"First in Flight," by Ed Sessa

"Season's Grieving," by Harvey Estes

"Crunch Time," by Brian Thomas

Constructor's Comments

'Tis the season to drink some HOT COCOA and snuggle up watching ELF, my favorite Christmas movie.  Throw in a day with a SKI (or maybe two!), and this puzzle is arriving at the perfect time of year—albeit unintentionally, because the wintry fill was a happy bonus to the theme.  Speaking of the theme, I'm a big fan of some potato chips (unfortunately for my health) and poker (unfortunately for my wallet)—so combining the two seemed like a fun combo.  Hope all enjoy and have a wonderful holiday season!

"Listen!" by Ari Halpern

Constructor's Comments

Thrilled to have my second crossword appear on the Puzzle Society page!

About the puzzle:  I have always loved crossword substitution/omission themes that have a revealer based on reparsing a word or phrase . . . themes like visa (V is A), floss (F loss), or story (S to RY).  When pondering theme ideas for a new puzzle, I always find myself going back to this basic wordplay.  In my growing list of ideas, I knew that the word not could be reparsed as no T.  However, I never seriously considered continuing with this notion because surely the idea of omitting a T in a phrase had been done before.  One day, during a discussion with a friend, the phrase seen but not heard was used in describing someone else.  In the back of my mind, I reparsed it as seen but no T heard.  A lightbulb went off, and I realized I could construct a puzzle where Ts were "seen" but not actually "heard."  In googling the origin of the phrase, I discovered that the actual phrase was seen and not heard.  That, however, did not change the meaning for my purposes, so I continued with the construction of this fun puzzle.  Hopefully, in solving, you had that aha moment that the central revealer should provide!

"Cheating in Class," by Evan Mahnken

Constructor's Comments

The theme idea for this puzzle came from a typo my education professor made, changing gifted students to grifted students.  By the end of the three-hour-long class, I had come up with the rest of the theme clues and mocked up a grid skeleton.  This is my first themed puzzle to be included in The Puzzle Society, but I hope it won't be the last.  Happy solving!

"Back Talk," by Annemarie Brethauer

Constructor's Comments

Snarkiness has been around for a long time, but there are always new ways to express your disbelief, boredom, smugness—to talk back.  However, this puzzle was meant to be a fun solve, not a nasty one.

My favorite fill words in "Back Talk" are SNOG and MOOED.  Also, I'm happy with the arrangement of the black squares in the grid, something I suspect most solvers don't concern themselves with (though my editors tell me otherwise).

As a fan of film noir, I was glad to be able to work in the clue [1955's "Kiss Me ___"] for DEADLY, though it got changed.  Now if I can only create a puzzle using THE GREAT WHATSIT, that film's MacGuffin.

I hope you enjoyed the solve.

"Thoroughly Themeless V," by Angela Olson Halsted and Erik Agard

"Ad Breaks," by Paul Coulter

Constructor's Comments

My original title was "Ad Lib."  As in AD has been "liberated from the rest of the word."  I imagined Ad Lib as a social movement for commercials.  Picture a bunch of ads marching on Madison Avenue with protest signs.  David's title "Ad Breaks" is good, too.  You can do lots of things during an ad break, including crossword puzzles.  And it's an apt description of the theme.  My favorite of the bunch is IPAD DRESSES, which was my seed entry.  I didn't come up with this myself, but I can't remember where I saw it.  Has anyone else seen this somewhere?

"To Err Is Human," by Mark McClain

Constructor's Comments

Happy Birthday to Me!  I am living proof that "To Err Is Human" . . . witness today's puzzle.  Some people believe crosswords should steer clear of the negative side of life, but how can that be possible when we English speakers have so very many words for PROBLEM?  A few of these are highlighted in this puzzle's four theme entries, though they are clued as if there is no PROBLEM at all.  But of course there is a PROBLEM (see 40-Across).  Hats off once again to David, who found a glitch in one of my theme entries (GLITCH being another PROBLEM word and a rhymer for HITCH).  David also suggested the inclusion of typos in the clues to add a little humor (with apologies to the spellcheck police, who were likely appalled by this gimmick and consider both David and I to be morons).  So in closing let me just say that if you finished this puzzle, then you definitely have a PROBLEM!

"Crossbreed," by Mark McClain

Constructor's Comments

If you're familiar with the word rebus, you may know that its dictionary definition is a puzzle device that uses pictures to represent words or letters.  But in the world of crosswords, the term is used to describe a puzzle with squares that contain more than one letter.  That's what we have today, and to add another layer of silliness to it, the squares that contain these letters are all black.  So, you can't write the letters in, which is just as well, because it's a pain in the neck to write a bunch of letters in those little squares, and if you're doing it on your screen, it may be even harder or impossible.  Anyway, the letters represented by the black squares are combined with the letters to the right and left to make sense of the clue.  In this puzzle the word that goes in those black squares is (not by accident) something that goes with black, which is all revealed near the bottom of the puzzle by the adjacent entries BLACK and LABS.  Bow-wow.

This is a departure from my usual puzzle-making technique, which is to stick to fairly basic themes and confine the trickery to an occasional pun or deceptive clue or two.

