Trey Mendez author page
1 puzzle by Trey Mendez
with Constructor comments
From The First Class of Our Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Trey writes:
I am a New Yorker with a mailing address in California who currently lives in Zagreb, Croatia.
I grew up competing in a variety of sports (football, basketball, baseball, track, lacrosse and mountain-bike racing), and I'm a fan of games of all sorts. I also love language and primarily make my living through language (nonfiction writing, content marketing, hosting podcasts, voice-over work and occasionally self-publishing fiction). So crossword puzzles help me scratch that itch to both play a game and play with words. Constructing crossword puzzles really lets me play with words because of the cluing. When I write anything, I'm trying to engage the mind and sync up with the reader. I love the thought of truly affecting someone I've never met with my writing: It's like an immortality device. The relationship between the constructor and the solver may be the purest expression of the idea of building a bond between writer and reader that ever existed. That's what drives me to construct.
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As an American who lives in the small country of Croatia, I spend an inordinate amount of time describing the vast distances and differences between places in my home country. I guess it makes sense that I'm making my debut with this puzzle inspired by American geography.
Once I came up with the idea of connecting two state abbreviations with a transportation word, I began looking for words and phrases that would fit the bill. Some crazy concepts didn't get into the puzzle (like a MAGLEV TRAIN connecting Boston and Indianapolis) but might work as brand names (Who wouldn't want to fly HIGHTAIL, the only airline with daily flights from Waikiki to Kankakee?). I would write more about this puzzle's theme, but I've got to get to a pitch meeting for PALIMONY, my startup limousine service that transports divorced dads from Pennsylvania to see their kids in New York in style!