Michael Lieberman author page

Michael Lieberman: This puzzle has its origins at this year's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where we made a point of meeting each other at the suggestion of our mutual friend (the journalist Stefan Fatsis). Andrea's excellent movie-themed puzzle (with Christina Iverson) came out a few days later, and we soon started emailing about collaborating on something else movie-related, which led to this theme.

Andrea wanted to include Chris Hemsworth (if not "all those Chris guys," as she put it), and we thought we had a theme set that included him, only to realize that I had miscounted letters and had to replace Mr. Hemsworth to maintain symmetry. We'll try to work him into our next collaboration!

Andrea Carla Michaels: I was thrilled to meet Mike, magically (Magic Mike?) on Stefan's April Fool's birthday. Mike's earlier-that-week LEMURMURMUR puzzle makes me beam every time I think about it!!! This all came together quickly and easily and was a hunk a hunk a burning love.

RAFA: It's a huge honor to share a byline with two besties and crossword idols for what is undoubtedly the best NYT puzzle of 2023 so far!

Three things:

• 16D is very apt
• Pour one out for my [Myrrh-thful trio?] clue for 51D
• I was skeptical of 3D when Adam proposed that corner, but now it's one of my favorite answers in the grid!

ADAM: While we're on the subject of pouring ones out, here's to Mike's absolutely brilliant (G)O(R)ILL(A) (C)OSTUM(E) = BLESSING IN DISGUISE.

And props to Rafa for the incredible, puzzle-saving (REC)TANGU(LA)R PR(I)S(M).

My main contribution is this preposterous grid design, where every single Down crosses at least one theme answer... and over half cross more than one... including an absurd 10 entries that cross three!

This is also a full circle puzzle for me, with GET BACK IN SHAPE and PICTURE IN PICTURE echoing the revealers of my last two Sunday outings.

MIKE: In addition to the one Adam mentions above, my favorites that didn't make the puzzle (because making paired symmetry work is truly, remarkably, unimaginably frustrating) are:

• UNL(A)WFU(L) ASSEMB(L)(Y)
• TH(E) TWI(L)(I)GH(T) ZON(E)
• (M)(A)ISO(N)(E)T(T)E
• A (S)(T)RE(E)TCAR NAM(E)D DESI(R)E

(PARTNER IN CRIME, BEST IN SHOW, ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, and DRIVE IN MOVIE)

Three things I learned while making this puzzle:

• The website Rhyme Desk has a very useful phonetic word search function
• There aren't any great in-the-language phrases that use the word "taunt"
• The french "en pointe" is not pronounced the same as the english "on point" (I learned this one too late and had to re-do the whole grid after my first submission)

Special shout-outs go to Adam Wagner and Rafa Musa, who tolerated way too many "is this funny?" queries about potential theme entries, and also to the guy on the far left of 30-Across.

I'm sorry that I put 34-Across in this grid. You won't see it in another puzzle of mine.

This theme was inspired by Sid's constructor notes, which sent me searching for crossword conventions I could violate in service of a tricky theme. I liked the idea of using fake cross-references because a) I generally don't like real cross-references, and b) I figured that people wouldn't suspect them as the culprits. I hope it kept you stumped for exactly the right amount of time.

One added difficulty in constructing this puzzle was that I needed 1-Across and 1-Down to both be words that could plausibly be part of multiple idioms/phrases, to keep solvers off the scent as long as possible. You would have known something was up right away if 1-Across was, like, AIDA or OLEO. That turned out to be more difficult than I expected, but I like the BACK/BEST combination. An earlier version (with a different theme set) had MAGIC/MATH, which doesn't work quite as well.

As I am typing this, I don't know whether the online solver or app will highlight 1-Across or 1-Down when your cursor is on the theme answers, but it sure would be extra tricky if it did...

I hope you enjoyed this one. This was my first attempt at making something tricky, and I liked this particular idea because it allowed for colorful theme phrases that would be too long for a 15x15 grid if presented straightforwardly.

The major constraint was that I didn't want to use more than one phrase in which UNDER is followed by THE, and there are a whole bunch of those and not many others. I'm sure I missed some, but I found only four non-THE options that I really liked (COURAGE UNDER FIRE was the fourth, but I didn't use it because it's just basically the opposite of CRACK UNDER PRESSURE).