"Extended Play," by Jeffrey Wechsler

Constructor's Comments

It's fun to play around with the conventions of crossword construction, and this puzzle's gimmick derives from a frequently seen convention:  the addition of a preposition within a clue to define it accurately.  One example is the clue [Ascend, with "off"] for the answer TAKE.  It occurred to me that an interesting twist on this procedure would be to take the "with" literally, creating answers that needed the letters in the preposition to complete the answer.

As I was finishing the puzzle, I got the odd feeling that someone might have done something similar before.  Searching my imperfect memory, I recalled a puzzle (perhaps by the late, great Henry Hook) that I believe used a very common clue addition—with "the."  Every answer needed the added letters THE to make sense, although I think the answers in that puzzle simply suggested that THE was missing; it did not create complete words in the puzzle with "the"—for example, THEIR would simply become IR in the answer.  I am pleased that I was able to find several reasonable, stand-alone phrases that allowed the addition of a short preposition to create a humorous new phrase, with each answer using a different preposition.

[Ed.:  The earlier puzzle Jeffrey refers to was indeed by Henry Hook and appeared in The New York Times on April 7, 2011; it can be seen here on XWord Info.]

"See 33-Across!" by Morton J. Mendelson

Constructor's Comments

When I came up with the idea for this puzzle, I wasn't sure it would be possible either for me to construct it or for anyone to solve it.  The construction was a bit of a challenge, but not as much as I anticipated or might appear at first glance.  For one thing, the grid is relatively simple, with no Across word more than seven letters long; also, the only letter constraints are in the reveal at 33-Across; finally, a web-based anagram solver made it easy to test possible entries.  I still had to use cheater squares to avoid problematic fill, and David added an unusual title to make sure solvers—especially those who start at 1-Across and work their way through the clues—didn't overlook the reveal.  The final puzzle, although difficult, is indeed solvable, and I hope you enjoy the challenge.

"Even Splits," by Mike Doran

"Look Around," by Victor Barocas

Constructor's Comments

This puzzle was one of those where you have the idea for it and you think, "Yeah, that would be nifty," but you're not sure that it's possible.  I also promised myself years ago that I would never make an "around the outside" theme, and now here I am.  I'll never make another one.  They look so doable, but they are so hard, even in this one that had a lot of flexibility in the outside words.  On the other hand, I really liked the BELL-BOTTOM row, and I liked the different meanings of BEAR in CARE (BEAR) and CAN'T (BEAR), and of COUNTER in CARD (COUNTER) and BEAN (COUNTER).  ALL RIGHT was, in my opinion, the weakest, but omelets and breaking eggs, I suppose.  The fill was rough in spots because of all the demands, but I'm glad I got a good classical reference in there with EURIPIDEAN, and I was very proud of the clue for ALPHABETIC.  I hope that people enjoy the puzzle.

"Flippers," by Steven L. Zisser

Constructor's Comments

I kind of backed into this theme.  I have been relying primarily on pop culture themes but am finding out that they tend to be a bit dated.  The new direction that I took in this puzzle relies more on wordplay, and David provided great insight into how to improve the fill.

"One Step Forward, Two Steps Back," by Will Nediger

Constructor's Comments

As I often do, I set this puzzle aside once I finished the grid and then came back to write the clues a few days later.  A mistake in this case—I wrote clues for CODER and COMPLETES before I remembered that those were actually theme entries, so they were really CODE RED and COMPLETE SET.  Luckily, I realized my mistake before sending the puzzle off.

I'll also take this opportunity to do some shameless self-promotion:  I recently released a suite of themeless puzzles designed to showcase 16-letter entries that don't get much play in normal crosswords.  Check out my website for more details/to purchase it.

"Dial-ect," by Jake Halperin

Constructor's Comments

What's refreshing about this theme, to me, is that it's not an instance of a common well-known theme type.  Note also that in each equivalent pair, the same letter never appears in the same position in both words (e.g., if one word has an A as the first letter, the first letter in the other word is either a B or a C), which I think is an elegant restriction.

I wrote a couple of lines of Python code to generate a list of candidates for theme entries, which I then went over manually.  Other pairs of answers with the paired clues I would have used included PAID OFF [Panned out]/SCHEMED [Planned out] and PISTOL [Word with "drawn"]/SHRUNK [Withdrawn].  I couldn't think of anything for ABASHED and CAB RIDE.

The unusual lengths and layout of theme answers made it a challenging grid to fill, with little opportunity for sparkly bonus fill.  But USAIN BOLT is nice to have, as is the little Disney mini-theme.

I hope solvers had a positive experience with this.  Let me know in the comments!

"In and Out," by Jeff Chen

"International Cuisine," by Bruce Haight

Constructor's Comments

David was instrumental in tuning up this gastronomic conundrum, and he was nice enough to publish it exactly on my 65th birthday—thanks, David!

"Repositioning," by Andy Kravis

Constructor's Comments

This is the kind of puzzle I wish I could turn out every day.  Five solid puns, supported by clean fill from a variety of knowledge areas, with relatively lively clues.  I hope solvers will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.