Sam Trabucco author page

Oof, this was a doozy to construct. There are so few themer options (beyond the flexibility that Bond and "Men in Black" provide), leading to me needing to use 14-letter CHARACTER ACTOR instead of much friendlier CHARACTER ACTORS. Combined with my desire to use HUGO WEAVING (for whom I had no matching 11) meant I could not use a 14x16 grid, which forced the rectangles in the corners. It did give me the chance to make the grid pretty open, and I like how it's different from what's typically seen (even if that is because it's ugly and what's typically seen is not ugly :P).

I'm thrilled to debut THE BEAN today. I've only been to Chicago once, but while there I developed a weird fascination with THE BEAN. It's become quite a real part of my personality — many of my friends won't visit Chicago without sending me a selfie with THE BEAN. I'll always look back upon this puzzle as my tribute to it.

I thought of this concept while running, which marks the first time I've ever had a cogent thought while running. More specifically, I thought of the "build a word" idea, hoping that I'd be able to find a nice enough selection of words which could be built up that there'd be a shot one would have an apt revealer. I wrote a script to find all the 5s in my word list which would work (daring not even dream a 6 might work — I did confirm this later though!) and was very happy to see BEARD pop out, immediately thinking of today's revealer. The theme fell nicely together after that. I like how as you solve, it seems like a homonym puzzle, and then BEAR shows up and hopefully provides some temporary confusion (as a bear showing up is wont to do). And shoutout to mom and sister, both gigantic 34-Across fans.

Some people dislike the structure a central 9 often forces, with lots of 7s in the corners, but I'm a big fan. Because this usually means each corner only interacts with one themer, I find I can usually convert a decent number of those 7s into assets (e.g., I like A-LISTER, PLANET X, and JANELLE in the NE). And I was able to get down to 72 words, allowing for some additional nice answers going across (again, some people dislike having non-theme across answers as long as theme answers, like FALSE IDOL and THIS IS WAR, but I think it's almost always fine, and especially so here because of the circles).

Happy No-Shave November!

I'll sometimes hear a phrase and know I'm going to build a grid around it. That's what happened with NETFLIX ORIGINAL — how fortuitous that it's a 15! I built the NE stack around it first (having also been meaning to use "Hercules"-inspired ZERO TO HERO for some time) and then expanded from there.

I like the grid overall. I actively chose this version with LENO'S over others with cleaner SW sections because it allowed me to get five entries down there which I love (ON FLEEK / VIA VENETO / ANTIDOTES / FAT ELVIS / RING TOSS), whereas the fully clean versions could only get around 3.5. This will be a mixed bag, I'm sure, especially since ON FLEEK will be utter nonsense to a lot of people, but I think it was worth it. To the ON FLEEK haters: I look forward to your blog comments about the eventual debut of YAS QUEEN.

Speaking of YAS QUEEN and [Letters following Q], it's not too late to pick up Queer Qrosswords! I dare you to find me a better way to celebrate Pride

I had the idea to do a play on line breaks a while ago, but the extent of that was pretty much "line break puzzle?" in my Notes app. Then one day I was sifting through said Notes app (which is just a bunch of half-baked theme ideas and things I want to add to my word list) and thought some more about it, eventually arriving at the idea of repurposing the hyphen from the line break as part of the crossing downs. Then I thought, hey, all the broken lines should be things you say when you're interrupted! Then I thought, hey, the remnants of the broken lines should still form valid entries! Then I thought, hey, no way in hell that'll work. But sometimes you just get lucky (though the brainstorm on this one was long).

I've really gotta stop making puzzles with crossing theme entries because they force a lot of constraints on the grid. In addition, this puzzle has six theme entries of length 3-5, which probably don't seem like they'd be tough to incorporate, but they do force specific black squares, as well as demanding longer entries in the fill. It took a while to put together, but I am happy with the end product (absent ABLUSH). Otherwise, I'm just happy to have gotten wordplay dependent on both fixed income products and the term "body shot" into the same crossword; I'm easy to please like that.

I wanted to make a low-word count grid, so I decided on a big stagger-stack design in the middle and tested out seed entries for a while. Eventually I hit on STRESS EATER; its ultra-friendly letters in combination with how fun a term it is (and, in this case, its autobiographical nature) made me excited to try it on the bottom. Once I shifted the black squares around, the rest of the center fell quickly. It was important to me that the non-central parts of the puzzle not just feel like afterthoughts, which is why I left long slots running through it, grid-spanners on the top and bottom, and additional stacks in the upper-left and bottom-right.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how the grid turned out (just HAVE A as a problem in the middle and a few blips elsewhere which all felt worth it to me). My original grid had OBAN / OLD rather than EBAN / ELD, and though it's not necessarily a change I agree with, it's okay. I am a bit bummed to get scooped on ESCAPE ROOM by just a few weeks (not for "debut points" or whatever — I just worry about a repetitive feeling for solvers). But that's okay too — the presence of GIRL CODE renders me unable to dislike the puzzle.

