Ashton Anderson author page

SAWYER: I met my wife Natalya in 2012. We established a tradition of solving the Saturday NYT crossword. After deciding to propose, my most romantic option seemed to be publishing a crossword in the NYT containing the message.

I started constructing, first by hand, then with a phone app. Every MTA trip commuting to work, I'd be rearranging entries, with NATALYA#MARRYME the only fixed part of the layout. After months of work with little to show for it, my friend Meg introduced me to Ashton. I apprenticed under him and James Mulhern, and among many valuable lessons, they taught me about the timeline of publication. So by the time I had created a proposal puzzle that could be mistaken for an NYT themeless, I secretly replaced the week's puzzle with mine in Across Lite, and Natalya solved it in March 2017. My heart was pounding when she said, "Wow, my name is in the puzzle! We should take a picture!" After she filled in MARRY ME, I knelt next to the coffee table to finalize the delivery of the message.

She said yes! We went on to get married in 2018, with the proposal puzzle on display to be solved by our wedding guests, including Ashton. After that journey proved so successful, Ashton and I decided to try a collaboration. I seeded his corner with one of my very favorite phrases, NO WORRIES, and my corner got started with PRESS SEND, a phrase that Natalya often uses. I ended up finishing off the southwest, and I'm particularly proud of the rich Scrabbly short fill under the long diagonal. I find it poetic that Ashton and I now have a puzzle to share with the world after he helped me construct a puzzle that was designed to be solved by exactly one person.

ASHTON: GOOGOOGAGA was the inspiration for this puzzle. One of the most rewarding parts of constructing puzzles for a long time has been discovering the kinds of answers I tend to like. I've found that part of my voice involves including nostalgic, child-like answers when I can. GOOGOOGAGA was the natural extension of this and seemed just crazy enough to seed a puzzle with.

JAMES: As in these notes, in our collaborations, I usually come in second to bat cleanup. After Ashton had fashioned this puzzle's somewhat daunting SW, I was a little nervous about filling the opposite corner in the NE. Given the constraints, I think it came out pretty well. From there, the two of us worked together to hammer out the final corners, which are trickier than they look. We were fortunate to find IPADAIR for the pivot into the SE, where initially we thought only DEADAIR worked. Sometimes a single tweak can be the difference between smoove and gnarly. Enjoy!

Ashton:

This was the first themeless James and I collaborated on, around two years ago now. Our ideas about what makes a themeless great were starting to evolve towards a more "holistic" view, for lack of a better word. In the era of computer-assisted construction, a scattershot collection of great entries isn't enough — it becomes harder and harder to tell what's human and what's machine.

Instead of making themelesses that are simply lists of words (and judging them by simply enumerating their "good" and "bad" words), we focused on trying to craft puzzles with interrelations and echoes and interesting juxtapositions in them, so they could only be fully appreciated by considering them whole. Hopefully this puzzle's NW corner has this effect (relating the two long downs and joining a triplet of entries with identical clues were two other attempts at achieving something similar). The end result isn't perfect, but we hope the solver can feel the human effort that went into it.

James:

What he said. Ashton did the top and I did the bottom. Hope you like it!

James:

We constructed this puzzle a little over a year ago. Ashton constructed the eastern half of the grid, seeded with my entry, CHA-CHING!, and I put together the west, seeded with Ashton's entry, THE CLOUD.

I think Ashton's NE is particularly good. We often rate entries on a scale of 0-10, with 0 being a "sale-killer," and 10 being reserved for what we consider explosive, top-shelf stunners. To stack two 10's (CHA-CHING and AI WEIWEI are 10's in my mind) and incorporate a ton of other entries that I consider 8+ is gorgeous work. His clue [Cash flow statement?] ups the ante in that section even more.

A final thought: although WSW isn't the best entry, I thought it was pretty cool that it fell in the WSWernmost spot of the grid. One of the clues left on the cutting room floor hinted as much. Oh well.

Ashton:

James's seed entry, CHA-CHING!, is one of my favourite entries in a long time. It's evocative, melodic, slangy, positive, and implicitly exclamatory. To sift through the language of daily life and unearth an ultra-rare gem-phrase that combines a lot of wonderful traits like this, and then start fashioning a freestyle grid around it, is the single greatest joy in puzzling for me.

Ashton:

A quick intro: I'm a Ph.D. student in computer science. James and I met during our undergrads at McGill, where he first introduced me to crosswords, and, later, to the idea of constructing them. I never thought I'd be a "crossword person," but it has turned out to be a weirdly perfect combination of many things I love (language, pattern, misdirection, etc.). I think of constructing as a craft, or a minor form of art, and it makes for a great creative outlet for me.

When James and I collaborate, I usually start off with the first corner (seeded with an entry from James), then pass it off to James who fills in the opposite corner (seeded with one of my entries), and we try to design the grid so that the 3rd and 4th corners can then be finished simultaneously. This is because I'm a hopeless puzzle perfectionist and love the freedom of the first corner (but my solo output is mostly a folder full of first corners), whereas James is much better at making shrewd compromises to squeeze great corners out of constrained situations — I open, he closes.

I did the top half of the puzzle (seeded by LEGALIZE IT) and James did the bottom (seeded by SHE SAID YES, although I was thinking of the ecstatic phrase). I'm especially excited about this one because it has a lot of answers that feel very "us," like I GOT YOU, MAKE BANK, DUCHAMP, and PATTYCAKE.

James:

Despite almost ruining our friendship (PEELINGS led to a heated debate), it was a blast making this puzzle. Ashton's NE corner, in particular, is a beaut, with LEGALIZE IT crossing REEFER, and my favorite clue, [Drive to drink, e.g.] for the super-fun PRIMAL URGE.

Speaking of cluing, our cluing method for our collaborations involves each of us writing a set of clues without talking to each other, then brainstorming as we merge them. That way, we get two perspectives — that is, assuming we don't have the same clue... and that Ashton manages to finish his (3+ months to write clues is not unusual for him!).

And finally, a huge thank you to Will for agreeing to run this puzzle today. I reached out to him a few weeks back about the possibility of having it in the paper on the day I propose to Kate, my one, and he graciously agreed. 58-Across will be a keepsake for life.