11/12/19 My NYT Debut!

Today I made my NYT debut with my cousin Jakob Weisblat. As I shared on WordPlay and XWord Info, I first started writing crosswords almost exactly a year ago. Jakob ran into my parents at a family event and mentioned he had also recently begun constructing. Today's puzzle was our very first collaboration, built from my germ of an idea about an older pop hit, "Bye Bye Bye."

I learned a lot about constructing from writing this puzzle with Jakob and from the many I've written since we submitted in May. I also learned a lot from reading comments and blog posts written about the puzzle today. Here are some of my big takeaways:

• People have mixed, but strong feelings about the term BICURIOUS; reactions to the clue skewed more negative. @AllieLHunter posted an article about the way the term 'bicurious' can feel offensive and diminishing to people who identify as bisexual, which I learned a lot from. All in all, I think I'm okay with leaving BICURIOUS in my dictionary for future use, but I'll need to be a lot more careful about what clue gets attached to it. Jakob and I didn't write this one, but I also didn't notice it as offensive when I looked over the advance copy. I'm very interested in suggestions for a definitively bi-positive replacement in cluing rather than just a neutral/inoffensive solution.
• ITGUY, on the other hand, has to go. Although I think our original clue (Nick from "The Office") was more fun and a little less problematic, overall, I agree with Amy from Crossword Fiend that the term is needlessly gendered and not great fill. 
• BY A LONG SHOT was "easily" our most confusing entry and clue combo. Because the phrase is usually seen as 'not by a long shot' or x occurring is a long shot, our use of the phrase seemed awkward. I remember thinking it was a little awkward when we filled it in, and having a discussion with Jakob about it. The clue we wrote to go with it was "a good way to win," which is fairly similar to the editors' simplified version: "easily." One of Google's definitions of (not) by a long shot is "(not) by far," which if you subtract the negatives, fits our usage. But I totally get why this seemed awkward and in retrospect, we should have spent a little longer looking for a different theme entry.
• This puzzle was a little glue-y, especially for an easy/ early week theme set. Many readers and bloggers called out fill entries like NO TAR, NOT PASS, TONG, DII and ARTE. My default in constructing is to lean towards fun and scrabbly long entries at the cost of some meh shorter entries. One fix for this is to clean up my dictionary, which has all sorts of fusty and fake words that fit in little spots and tempt me into a sparkly down I should really let slide.

All in all, it was fantastic getting to see our puzzle in print, even if the cluing didn't look too familiar. I got a lot of really nice notes from more experienced constructors, which made the day even better. Finally, I SMASHED my Tuesday record to keep my streak going. 😂