Lynn Lempel author page

I have stacks and stacks of scribbled theme ideas, the vast majority of which never become puzzles. Most of those sit around for years until for no particular reason, one of them beckons. Such was the case for my notion of "human nature."

My original thought was things like MOUTH OF THE RIVER, EYE OF THE STORM, NECK OF THE WOODS. But I couldn't get a symmetrical set that would work. So I switched gears and ended up with the shortish answers and rather unusual grid you see here.

It seems the majority of clues were my own, with some of the changes clearly meant to make them easier. Yes, it's Monday.

OMG, I was just reminded that this is my 100^th NYT crossword. That means a lot of years have flown by! I'm constructing far fewer puzzles these days, but as I've said before, it remains a great alternative to cleaning or shopping or decluttering.

It's been a little over a year since I submitted this puzzle. I do remember trying out umpteen grids with various theme possibilities before settling on this one. Hitting on MAGENTA for the middle was a big help. I wanted all the "double" words to be embedded in other words and phrases rather than standing alone. For example, I wouldn't have used something like FBI AGENT or DATE PALM.

I hope you're all having a fun holiday season!

The vagaries of English are always fun to play around with. Way back when, it seemed popular to publish puzzles with rhyming words: theme answers like TRAFFIC LIGHT, PRIZE FIGHT, STAGE RIGHT. In coming up with rhymes, I always found it more interesting when the spellings were different.

"Clean coal" as an answer gave me a slight pause because it's debatable whether there is such a thing. My original clue included something of a hedge ("Dubious term for a greener energy source"), but the editing team didn't think that was needed. Actually, there weren't many clue changes overall. It helped with clue-writing to know that this would definitely be slated for a Monday.

Whenever I would come across the word "cardamom," I saw it in my head as "card a mom." And since I'm always on the lookout for puzzle themes, it eventually dawned on me to look for other examples of words with an "a" in the middle that could be similarly reparsed.

And interestingly, it was that seed entry that Will & Company questioned after I submitted the puzzle this past November, saying the pronunciation was a bit off with the slight change to a schwa sound in the last syllable. My only substitute was SPAMALOT, which they felt was already a sort-of pun. Anyway, they then decided that CARDAMOM was okay after all, and accepted the puzzle as is.

I hadn't found a lot of possibilities. The only other one I remember is MANATEE.

I probably pegged this as a Tuesday. Even so, most of the clues remain intact. Those long clues at 53- and 62-Down were Will's.

Not a whole lot to say about the puzzle — a pretty common theme type. I think what elevates it somewhat is the lost-and-found element, which came to me only after starting the grid.

True story. Just last weekend my husband and I were leaving the house when we both saw that our front door keys were missing from our keychains. We mainly go through the garage, not the front door, but still …. We looked in the obvious places to no avail. For months we'd procrastinated about making an extra key, and now we didn't even have one. Would we need a locksmith to come put in a new lock? Well, needless to say, I found both keys. And then this puzzle pops up. Very timely.

I think it was BILLFOLDS that got me started on this one. But really, I find there's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to using people's names for puzzle themes. The stumbling block here was finding a second 9-letter option, so the idea sat around until I finally came up with VANGUARDS. The puzzle was submitted roughly a year ago. I don't see any especially noteworthy clue changes.

As always, I hope it's a fun one. Hurray for puzzles to keep us all occupied, these days more than ever.

I'm having a hard time remembering much about the construction of this one, which was in June of 2019. I have no recollection of what prompted the idea. However, I think I tried all sorts of combinations and permutations of possible answers and various grids. I see I ended up with something of an unusual one, with that black square in the middle separating two 7-letter answers.

And I'm not seeing any particularly noteworthy clue changes, for better or worse. Sometimes, though, I have to laugh when there's a clue I absolutely don't recognize and then discover it was my own. This was the case for 51-Down. I saw "Bored of the Rings" and had no memory of it whatsoever. It turned out to be exactly what I'd written.

This puzzle sprang from a totally different idea, which had sat around forever and ever. I'd jotted down SHOOTING STAR as an answer for John Wayne, thinking I'd use other nonhuman phrases that could apply to real people. I never got anywhere with it. Then one day, coming across my "shooting star" note for the umpteenth time, I suddenly wondered if maybe there were other stars that would work. Right away I decided that ANNIE OAKLEY was a better fit than John Wayne, and from there it was a piece of cake.

I do remember trying to fit in a dog star like Rin Tin Tin or Lassie, but to no avail. I submitted this pretty recently, in early December. And I'm rather amazed to see mighty few clue changes. I guess the crossword stars were finally aligned!

This idea sat around for years until I finally tackled it the weekend I had to miss the ACPT this past spring. I figured I might as well work on a puzzle.