From there, symmetry dictated that I go with DRINK UNDER THE TABLE instead of WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, FLY UNDER THE RADAR, SWEEP UNDER THE RUG, THROW UNDER THE BUS, HOT UNDER THE COLLAR, etc. DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS could have worked, but I think this theme type works better without proper nouns.

Regarding 17-Across, I am obligated to inform you that the 1986 BMX classic(?) Rad—my honest-to-god favorite movie of all time—is now streaming on PRIME VIDEO.

The idea for this theme came while I was solving a Puns & Anagrams puzzle with the word ELONGATE, which Joel had clued as [Where to enter a North Carolina university]. That type of re-parsing is pretty common in P&A puzzles, but this one stood out because it occurred to me that ELON could ELONGATE its GATE — a trick that doesn't work most of the time. Hours of brute-force searching later, I had a theme set. The moral of the story, in my view, is that everyone should solve more P&As.

If you haven't had enough of these, the other decent ones I found could be clued as:

[Congresswoman performs some sneaker maintenance?]
[Novelist Patchett shares her newborn's weight?]
[Fratty guy confesses that his arms are sore?]

Big thanks to the NYT team for everything, but especially for keeping my silly clue/punctuation joke for 56-Down, allowing me to break the "don't editorialize" rule with 68-Across, and keeping my trinity of saintly clues at 36-, 37-, and 38-Down.

Happy Father's Day!

This is one of those themes that grew out of a different, failed theme idea. I started with the idea of using the theme clues [Rocky's friend] and [Rocky's foe] with the answers BULLWINKLE and APOLLO CREED. But I couldn't come up with another pair of [Rocky's ___] clues that worked as nicely, despite much effort and much cursing of Paul McCartney for not naming the guy who shot Rocky Raccoon something more interesting than DAN. So that was a bust, but in the course of searching for characters named Rocky, I hit on the phrase ROCKY START and realized that I could make the puzzle you see here.

If I had to do this over again, I would probably find a way to replace NAPALM, as it doesn't exactly give off the fun and positive vibe I've been aiming for with my more recent puzzles. It also was not super smart, construction-wise, to hardwire N__B_S and R_M__N into the grid, as there's only one good entry for each of those patterns, but the grid thankfully filled pretty smoothly anyway.

One fun fact: MOUNTAIN DEW first appeared in the NYT crossword almost exactly 50 years ago today (April 12, 1971). It was clued as [Corn squeezins], in reference to moonshine. This is the first time (out of four appearances) that it's been clued as the soda.

I hope you enjoy(ed) the solve!

Hi, Crossworld! I'm thrilled to be making my NYT debut today. It's been so much fun getting to know many of you virtually over the past year or so, and I hope we're all able to gather and meet at an in-person event soon. Until then, please say hello on Twitter (@footnote24) or the Crossword Discord Server.

The idea for this puzzle came while I was reading Erik Larson's Devil in the White City. I had just started constructing, so I was hyper-aware of word lengths, and I noticed the matched pair of FERRIS WHEEL and EIFFEL TOWER. I knew that another World's Fair was coming up soon, so I figured there was potential for a timely puzzle (though admittedly not a groundbreaking one). When I saw that SPACE NEEDLE and the revealer would complete the set, I was off to the races. I was pleased to sneak in EPCOT as a mini-bonus in the middle row, and I'm happy (and surprised) to see that I'm debuting non-themers 3-Down and 66-Across.

The original plan (both mine and the NYT team's) was for this to run on or around 10/20/2020 when the 2020 World's Fair was scheduled to kick off in Dubai. That didn't happen, for obvious reasons, but I hope this puzzle reminds solvers of past vacations taken and sights seen—and I hope that we're all able to safely travel and explore again soon.

As a Dodgers fan still not fully over the 2017 World Series (although 2020 helped quite a bit in that respect), I should note that the stacked pair of 4-Across and 15-Across was unintentional but apt.

Finally, thanks to the NYT team for allowing me to make a last-minute cluing change (to my own clue!), which I very much appreciated.