Still, the entry is goofy in all the right ways. AutoFill is notoriously fickle, though, and doesn’t have a human’s discerning eye for what makes fun fill. Oh, and then we could use a similar pattern to make the middle section look really cool. STEINBERG: Me too! NATAN LAST: Wait, practice? Even though The New York Times publishes a wide variety of constructors and themes, there are striking similarities between grids by day of week. The goal is to place the theme entries and black squares in such a way as to get the best chance of filling the puzzle with sparkling, lively nontheme entries. VIGELAND: Let’s go to two wonderful resources now, OneLook.com and XWordInfo.com/Finder, in order to look up other phrases that end with the word NUMBER.

LAST: Well, I like the idea of having what’s now 25-Down contain the Z. There are even more complex searches you can do once you get the hang of it. If you’re going to split up one of the first words, you should really be doing it to all of them. SLEAZEBAGS, SSNS, and RENEES are also less than ideal. YO-YO, DOLL, BARBIE, UNO, PUZZLE, JACKS …. A player's cards during a tournament at a 2006 Rockford Charitable Games Association Texas Hold'em Tournament in Arlington Heights, Ill. That is Mr. Steinberg’s and Mr. Last’s challenge. Determine the layout of your crossword puzzle and write down its length and height.

Constructors tend to place theme answers as far away from one another as possible, to give them breathing room and increase the likelihood that the grid will fill well.

Jumping back to our toys, maybe we could make a theme around “puzzles,” since we are, after all, teaching people how to make a crossword puzzle. Probably best to keep that other Z word on the shorter side.

If we want to avoid blocky three-letter word regions, our only options are under the N or U of NUMBER — while there are words that end with U, there are way more that end with N. So that’s a good place to go. STEINBERG: There are a few ways to make a crossword puzzle, including the good, old-fashioned graph-paper-and-pencil method, but there are several excellent software programs that make designing and filling grids easier. If we imagine the phrase PUZZLE PIECE as describing not a game piece but a song about crosswords, then we’ve got a super funny seed entry. This set is good! Take it away, grid developers! A free crossword puzzle maker can be used to create educational materials or for fun. STEINBERG: Yup, the software used RE-AIR — a terrible entry to begin with, and one that duplicates the AIR of MACBOOK AIR, usually seen as an inelegant no-no. Check out this heat map of what grids look like as the week goes on, created by Darren McCleary, a senior Games engineer at The New York Times. A theme entry set with two (13)s and one (15) would still have symmetry if the (15) ran in the middle row. Humans are a much better judge of what makes fun and “good” fill than a computer. Just as in theme development, there is a lot of trial and error. Crosswords make great personal gifts for weddings, family reunions, and holidays. And we can use a “stair step” set of squares to get ourselves out of this corner.

In Part 1 of this Wordplay series, two New York Times constructors, Ben Tausig and Finn Vigeland, demystify the process of developing a theme set. It would be ambitious, but we can test out whether the AutoFill feature in CrossFire can find something. And one of the most fun parts of brainstorming themes is seeing how far you’ve come from your initial ideas. As a reminder, those entries, with their letter counts in parentheses, are: LAST: Black squares will be placed after our theme answers to separate them from other entries. This is a solid entry, just like PUZZLE PIECE, because the sense of “track” changes, and it does so in a way that takes us far from the original meaning of “track.” I will note, however, that the sense of “tenure” does not change. It’s all about letting your mind wander to the right places. VIGELAND: Speaking of toys and games, I was just watching the finale of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars,” which was won by TRIXIE MATTEL (12), and Mattel is of course a game manufacturer. LAST: Agreed. TAUSIG: Whatever the lengths, they have to be paired to meet another rule of crossword constructing: most themed grids are diagonally symmetrical for aesthetic reasons. the maximum for a 15 by 15 in a New York Times crossword is 78 words/42 blocks, heat map of what grids look like as the week goes on. There are way fewer three-letter words than four-letter words, which means our colleagues won’t have a great choice of fill, so let’s go with one of our other themers. LAST: Yup! The MATTEL in TRIXIE MATTEL has nothing to do with the company, which would have made her an excellent entry in this theme set. We need to make sure the bonus words go in the Down direction, though. Maybe if we name a few toys, we’ll find another seed entry, one we can build on. TAUSIG: I like this. Any words or phrases on your mind today that we can start with? Mondays are generally closed off (note all the black squares around the edges), which tends to lead to smoother fill. TAUSIG: Thanks for straight-up ignoring my dad joke in the comment above, Finn.

If the theme includes a particular kind of pun, for example, then all the puns should be of that kind. But to close up the middle left, we’ll either need to put black squares underneath the U of PUZZLE PIECE or create three-letter words by putting them above the P and the U. STEINBERG: True. STEINBERG: Fair enough.

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