At first, I tried to put STAR-CROSSED across the middle and got absolutely nowhere. Finally, the lightbulb went off, and I realized I could cross it, appropriately enough. But then finding "star" words that crossed proved harder than I would have thought. There had to be four longish entries and four short ones, and I wanted to make sure there were different kinds of stars without totally repeating any. Like, I wouldn't use both FILM and MOVIE, or MORNING and EVENING. And I couldn't use anything too technical that no one ever heard of. I do remember having to abandon some more interesting choices (for example, FREE-FOR-ALL, instead of LEAST OF ALL, would not work), as well as being stuck with the likes of SOLIDER.

Sometimes we just have to give in.

I was wondering about a word or phrase I could break up as the beginnings of theme answers—which I don't remember doing before—and RUMPELSTILTSKIN is what immediately popped into my head. It came out of nowhere but seemed perfect, being the answer to a riddle-type question that could serve as a revealer. The crossword gods were definitely smiling.

The main construction issue was deciding where the breaks would come, with RUM- or RUMP- having to be 11 letters for symmetry's sake. I wasn't real thrilled with PELICAN STATE, but it must have worked out the best.

I had fun with this one and was happy with the way it turned out. I hope it's a fun solve.

I'm a sucker for quirks of English, so a puzzle was clearly in the cards when I noticed there are several stand-alone, differently spelled "do" rhymes. I think it was only when starting the grid that I thought of PAS DE DEUX, which purists will complain isn't quite the same pronunciation. For me, close enough. I would have loved to use DERRING-DO, but it just didn't work.

Nothing much to say about clues. They're mostly what I submitted, or at least the gist of what I submitted. Changes seemed generally to make them a bit easier. The 65-Across clue for ONE was definitely Will's. And he must have nixed my attempt to include a Monday question-mark clue at 7-D, with [Person going to court?] for WOOER.

I hope you all DO enjoy the puzzle.

This was an exceedingly rare, once-in-a-blue-moon puzzle for me: Once the phrase "go first" popped into my head, the theme idea and all four theme entries were a done deal within, say,15 minutes. And within an hour, the grid was finished. That just never happens.

I submitted the puzzle close to a year ago, without the circles. I thought the revealer would make everything obvious enough without them, and that people would have a nicer aha moment by seeing it on their own. But yeah, it's Monday.

Only a pair of clue changes to note—the Michael Jackson ones at 11- and 12-Down. I could never have written them, never having heard of the song. But then, you all probably knew that!

I doubt that "hit" puzzles are all that original, so I was mildly surprised when this was accepted, back in April. And I was totally surprised to learn last week that it would be running on Christmas Day. Hitting someone doesn't seem like a Christmasy theme!

I think it was noticing Lucy's last name that inspired this. Van Pelt was a must-use answer, even with the sort-of extra word in there. Deciding on the theme answers made me realize the multitude of words — clock, paste, and belt being just a few — that can be used in this vein.

I didn't notice any significant changes to the clues, so the puzzle you worked is pretty much the one I submitted.

Peace and good will to all this holiday season, and here's to lots of good solving in 2018.

I don't remember what sparked this puzzle. I do remember consulting the dictionary to check the proper spelling for each written-out letter.

Most of my clues seem to have survived intact. I don't notice any major changes, though my clue for BEE STUDENT referenced someone in the annual Scripps-Howard tournament, and my TEE BILL clue was in relation to a pro shop rather than a souvenir shop.

I submitted this in mid-August, so it hasn't been languishing too terribly long. As always, I hope you enjoy it.

Maybe I've finally gotten the message about writing sufficiently easy clues, because this puzzle is hardly changed from what I submitted. Yes, there were a few slight rewordings and a few rewrites—but nothing I'd consider significant.

Once I realized that "fool around" had good crossword potential, I was happy to find four reasonably common phrases that worked—and mostly for words of five letters (i.e., not too short, like ASS or OAF).

I sent in this puzzle just before Christmas, so it's been in the queue less than six months. You never know how long it will take. I hope you had fun fooling around with this one.

There are so many ways to play around with people's names. That's obviously not original as far as crossword themes go, but as long as it's fun it passes muster for me. I think what inspired this one was "playwright." A word or phrase you've seen a zillion times suddenly takes on new meaning--and voilà! Here it became a matter of finding compound words where the first part could be a verb and the second part could be a recognizable name.

I sent this to Will in September, so it hasn't been languishing for very long. And I can report that there weren't many clue changes, with none I'd consider significant. The theme clues are all word for word as I submitted them—which is not always the case! I hope you all enjoy it.

Hmm, I can't think of much to say about this one. I have no idea anymore what prompted me to consider the revealer phrase as potential puzzle fodder. But once I did, it was relatively easy to find words and phrases that fit the pattern. Create the grid, and voila, done! Well, obviously not quite. Still those clues to be written.

It goes without saying that Will changed some of them, but I didn't notice anything major. In general, for a Monday, his clues ease things up a bit.

Looking at the grid now — nine months after submitting it — I do remember pondering whether ROMANESQUE was Monday-OK. Getting the Q in there was not a factor — actually, it was the only darn thing that would work.

Only thing left was to solve the puzzle, and for that, of course, it's up to you!