Pawel Fludzinski author page

MICKEY: This puzzle is one of a number of collaborations between Pawel Fludzinski and me, both for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and other publications. The idea probably arose at dinner one night. Pawel is a wine consumer. In our research, we found two toasts that I really liked, but they did not fit the theme of the puzzle. They are: "As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never face the wrong way" and "Everybody should believe in something — I believe I'll have another drink."

It is always a great experience to collaborate with Pawel. Although he is relatively new to the game, his constructions are masterful.

PAWEL: Mickey has been a terrific mentor as I entered the world of crossword construction a few years ago. I could not have gotten started without his help, support and encouragement, and what limited success I have enjoyed to date I owe to him. He is a true friend!

This puzzle is my first themeless in the New York Times. A humbling experience — the bar is very high. Without theme entries to "excuse" possible deficiencies in the grid, there is little tolerance for "glue" (or whatever your preferred euphemism is for poor entries).

I constructed this puzzle around four seed entries: DUMPSTERFIRE, VITRUVIANMAN, SETOFPIPES and GAMETHEORY — all interesting entries that hadn't been used before. I was pleased that the NW and SE corners had reasonable stacks. However, as with any puzzle, once I looked at it again a few months after submission, there were several entries I wish I could've avoided — ACAN, TAPPER and INIGO come to mind, not to mention COSTUMER.

I was also pleased to see that approx 2/3 of my clues survived directly or in a closely related fashion. One clue that did not survive amongst the seed entries was for 41-Across (VITRUVIANMAN). My original clue was "Da Vinci's canon of proportions" — which in hindsight, was far too obscure.

As always, my thanks to Will and Joel for their help.

Finally, as a "still learning" constructor, XWord Info has been invaluable, and a shout-out to Jeff Chen for his rapid responses and counsel to questions like "what do you think of ___ as an entry?" Thanks, Jeff.

Last fall while at an art fair, I ran across these Shakespeare, Socrates, Sartre and Sinatra "quotes" twice in one day. By the second time, I realized that the number of letters in the phrases matched — and a possible theme was born. I suspect like most readers of the constructors' comments on XWord Info, we observe things around us through a unique lens of letter counts, interesting words, and other filters of a crossword constructor.

Of course Will and Joel greatly improved my clues, changing about half of them and tweaking the grammar in a handful more. I originally assumed this puzzle would appear on a Monday (perhaps Tuesday) if accepted, so their editorial assistance tightened the consistency of the degree-of-difficulty of the clues. As a still relatively inexperienced constructor, I find setting the right tone for clues as one of the more challenging aspects of construction. I often get enamored with a possible clue, without fully appreciating whether or not it is appropriate for a given puzzle.

In the end, I hope solvers share the same moment of amusement from the theme that I did when I ran across it (twice!) last fall.

Today's version of CUTIES is the 4^th iteration of this puzzle. It started life as a 21x21 puzzle, but I quickly realized two things (after a quick rejection) — first, this theme is more appropriate for an early week puzzle rather than a Sunday puzzle, and second, it is difficult to come up with enough meaningful QT theme entries that are in common usage to accommodate a Sunday puzzle.

There were two 16-letter entries in the larger version that I wanted to salvage for a daily puzzle — QUENTIN TARANTINO and QUIDDITCH TOURNEY. Both of these entries were in the second version (15x16). Will thought QUIDDITCH TOURNEY was a bit contrived, but he did like QUENTIN TARANTINO, so I kept that entry in the third version. However, in reviewing the grid in version 3, there was too much subpar fill necessary to accommodate QUENTIN TARANTINO. In the end, Will/Joel suggested letting go of this theme entry and the net result is what you see today in version 4.

With respect to clues, most of mine (75%) survived — a high percentage for me. The only two I was disappointed to lose were 39A — I originally proposed "Necessary skill for Jeopardy" (QUICK THINKING), but I can understand perhaps not wanting to reference the game show; and 52D — I proposed "With 53-Down, Jethro Tull's best-selling album" (AQUA LUNG), but then I date myself. Undoubtedly too obscure a clue except for us Tull/Zeppelin fans from the 70s!

