Eli Cotham makes his New York Times Crossword debut.
Jump to: Tricky Clues
FRIDAY PUZZLE — Let’s say that you’ve decided to make your very first crossword puzzle. Where do you start?
There are many good resources for learning the rules of construction: The New York Times Crossword team’s series on how to make a puzzle, Patrick Berry’s excellent guide, the Daily Crossword Links resource list, as well as tips and tricks that can be picked up from experienced constructors on Facebook (Cruciverb and Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory) and Discord.
But there’s something else that distinguishes constructors who get published versus those who don’t. You have to do the hard work of seeking out fresh words and phrases with which to fill a grid, and add them to your word list. Prune out the fill that is nonsensical or boring. And you need to spend the time creating clever clues that are not simply copied and pasted from other puzzles.
Ostensibly, the reason you are making a puzzle is to entertain (the bragging rights are a given here), which is an admirable goal. But that means you can’t just stuff a grid with any old fill.
Experienced solvers know the difference between puzzles packed with lively, unusual fill and those where constructors have relied heavily on the autofill feature of their crossword-building software.
This is Eli Cotham’s New York Times Crossword debut, and he understood the assignment, so to speak. The double-stacked grid spanners are jaw-droppingly good, and the surrounding fill holds the grid up in a pleasing way. In addition, the puzzle editors helped Mr. Cotham polish his clues for maximum interest.
Well done, Mr. Cotham. I’m looking forward to solving your puzzles in the future.
Tricky Clues
21A. I knew the drink in the clue “Half of a rum-based cocktail’s name” was a MAI Tai, but I wasn’t sure whether the half that Mr. Cotham wanted was supposed to be MAI or Tai. What to do? Well, I filled in the AI and then solved 1D (MADAM), which gave me my answer.
23A. If “Play things” referred to toys, the clue would have been one word. Since it’s two, we need to think about what “things” are part of a play. The answer is ACTS.
43A. Does anyone else have traumatizing flashbacks to standardized exams when they see an analogy clue? No? Just me? This one (“Con : Spanish :: ___ : French”) is looking for the French equivalent to the Spanish word “con,” which means “with.” The answer is AVEC.
45A. The “Start of an apology” is usually “I’m sorry,” but here it’s MEA, as in “mea culpa.”
49A. This not only made me laugh, but it also hit me in the gut, which is what I imagine GAS STATION SUSHI does. I don’t know anyone brave enough to try sushi at a gas station, but I do know someone who once ate airplane sushi on a 20-hour flight. The exact type of drama one might expect ensued.
The clue “Shell fish?” is a veiled capital clue, which means that “Shell” is deliberately placed at the beginning of the sentence to obscure the fact that it really is a proper noun (Shell gas stations).
57A. “Service agreement” can have different meanings. It can be a contract for services rendered, or have something to do with racket sports. In this puzzle, however, the “service” is a religious one, and the “agreement” is AMEN.
59A. As you are solving a Friday puzzle, you probably know this: If a clue is in a certain language, the answer must also be in that language. “Saisons chaudes” is French for “hot seasons,” so the answer is ÉTÉS, or “summers.”
6D. These “Cool-down stretches?” are not the slow exercises you do after a workout. They are stretches of time, and the times things cooled down quite a bit were the ICE AGES.
9D. I loved this one. The “Game with a hands-down winner?” is TWISTER. This is a great clue that is both clever and brings back good memories.
29D. Before you rack you brain for a word ending in K (“Something ending in ‘K,” perhaps”), the answer is RACE, which can be measured in kilometers and referred to as a __ K RACE.
38D. One of the funniest comments to appear on nytimes.com, in my opinion, was a response to a seared steak recipe from Cooking. I would like to be friends with this woman.
Oh, sorry: “One way to prepare a steak” is TARTARE.
Constructor Notes
Hi everyone, I’m proud to present my New York Times debut puzzle. I’m a Realtor in the Portland, Ore., metro area and have been building puzzles (mostly bad ones) for a few years.
I built this grid without having any specific seed words in mind; all I knew was that I wanted four fun and fresh words for the long slots. I found GAS STATION SUSHI first, and figured that it was basically a pass/fail term for editors: If it failed, it would take the whole puzzle down with it.
Once I stopped worrying about that — I’ve failed before, and I will again — I seeded that half of the puzzle with it and seeded the top half with AN HEIR AND A SPARE, which, surprisingly, had never been used in a Times crossword. By the way, the clue I submitted for AN HEIR AND A SPARE was “Two princes?” The editors changed it, presumably so no one would get earwormed by the Spin Doctors song. I am happy that my GAS STATION SUSHI clue survived. I was batting around different variations of “a little fishy,” “fish in a Shell,” before my much quicker wife, Nicole, landed on the obvious: “Shell fish.” Gold.
The lesson I got from the acceptance of this crossword is that the best entries for a themeless puzzle are the ones that are the closest to being unacceptable. There’s a fine line between a clue being fresh and fun and being too narrow, esoteric or colloquial.
Big thanks go out to the aforementioned Nicole and the good folks on Crosscord, the Discord crossword community, who have helped me improve my skills. I’ll be back!
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
