" didn't make the cut for SAFARIS, although the Teddy Roosevelt clue is a fun one. (The River of Doubt is an amazing read about his adventures in the Amazon!).

I hope this was a fun and challenging one, and look forward to giving you more puzzles in the near future!

The idea for this puzzle came after I saw mention of Britain's Royal Navy, and found it interesting that both ROYAL and NAVY were shades of blue. Just for fun, I started thinking about other shades in my head to see if I could find other pairs with the same property. As soon as BABY POWDER came together in my head as the best anchor entry, I knew I needed to try to finish the theme set for a puzzle.

Hundreds of blue shades exist here and there. I wanted to make sure the ones I chose came up pretty consistently on color palettes, so as not to reach into obscurity. ARCTIC and OCEAN appear on short lists of common shades for online palettes, so I felt comfortable with that choice, and ditto for COBALT and STEEL. I had a few options to tie together these four pairs with a fifth entry, like SHADES OF BLUE, but with the symmetry necessitating a ten-letter entry. BLUE ON BLUE worked and felt like a good fit.

The clue for 55 Down is my favorite, having a soft spot for word origins - I'm glad Will left it in.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

It's a great honor to make my New York Times crossword debut with a puzzle I had so much fun putting together! I'm a veterinarian who has been addicted to crossword puzzles for 30 years, since picking up my first issue of GAMES magazine when I was 7. After getting some puzzles published in GAMES in college, I wanted to make a more serious effort to get my work into the New York Times. All of my early rejections thankfully came with some helpful feedback. Thanks to Will for giving this puzzle a thumbs up, to Dave, Lily, and Mom for test solving, and especially to Nancy Salomon for some excellent mentorship during the constructing process!

I decided it would be a novel idea to build a puzzle around an emoticon — I toyed with a few different ideas for working in a smiley face, such as fitting it into a single square rebus-fashion or placing it into a few themed entries to replace the word HAPPY. In the end, I decided to place it dead center, and use the other theme entries to hint at the gimmick. It worked out nicely that EYES, NOSE, and MOUTH dovetailed into some decent Down rebus entries, and the fact that COLONHYPHEN / PARENTHESIS worked as symmetrical descriptors sealed the deal.

A few of my original clues may have been too iffy for a Thursday, or for the difficulty of their crossings ("Rocky landing?" for PLYMOUTH; "Change for good?" for TIP JAR), and were changed accordingly, so I'll have to keep that in mind going forward.

Hope this was a fun solve, and I look forward to rolling out some more puzzles in the near future!