As always, Will/Joel provided invaluable advice and assistance. Very much appreciated.

My first Sunday puzzle in the NY Times! The inspiration for this puzzle came from my daughter's first day in second grade. She came home that day with a variety of word puzzles, including words within words, e.g. THODEEPUGHT. Her schoolwork got me thinking about short phrases containing "in" that could work in a puzzle, rather than just a word within a word, like her example. From that moment of inspiration, the creation of this puzzle became a tutorial in how to create a consistent, tight-knit set of theme entries. Indeed, the published version is the fourth iteration of the puzzle. (My daughter is now in third grade, so you can get a sense of the gestation period for this puzzle!)

In the first version, I had many interesting theme entries, but they were inconsistent in whether or not an article was dropped — e.g. HIGHFRIENDSPLACES, CHINABULLSHOP and NEWRINGYEAR — all nice entries, but the second drops an "a", the third a "the", whereas the first does not drop an article at all. In hindsight, this should have been an obvious consideration in the selection of my theme entries. I went back to my list of over 50 possible theme entries and sorted for grammatical consistency. The selection process became much more difficult because no group of possible theme entries had more than 10-12 members. As if that wasn't enough, I added the additional constraint to the selection process of having crossing theme entries — both versions 2 and 3 had 8 entries, with 2 in the down orientation.

Both the second and third versions of the puzzle were grammatically consistent, but some of the entries were weak. Hence, the tutorial concluded with the valuable lesson of not compromising the selection of theme entries for the sake of having them cross. Everything finally came together in the fourth and final version, which is the result you see today. As a new constructor, it was a real education. (I got started in crossword creation about 4 years ago after seeing Will Shortz give a talk in Indianapolis — I caught the cruciverbalist bug).

My other passion, time permitting (and it is tough with an 8 year old) is large format photography. It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that spatial relationships — be they black squares on a crossword grid or subject elements on the ground glass of a large format camera (viewed upside and in reverse) — are something of great interest to me. The rest, as they say, is "history", although in my case, a very thin one! I definitely want to extend a tremendous thanks to Will for his continued encouragement and assistance in finalizing the theme set for this puzzle.

The first version of this puzzle was crafted in late 2012. Will said that the puzzle was "fresh and amusing," but thought some of the theme answers and the revealer clue didn't make sense. He encouraged me to try again, which I did in 2013, resulting in a much better set of theme entries. However, this time Will commented that I had far too many 3-letter entries (24) for the puzzle. The final version was submitted in January of this year and accepted, with requested modifications in one corner which were easy to implement.

My submitted thematic clues were far more complicated than those in the published version. I suspect I never did rid the puzzle of the confusion that Will noted early on. My struggle from the very beginning was to find a good way to clue the theme. In my set of clues, the revealer was: "Where to find two-part answers to asterisked clues" (IN BED). Examples of my themed clues were: "*Neared a pesky insect?" (BROACHED), or "*Obstructed a door fastener?" (BLOCKED). My clues were intended to be two part clues leading to an embedded two part answer; however, it gets complicated because the revealer (IN BED) is also part of one of the answers. In hindsight, I don't think any of my variations on this approach ever quite did the job. Indeed, just the effort to explain it here is illustrative of the problem. As a result, Will simplified the theme with the clues as they appear, with a revealer clue of "How breakfast may be served…or how the answers to the eight starred clues should be entered?" The clue for BROACHED became "*___Motel" and for BLOCKED became "*Bit of hair."

I very much appreciated Will's encouragement and editorial changes, which greatly improved my initial attempts. In the end, it is an absolute delight to get my second puzzle published in the NYT. Makes all the effort worthwhile — having trained as a lab scientist long ago, I am used to failed experiments! I follow Lone Watie's advice (from the movie classic "The Outlaw Josie Wales") — "endeavor to persevere". In fact, I am still trying to work ENDEAVORTOPERSEVERE (19) into a puzzle. I did once, cluing it as "Advice to cruciverbalists." Unfortunately, the puzzle was rejected.