My First Entry In Months

The occasion is that I came across a copy of "Will Shortz Picks His Favorite Puzzles" while wasting time in a book store this afternoon, and I have two puzzles in it. For each puzzle Will says a little blurb, and for my first puzzle (chronologically), he says,

Here's a fun subject for a puzzle, and there is a little surprise at 41-Across. To date, Damon has had six crosswords published in The Times, two of which are in this book. Not a bad average!

Pretty cool. But it's a good thing he didn't state my acceptance / submission average, that one's not so great.

Actually, I knew that I had two puzzles in this book a while ago. Will mentioned it in an email while telling me a puzzle of mine was accepted (as did his helper Paula Gamache in an email telling me a puzzle of mine was rejected, I liked the first email better). The puzzle hasn't appeared yet, but I suspect it will soon. You never know though, sometimes they appear faster than other times.

My new goal is get a themeless puzzle accepted. I've submitted a few, but they've been no-gos. Looking back over them, I see why. I often get caught up in the moment constructing and convince myself that bad fill isn't so bad (like TOKENED). I think I can eliminate this with some more practice, so my new strategy is to make a bunch -- five or so, wait a little while, and then go back over them later and see if any of them are worth submitting.

We'll see how it goes.