I'll be flying home to visit my family for Christmas when this comes out — I hope that any families for whom solving crosswords together is part of their holiday tradition enjoy it!

One day at work I realized that GOTTA CATCH EM ALL was a 15, and that was that. I needed to build a grid around it. Pokemon is a beloved part of my childhood*, and including it prominently in a crossword feels like marrying my biggest hobby from back then with my biggest hobby from today. I wish the clue could've been a bit tougher / more interesting (it feels like most people below a certain age will be able to fill it in without crosses), but that's the tricky part of including proper nouns with bifurcated familiarity.

*I may or may not have bought White 2 during college.

I also wanted to clue CHASE UTLEY to It's Always Sunny but I guess that's a bit abstruse now that he's not even on the Phillies. Also, he's upholding my now-two-puzzle streak of including a 10-letter baseball player in the NE of a themeless — watch out for JOSE ALTUVÉ or WILLIE MAYS next time.

Not much else to say about this one — hope even non-Pokemon fans enjoyed!

It takes a pretty specific sort of person to create an NYT crossword puzzle centered around BUZZFEED QUIZZES, but here I am. Consider this my love letter to the fallen BuzzFeed Crossword, which I miss dearly both as a solver and a constructor. I'm still sitting on some profanity-laden, otherwise-inappropriate crosswords from that period, if anyone's looking.

I generally shy away from the gratuitous use of JQXZ-type letters because usually it results in lower quality fill. And though I know no one will believe me, I really didn't prioritize any of those letters here (beyond the initial selection of BUZZFEED QUIZZES, which I definitely liked in part for its Scrabbliness). They just gave me the best combination of smooth and fun.

For those who think two sitcom references is a lot for one puzzle (ROSA from "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and ARTIE from "Glee"), imagine if Will had kept the other two I put in (ROSS from "Friends" and ALIA Shawkat from "Arrested Development"). I love all those shows, so I'm happy at least a few survived the edit. And I'm especially happy to see ROSA Diaz still here — badass character in my favorite current sitcom (for many reasons, including Amy and Captain Holt's obsession with crosswords).

This is a weird case where my original seed entry* was deemed a puzzle killer, but Will was interested in the rest of the grid, so I salvaged the puzzle. Unfortunately, this led to the grid having less sparkle than I aim for in my puzzles today — the parts of the grid which can typically shine most are the least constrained parts, and tearing out my only seed then rebuilding that section effectively led to the grid having zero unconstrained regions.

It is pretty clean, though, I think — a bit more flash / personality and I'd really like it. I DON'T MIND, though! I wouldn't have submitted the revision if I didn't think it had enough GOOD STUFF, and I hope solvers agree.

I love writing hard clues, so my recent focus on themeless puzzles has been lots of fun in that regard. My favorites here are for ODOR EATER, PUFFERFISH (also my fav entry in the puzzle), TAROT CARDS, and ULTRASONIC. I also love all the clue echoes Will and co. added — stuff like giving three entries the clue [Test] and the disparate John Hancock references adds a nice sense of cohesion for me as a solver.

Til next time!

*This entry was "MOM, DAD — I'M GAY" which was (fairly) rejected for being arbitrary. I got too attached to the clue [Parental advisory about sexual content?] to realize that, I think (and it's possible that clue is too "risque" anyway). Being more objective and recognizing that other people's experiences / preferences differ from my own has been an ongoing goal for me in construction — and my focus on improving in that arena has greatly improved the puzzles I've made in the year-plus since I made this one (I hope???).

I've always disproportionately enjoyed plays on silent letters; this is the second crossword I've written themed around them, the first being what eventually became my 2016 Indie 500 puzzle. I'm not entirely certain what's so interesting to me about silent letters. Maybe it's how strange they are as a construct, and how unpredictably they can appear in English (much to the chagrin of non-native speakers). Or maybe it's the fact that, despite their ubiquity as a concept, different people can mean different things when they talk about them. Not sure! All I know is I've gotten some nice crossword mileage out of them.

In creating this puzzle, I narrowed my definition of a silent letter to be one which, when removed from its word, leaves a string whose most reasonable pronunciation is identical to the that of the original. In the case of the theme entries, this is natural — since I was leaving a legitimate English word (homophonous to the original), the most reasonable pronunciation would have to be unchanged. When I decided to make myself cross the silent letters with other words where they're also silent, though, suddenly I needed to be very particular about which words I used. For instance, under my narrow definition, the G in SIGN is not actually silent — removing the G leaves SIN, which is pronounced differently. This made finding crossing Downs all the more difficult, adding additional filling constraints everywhere.

Originally I thought it would be best to include a note or something to explain why the silent letters spell KNIGHT. The note would read something like "What holiday standard is hinted at by the circled letters?", which leaves you with SILENT NIGHT (after applying "Silent Treatment" to the K). I hope that meta element isn't lost on solvers!

Also, I see 49A was edited from my original submission (TAP -> TRY), most notably changing PSL into YSL. This means I've lost a bet with my friend, who predicted this turn of events. I guess the NYT isn't yet basic enough for that. (I'll note that I made sure excising PSL would be easy before I put it in the grid :P).

