Tess Davison author page
1 puzzle by Tess Davison
with Constructor comments
See the answer words debuted by Tess Davison.
| V | A | C | A | T | E | G | E | N | T | G | E | M | ||
| A | R | A | B | I | A | E | L | I | A | A | N | Y | ||
| R | U | B | I | E | S | E | M | E | R | A | L | D | S | |
| G | A | T | T | U | N | I | C | G | L | U | T | |||
| S | U | N | S | N | A | R | E | T | O | R | E | |||
| E | L | A | S | T | I | C | A | S | A | P | E | R | ||
| W | A | S | H | E | D | U | P | F | U | S | S | Y | ||
| A | M | E | T | H | Y | S | T | S | ||||||
| S | C | A | M | P | D | E | C | R | E | A | S | E | ||
| C | O | G | E | E | G | S | H | A | D | I | E | R | ||
| A | C | I | D | A | L | L | E | N | L | A | G | |||
| N | A | T | O | R | A | I | S | A | R | E | S | |||
| D | I | A | M | O | N | D | S | P | E | A | R | L | S | |
| A | N | T | W | E | L | T | P | A | N | O | U | T | ||
| L | E | E | E | D | Y | S | S | T | I | N | G | Y |
We are a mother/daughter team. Tess, the millennial, does the Times puzzle online, while Kathy, the boomer, prefers pencil and paper. This is our first published puzzle ever — but our fourth submission to the New York Times.
The theme came to Kathy in the middle of the night, when she couldn't sleep — as do many of our themes. Note to insomniacs: this is NOT a very good way to lull yourself back to sleep. Why birthstones? The only thing we can think of is that Kathy had a costume jewelry business as a teenager and so memorized the birthstone for each month. But it turns out that if you Google "birthstones," each month has four or five, which gave us a scare after we had filled in the grid. "Wait, June's birthstone is alexandrite, not pearl?"
We originally had the word "schlepps" in the southeast corner but Will Shortz and Joel Fagliano pointed out that the proper spelling of "schlepps" only has one "p" and asked that we change it. It felt like a lost cause to Kathy — what other word ends with "pps"? But Tess immediately came up with a new fill using "schnapps," requiring minimal other changes.
We're thrilled to be making our debut! Hopefully it won't be our swan song as well …