How I made yesterday's NYT crossword

Breaking down crossword construction

Hello puzzle lovers!

In this newsletter:

• The anatomy of a Thursday crossword

• Yesterday’s Thursday crossword for you to solve

• The Enigmatist Chicago now on sale!

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The anatomy of a Thursday crossword

In this edition of Enigmatology, I thought it would be fun to shed light on how yesterday’s NYT crossword came together and what went into its construction. Read no further if you’d like to solve it (below) and then please double-back to learn about the process! 

For those of you who are regular solvers, you know that Thursday is the trickiest day. My favorite type of crossword is the kind that messes with the conventions of the puzzle. Ashish Vengsarkar had a puzzle once where the clues “First part of Quote” and “Part 2 of quote” etc. yielded phrases that resembled the letters Q, U, O, T, and E. BRITISH WAITING LINE was “Q” and SECOND PERSON SINGULAR was “U” etc. Brilliant! And it screwed with a format that people are used to seeing. Another one I loved was by Todd McClary and Dave Tuller. This puzzle took the convention of “See 1-Down” and and twisted it by using the “See” as an integral part of the clue. Because the answer to 1-Down was RED, the clue was actually “See red” or BECOME ANGRY.

For this puzzle, I wanted to play around with the convention that asterisks (stars) are often used to denote where the theme clues are. The idea was that A STAR IS BORN could be parsed as A STAR IS “B” OR “N” so that a clue like “*Allot time” could turn into “(B)allot time” or “*Ascent stage for a bird” could become “(N)ascent stage for a bird”. My original plan for the puzzle was to create “Schrödingers” in the clues (for a post on Schrödingers, go here). I wanted there to be two 17-Acrosses, say. “17. *Ear's opposite” could be interpreted in two different ways: "Bear's opposite" --> BULL and "Near's opposite" --> FAR. I then proposed there be two 17-Acrosses in the grid. Fun right? NOPE CAN'T DO THAT APPARENTLY. The editors told me that the programming can't handle non-standard grid numbering (which to be honest I don’t quite understand).

So Joel Fagliano at the Times proposed that I rework the puzzle and focus on the most misleading clues with a B or N missing. Mislead people? Gladly (magician)! I had two goals as I set out to do this: Create clues with the most "surface sense" and mess with pronunciation. Here are the clues and answers that made it into the puzzle:

*Allot time becomes Ballot time …. ELECTION DAY

*Assist in a foursome becomes Bassist in a foursome …. MCCARTNEY

*Ice is found on it becomes Nice is found on it …. RIVIERA

*Ascent stage for a bird becomes Nascent stage for a bird …. HATCHLING

*Ovid of Greek mythology becomes Bovid of Greek mythology …. THE CRETAN BULL

*Acre on the ocean floor becomes Nacre on the ocean floor …. MOTHER OF PEARL

I believe I achieved surface sense with all of them -- my favorite being *Ovid of Greek Mythology. I hope that one earned an equal amount of gasps and groans. Here is the final grid. In order to get seven theme answers to fit, there had to be some intersection of them. Fun and not easy to make!

But let’s go back to the beginning of putting this together. My first step was to find all the words that could take a B or N in the front and still be words. Turns out there are lots of B words (a hundred or so) and not a lot of N words (twenty-ish). And then I had to nix words where both a B or N could work (ironically the original conceit of the puzzle). Those are in red. Here’s a screenshot of my spreadsheet.

The green N words were the best for deceptive clueing, and they ended up making it into the puzzle.

I had around a dozen fully gridded out versions of this puzzle. In one of them BABE THE BLUE OX was an alternate answer to *Ovid of mythology. I also had THE MINOTAUR, but was worried that nitpicking solvers would claim the minotaur wasn’t full bovid!

Here’s one that didn’t make it that I wanted so badly to include: *Ones on TV can be found here …. THE ENTERPRISE

DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy

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Here’s the crossword!

Solve it here at the New York Times online. For those of you that don’t have a NYT subscription, you can solve it here. I don’t want to get in trouble with The Gray Lady, so the latter (grid below) is the pre-edited version. Many of the clues are different than what ended up going to print.

As always, please let me know in the comments what you think! The internet tells me that it was playing hard for people. How did you do?

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The Enigmatist in Chicago!

After a sold out run at The Kennedy Center, The Enigmatist next moves to Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier in May 2024. The Windy City, get ready for the puzzle party! Tickets available here!

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Puzzle Hunt Playing Cards

Enigmas: Puzzle Hunt Playing Cards. Included within this unique deck are four very special puzzle cards. Solve them all to unlock an online Puzzle Hunt! Available here.

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