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This puzzle:
Rows: 21, Columns: 21 Words: 140, Blocks: 76 This is the debut puzzle for Emet Ozar.
Will Shortz notes:
Emet Ozar, formerly from Los Angeles but currently in Charlotte, N.C., is a program manager for a software company. She and her wife have three children, all under 6. She finds crosswords ... read more
Emet Ozar, formerly from Los Angeles but currently in Charlotte, N.C., is a program manager for a software company. She and her wife have three children, all under 6. She finds crosswords appealing partly because they can be picked up and set down easily, which is helpful due to constant interruptions from the kids.
She credits the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory on Facebook for helping her develop her construction skills. This is Emet's New York Times debut.
Emet Ozar notes:
Have you ever been on an Easter egg hunt? I have not. The idea for this puzzle began with finding an Easter egg of a different sort. I thought first about the video game Easter egg in the ... read more
Have you ever been on an Easter egg hunt? I have not. The idea for this puzzle began with finding an Easter egg of a different sort. I thought first about the video game Easter egg in the Atari game Adventure . That Easter egg was created by game designer Warren Robinett . Translating that into a puzzle didn't work out, so I transitioned to having hidden EGGs, more like a traditional Easter egg hunt.
During first iterations I managed to fit in grid art of an Easter bunny that my wife described as looking like the rabbit from Donnie Darko . Good thing that didn't make it through the editing process as the grid was definitely not meant to horrify anyone.
Jeff Chen notes:
Easter eggs! Adventure was one of the first video games that captured my youthful attention. I spent dozens of hours locating Robinett's egg and eventually found it, boasting about my nerd ... read more
Easter eggs! Adventure was one of the first video games that captured my youthful attention. I spent dozens of hours locating Robinett's egg and eventually found it, boasting about my nerd cred to anyone too slow to run away. And when "Ready Player One" hit the shelves — with an audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"! — the fanboy SQUEE! shattered robotic armor all the way to Frobozz .
Rebus puzzles are common these days, although they're much more prevalent on Thursdays than Sundays. We did have another Sunday EGG hunt , but that was way back in 1977, and some factors helped elevate today's.
First and foremost, what a fantastic central entry, LEGGO MY EGGO. Not only does it neatly hide two eggs, but I have vivid memories of those commercials . Man, their marketing team did an amazing job! I still crave Eggo waffles to this day.
It's also cool that Emet didn't have the stand-alone word EGG in any themer. What fresh, evocative hiding places — PREGGERS, BOOTLEGGER, ARPEGGIO, and best of all, within longer phrases like REGGAE BAND.
Now, one entry BEGGED THE QUESTION, wtf are YEGGS ? Let us pray to Crucivera, the god of crosswords, that we shall never need to discuss this piece of Maleskan crosswordese again.
I'd have loved to get a few EGGs broken across phrases, which Will Shortz usually requires. There aren't many possibilities, but a few like NUTMEG GRATER, GREG GUMBEL , and MEG GRIFFIN would have been fantastic.
Overall, though, a solid debut puzzle. It's not easy to create a Sunday 140-word grid, and it's even harder when you have so many EGGs to hide.