Greetings from the couch, and may I never again leave its friendly embrace

[slipjig3]

I'm starting to get the feeling that evening is not the time to be posting stuff. Even after a profoundly non-mentally-taxing day like today, the thought of sticking words into sentences into paragraphs into anything remotely coherent makes my brain twitch like the weird Jello wad that it is. But since I'm here, let's see what happens.

I think I went just a tad over the line at the gym this morning. Tired and sore are normal, but this was tired and sore and...something else, like I sprained my ghost a bit. Didn't affect the rest of the day for the most part, except for the bit when I was stapling a bunch of piles of card stock together, which is one of those activities that could kill you but the obituary would list it a homicide to spare your family the humiliation.

The office was ridiculously quiet, outside of illicit crossword construction, the aforementioned stapler fandango, and my laptop coughing up a lung when I was literally not even touching it. The company is going to be closed for the entirety of next week, so we're taking bets as to whether this week is going to be five days of Silence of the Power Ties or three days of silence followed by two days of shrieking Nordic epic deadline panic. Pray for me.

We made egg roll in a bowl for dinner. 'Twas tasty.

Comments

[sandrylene]

Wait, are you making your own crosswords? Or solving them illicitly? Either way, cool - that's become one of my hobbies since pandemic. If you're making them, I may have so many questions that you shouldn't admit to this. XD

[slipjig3]

Yes, making my own! I've sold eight to the New York Times so far (one Wednesday, one Thursday, one Friday, one Saturday, four Sundays) and recently started writing for Games Magazine again, which I did for a good decade or so back in the day. As for questions, ask away! :)

[sandrylene]

Woah, that is so cool!

The main one I'm wondering is - at what point do you impose the whole symmetrical structure onto the puzzle? Is the shape something that happens at the beginning? Toward the middle? I guess in general - what is the order of operations for figuring out clues, answers, shape of puzzle, etc?

Then also wondering if there are elements that separate difficulty aside from obscureness of clues and size of puzzle? Like, do things with two word answers generally then cause you to aim for a harder overall puzzle? (From solver POV, those are always harder.)

What are the bits that are hardest about making the puzzles?

Do you get editorial comments back on submissions, generally, or do things get a sort of binary acceptance/rejection?

...see, I told you I had too many questions. :P

[slipjig3]

Not too many at all! Questions answered in this post over here.

[felisdemens]

"Sprained my ghost" is such an elegant phrase.

[slipjig3]

Thank you! I did not, suffice to say, feel especially elegant.