It's about the X's and O's (Not the Jimmys and Joes)

[Published Grid]

It took me a couple tries to get this one right.  The grid you see above, the final grid, was my third submission.  My first attempt, seen below, was very different.

[Version 1]

I actually don't even remember making this grid.  I knew that I made three of the them, but then I couldn't find this one on my computer right away, so I started doubting myself, thinking I must have only made two.  And now that I have found it and am looking it, it only vaguely rings a bell.  I often construct at night in a sleep-deprived state (I have two young boys, so it's that or nothing), and I must have constructed this mostly on auto-pilot.  And if that's the case, it turned out pretty well considering.  But not quite well enough.  It got rejected -- encouragingly rejected, but rejected nonetheless.  The grid is too segmented and contains too many three-letter words (22).  Also, Will apparently doesn't care for BARF in his puzzles -- noted.

I put it aside for a while, and when I came back to it, I had a very difficult time opening up the grid and finding good theme entries that fit.  One thing that made this grid tricky is that the X and the O are not in symmetric squares, so if you want to make the theme answers symmetrical, which I decided I did (to keep things tight and to "reward" those solvers who figured out the trick early on), then you have to put two pairs of theme answers right next to each other.  Like I said, I struggled.  I talked myself into the grid below, but I never really felt good about it.

[Version 2]

This grid has some highly problematic entries -- for example: MAN OS.  A "man hug" is most definitely a thing in my world (I've given and received quite a few), so it might be fine as a non-rebus entry, but with the HUG part replaced by an O, solvers might not have any clue what's going on.  The same goes for THE SQUARED O.  Outside of professional wrestling fans, people might not have ever heard this term, completely negating the opportunity for that elusive "eureka" moment.

So I had my suspicions that this one would also be rejected, and a few weeks after I submitted it, those suspicions were confirmed.  But I tried again and finally got something that works.  My breakthrough was using those Utah-shaped blocks of black squares in the upper-right and lower-left of the final grid.  It's something I'm loath to do, because it's not very visually appealing, but in this case it made all the difference in the world.  It allowed me to put in the much more crossworthy BEAR OS and replace X CENT with X SPEED, which I think is an upgrade, and I didn't have to sacrifice the answers I really like (THREE X A LADY, X MY GRITS, and O SUM GAME).

The final piece to the puzzle was finding a new 16-letter "circle" entry at 26-Down.  My word list didn't have any entries, but it did have some that were 15 letters (unsurprisingly, given most girds are 15 x 15), and one of them was BRING FULL CIRCLE.  So I could have gone BRINGS FULL CIRCLE, but that didn't sound quite right to my ear.  The phrase, as I know it, is "come full circle," but that's too short, and it would require a non-rebus O, so I had to make do with TURNED FULL CIRCLE, which probably isn't something I would ever say, but it's in the dictionary, and it sounds better to me than the "brings" version, so it's a decent compromise.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how this one came out.  Let's hit some bullets and call it a post.

• Hopefully the solver noticed that I didn't use any X's or O's outside of the theme entries.  This was a serious pain in the ass.  It turns out filling in a crossword grid without the letter O is quite challenging.  And I don't know how many times I thought I got something to work and then realized "Oh no! It's an O!"  You just look right past them, even when you are explicitly trying to catch them.  Once I even did this with an X, which just felt wrong.  It's like, c'mon, avoiding X shouldn't be what trips me up!
• Interesting tidbit about the letter X: There has never been a player in any of the big four American professional sports leagues whose last name starts with X.  There was a baseball player named Joe Xavier who made it as far as Triple-A (with my childhood local minor league team, the Tacoma Tigers) but he never made the show.
• Not so interesting tidbit about the letter O: There have been many players in each of the big four leagues whose last name starts with O.  My personal favorite is former Cubs great Orval Overall.  But the one most crossword puzzle solvers know is surely Mel Ott (see the final across entry of my first grid).
• One review is in as I write this.  Jeff Chen at XWordInfo liked my puzzle and even gave it his weekly "POW!"  Sweet!
• Wait... another one just came in.  Andy at Crossword Fiend like it as well.  Two for two.  I probably will have to wait until the morning to find out what Rex Parker has to say about it, but, I mean, c'mon that's a lay in, right?  That guy never has a bad word to say about the New York Times crossword puzzle. [Update: Rex said the he "enjoyed this one," which is basically a rave review from him, so I'll happily take it.]

I might check back in later.  But if I don't, until next time...