I wrote this as an, uh, coping mechanism after certain late 2016 events. It's so important for kids to have role models they can see themselves in, and celebrating women who reach the top of fields historically dominated by men is a huge part of that. Shoutout to all my friends who will be those women for tomorrow's girls interested in STEM.

The crucial concept of BREAKing THE GLASS CEILING was very much in the news around the election, and hearing and thinking about it got me to thinking about how to literalize it in a crossword grid (this phenomenon happens to everyone, right?). A bit of brainstorming got me to the idea you see today, though I was pretty sure it'd be impossible to execute. There aren't that many ???GLASSes out there, and surely it'd be tough to find a set which could be broken in the manner I needed. I got lucky and it just barely worked out — I didn't leave too many good glasses on the (proverbial) table!

Lack of glass flexibility also led to a lack of flexibility in choosing women to include. I was bummed that I could only think of one GLASS which could be broken by a C, because CURIE and CLINTON were both at the top of my list. I went with CURIE mostly for field diversity, since a lot of others that were fitting in ended up being in politics. I was also sad that I couldn't think of any that could be broken by W, because I wanted to use either Edith WHARTON or Oprah WINFREY. Ditto Aretha FRANKLIN for F; the only "option" I found for F was WA(F)TER GLASS, and neither WAFTER nor WATER GLASS itself is strong at all.

This lack of flexibility, unfortunately, left me with a set of all white women, which I wanted to avoid, if possible — a puzzle celebrating diversity of extraordinary achievement feels incomplete that way. But overall, I was just happy to get a workable set of well-known glasses and women (and, in particular, women well-known as the breakers of their glass ceilings).

Wrangling the grid also wasn't trivial. It was easy to arrange the three glasses at the top of the grid since those ceilings naturally exist. Including all the black squares necessary to construct the remaining three ceilings constrained the grid a lot, and in particular led to the choked-off, relatively open sections that the theme entries are mostly contained in. And those sections themselves were pretty constrained, as happens with crossing theme entries, leading to some trade-offs in the fill — most notably in the CURIE / WIN(C)E GLASS region. I hope never to see the entry I SEE A again (though shoutout to my mom, who claims to have played "Bohemian Rhapsody" a lot when she was pregnant with me — explains a lot).

As for the rest of the puzzle, I think the fill is pretty solid in other regions, with (hopefully) enough interesting non-thematic stuff to keep solvers entertained. Writing ? clues is my favorite part of constructing, so I'm glad Will didn't quite excise all of them (luckily for everyone else, he did excise most of them). I think I'll add "first person to put the word SEXILE in the NYT crossword" to my dating app profiles — appreciating that feels like it'd have a really high correlation with getting along with me. Read into that what you will.

This puzzle's got an embarrassing backstory. Originally, I managed to drop EGGHEADS in as the first themer, apparently not noticing that the revealer is HEADS WILL ROLL and it's probably not wise to dupe theme words. And by "originally," I mean "to the point where I was content to send it to Will," because I didn't realize it until Joel sent a far-too-polite note about a "pretty bad dupe." Luckily, they were cool with me reworking the grid around EGG HUNTS, et voila. Figures the new grid would contain a TOO dupe, then — though, I've never actually been bothered by small dupes like that in the fill.

Anyway, when making easy puzzles (especially those which might end up on a Monday), I tend to hold myself to pretty high standards with respect to subpar / unfamiliar fill. I often see tweets on Mondays from solvers who just finished their first NYT crossword ever, and the last thing I want is to stymie such a would-be new solver with an even potentially-frustrating crossing, or other similar downer of a moment. Setting the solver up for success and all that. I think it's a huge responsibility for early-week puzzles, which can have particular influence on someone's relationship to crosswords, to provide an experience which leaves them wanting more.

I'd say this puzzle is solid in that regard — the least familiar / legit things are probably ET TU, LTRS, ETHNO-, EXT, but they're all inferable / crossed fine at worst. Though, wow, did I write this during a phase when I valued getting an X into the grid at literally any cost? EXT is so avoidable, would not do again.

I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

Hey all! Excited to be making my NYT debut today.

I came up with this puzzle during my last few weeks of college (I know, I was pretty wild). I'd only recently begun constructing seriously, and was brainstorming phrases I could literalize in some new way. I hit upon TIMESHARE, I think, and thought of the sharing mechanic you see here. In that version, just the first four theme entries would have had the sharing mechanism, but luckily I hit on the dual theme entry/revealer LION'(S)HARE at some point before getting too far along. This way is much more elegant.

This was actually one of the first puzzles I ever finished. Were I to redo this I'd definitely have put more effort into getting rid of some of the gluier bits of fill (IGA, LUC, UAE, AVI, ANSE, IPSO stick out), but overall I am happy with this puzzle. I like the long downs a lot, and the medium-length stuff is generally OK too. I wish my original clue for TENT [Pitcher's base?] had been retained, but I'll get over that (in time). The cluing was definitely improved overall.

Until next time, happy solving!