Below is a grid I submit to Lollapuzzoola just a few months. It was (kindly) rejected, and I completely forgot about it... until I did today's New York Times puzzle, which is also pictured below.
Weird.
If you ever think somebody "stole" an idea, keep this example in mind before passing judgement. Coincidences happen.
Honestly, seeing this crossword puzzle run brings me little joy at the moment. I’m still depressed about Tuesday’s election. I mean, I’m fine, I can carry on normally at work and with my family, but taking joy in frivolities like crossword puzzles – I’m just not there yet. I feel like I got dumped by America. Seriously, the last time I felt this gutted was in 2004 when my girlfriend at the time left me for another dude. It was a complicated, long-distance type of thing, and everybody was much better off for it, but at the time I was beyond devastated.
There is a passage somewhere in the book East of Eden – I swear it’s in there, but every time I look for it I can’t find it – in which a catatonically heartbroken Adam Trask is visited by his acquaintance Samuel Hamilton. And Samuel tells him, basically, to just live his life, to do all the things he usually does, to act as if everything is normal, and then one day he will realize that it is. It's simple advice, but I've found it to be helpful in tough times.
To this end...
I started this puzzle with THAT'S A BIG IF. That was my one seed answer. Then I threw down WELL, SHUT MY MOUTH, which reminds me of Dana Carvey's Church Lady from SNL, which is strange considering I never watched SNL regularly, and that's not even the Church Lady's catchphrase.
From those two entries, I developed version 1 of this grid.
[Version 1]
It's got some good stuff in it -- JUST YOU WAIT, DE STIJL, PLAYER PIANO. (Hey, it also has TRASK! I didn't even notice that when I wrote the previous paragraph. What a coincidence!) But I didn't think it was NYT-submission-worthy. You can probably see why. RBH, A BLUR, RIS -- these could not stand. Also, I wasn't sure enough solvers would appreciate BEER SNOB. (Coming of drinking age in the greater Seattle region, where there are dozens and dozens of microbreweries, this phrase is well-ingrained in my vernacular.) So I redid the grid.
[Version 2]
The problem with this, however, is that I didn't actually improve the puzzle. Now I had MISADDS, AS A TEAM, and SET AT in the upper-left corner, JODI in the upper-right corner, ENDE in the lower-right, and tons of other bad entries that I failed to clean up all over the puzzle. There are the tortured plurals ARNOS and ETHS (one of each is bad enough), and then RUTA, which I literally don't even know what it is. Also, THE ELVIS (a peanut butter and banana sandwich), an entry I really liked at first, now looked much iffier than BEER SNOB. This wouldn't do either.
So, I apparently made another version.
[Version 3]
I say "apparently" because I honestly don't remember making this version. It was just there in my folder among all the previous versions. So I don't know why I didn't make it the final version. Maybe I just thought I could beat it? I don't know.
[Great song off of The White Stripes album "De Stijl"]
I did finally scratch DE STIJL and rework the grid. I was very hesitant to do this because I really liked the entry DE STIJL. But as another constructor (I can't remember who) once wrote, YAHOO -- You Always Have Other Options. Don't get too attached to an answer that doesn't fit. You end up making four versions of your puzzles if you do.
[Final version]
Okay, a few bullets before I go.
As I mentioned at XWordInfo, I don't love the clue "Hook remover, perhaps" for NOSE JOB because it evokes the term "hooked-nose." Is it just me or is this a pejorative term? Maybe it's just me because no dictionary I've seen has it marked as such. It's certainly not something I would ever say to describe somebody.
Speaking of XWordInfo, Jeff Chen had mostly good things to say about this puzzle, but he balked at EVILEST. I didn't even think twice about this entry. I guess "most evil" sounds more natural, but if somebody said "evilest" I don't think I would notice anything out of the ordinary.
I hate when OSH is clued through OshKosh B'Gosh, because it's only part of a word. I prefer the Kyrgyzstan city, even if it is kind of obscure.
It really is JUST DESERTS. Desert is an archaic term for something deserved. It's not "just desserts" although that kinda makes sense as well. "You forgot to buy sugar?! Well, then, you're gonna get some pretty bland cookies. Enjoy your just desserts!"
I always try to clue BOZ through ex-Seahawks linebacker Brian "The Boz" Bosworth, and it always gets changed. Bosworth was somewhat of a big deal back in the mid-'80s. He's best known for getting run over by Bo Jackson on a play in the end zone, in which he never actually got run over. (It's actually a pretty ordinary football play.) This is going to be the titular tale in a new book I'm (slowly) working on: Actually... The Truth about Bo and "The Boz" and Ninety-Nine Other Misremembered Sports Tales. It's a working title. Ninety-nine might get changed to something much smaller.
Speaking of books I've written, you can buy my first (and only) one here. It's got a perfect five-star rating so far!
And two more things that have little to do with crossword puzzles.
Thank you to all the veterans for your service.
RIP, Leonard Cohen. About ten years ago I grabbed his album Songs of Love and Hate off my friend's CD rack and copied it on a whim. I put it on for the first time on a lonely, rainy night while I was studying for qualifying exams. I think I listened to it five times in a row. "Avalanche" was the first song I heard and still my favorite.
