Got another puzzle published today in the NYT. It got lost in the queue somehow; it was actually accepted way back in 2016. There is always a sizeable publication lag with the New York Times, so I didn't think anything of it at first, and then I kinda forgot about it, and then about a month ago I was looking through my "Accepted" crossword folder, and I saw this puzzle's file, did the arithmetic on the modification date, and thought to myself, Wait a second... I constructed this puzzle over four years ago and it still hasn't run? That doesn't seem right.
I emailed the editorial team about it, and they confirmed it got lost somehow, apologized, and told me it would run soon, which it did. So, it's all good. This is the only time that has ever happened to me. No harm, no foul.
The puzzle itself is pretty good, in my opinion. It has three grid-spanning entries in each direction, which locks in a lot of the fill straight-away. In order to make this type of puzzle fun for the solver, you really have to go six-for-six on the long entries, which I think I did.* As the constructor, you probably won't have much opportunity to work in other exciting entries (although OPEN SESAME and SCRUB NURSE aren't too shabby), so you really need to hit your spots out of the gate.
*CATCH AS CATCH CAN, SCENE OF THE CRIME, SHIVER ME TIMBERS, BETTER GET MOVING, BACKSEAT DRIVERS, BECAUSE IT'S THERE -- not a dud in the bunch, if you ask me.
The critics seemed to like it fine. Rex Parker called it a "typical Friday delight" (other than the somewhat obscure entry ASHLAR); Amy Reynaldo at Crossword Field gave it 3.5 stars (I'm just going to assume that's good; I'm not actually sure how that scales); Deb Amlen of WordPlay said it is "beautifully filled, with long, sparkling entries crisscrossing the grid"; and according to Jeff Chen, it is "an exemplary tic-tac-toe themeless. They don't get much better than this."
Jeff also compared it to a puzzle he once co-constructed, because he's co-constructed like 100 puzzles, so he's got one for pretty much any occasion. At least this time he didn't tell an anecdote about how he got the idea for my puzzle before me, but decided it wasn't good enough to actually make.
(No shade toward Jeff, by the way. I like him. I mean, I 've never met him before, just email, but he seems like a cool guy. He's a good constructor, and his site is a tremendous resource for the crossword puzzle community. I do find his writeups to be on the humblebraggy side, but I think that's just his style, and I still like reading them. I've said this before and I'll say it again: One of the best things about the crossword community is the diversity of character. Each of the four commentators I've named above are very different, but I really appreciate all of their sites for what they are. It's just cool to have crossword puzzle voices. Back when I first started getting puzzles published, I'd ask my parents if they liked them, and their inevitable "yes" would be the only feedback I'd get.)
The comments from the solvers are mostly positive as well. Some people, like Rex, thought ASHLAR is too obscure, which it probably is. I mean, it's a real thing used by people who know a lot about masonry, but apparently it's mostly unknown to the general population. It's almost impossible to get an accurate gauge on this type of thing in advance. I didn't know ASHLAR before seeing it in a word list, but I'm just one person (and I'm very wary of assuming my knowledge or lack thereof maps nicely onto other people's knowledge or lack thereof). Short of conducting a huge poll, how can you really tell what the typical solver will know and what they won't know? You can Google it, but as ASHLAR demonstrates, the results are often ambiguous.
Others complained about Nick SABAN, crossing NETS ("Court suspensions?") and SEAL ("Close up"). Because of the clues, some thought it was LETS (even though this in no way works) and NEAR (which could work), respectively. Considering the latter also crosses the perhaps-not-super-well-known model ALEK Wek, this could be a very thorny area if you didn't know Mr. SABAN. And if that was you: sorry not sorry. Nick SABAN is probably the most famous active college football coach and has been for over a decade. He is in a bunch of commercials and had a cameo in The Blind Side. His name in quotes gets nearly 5 million Google hits. If you've never heard of him, fine. There's nothing wrong with not knowing who he is.* It's just not the puzzle's fault is all.
*I sometimes wish I didn't know who he was. Despite being a huge sports fan, I'm very turned off by college football, because of the whole grossly underpaid workforce/grossly overpaid management thing, and Nick SABAN is kinda the face of this messed up system.
On the topic of sports in puzzles, one commenter at WordPlay (link above) wrote:
the puzzle played as something written by a very self-satisfied male ego... Miss me with those sport coaches/players...
Deb came to my defense, which I every much appreciate (Deb is awesome), even though I couldn't care less about this type of comment. It just doesn't bother me. And the thing is, in this case, by being too "woke" (excuse the term, I couldn't think of a better one), the commenter, it seems to me, is actually reinforcing outdated gender norms. As Deb points out in her response, many women follow and know a lot about sports. It's not accurate to associate sports coaches/players with a self-satisfied male ego.
The landscape has changed (and is continuing to evolve) concerning women in sports -- and that's a good thing! My three favorite young(ish) sports analysts are all women -- Mina Kimes, Charlotte Wilder, and Meg Rowley -- and I could probably name a dozen more off the top of my head whose work I really admire. (Cynthia Frelund, Lindsey Adler, Ramona Shelburne, Mallory Rubin, so on and so forth.) All these women are excellent at their sports jobs, and I guarantee you they all know who Nick SABAN is.
Okay, that's all I got for today.
