Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times
A shrimp tostada with guacamole.
THURSDAY’S PUZZLE — One of the best things about writing Wordplay is the opportunity to meet some exceptionally interesting people. Sometimes I get to meet the readers, and sometimes I get to meet the constructors behind your daily brain twisters.
Today I’d like to introduce you all to Parker Lewis, a young man from the Pacific Northwest who is making his debut and who has spent some time giving back admirably as a math teacher in Namibia with the United States Peace Corps. I will let Mr. Lewis tell you the rest of his story after the jump, where there is also a link to his blog recounting his time in Africa. I hope you’ll take some time to read it, as it is a memorable account of making a difference among people who have very little, yet manage to smile and maintain an incredible generosity of spirit. I found it to be a stunning and inspirational read.
As someone who is moderately math-challenged, my first thought when I saw the SEQUENCEs that made up the clues for the theme entries was “Uh, oh.” As I’ve said before, don’t panic. This is eminently solvable. In addition to the three theme entries, he has included a payoff at 37 Down that helped me figure out where he was going (thank you, Mr. Lewis!) Now I don’t feel like such a 5 Down.
What is truly intriguing here is the way Mr. Lewis was able to finagle some personalized extras into the grid. He has a special fondness for Princess ZELDA, which I smugly filled in as Princess PEACH at first (Princess Peach is actually a character from the “Mario” series of games, but at least I got the Nintendo part right. And besides, it fit.) At 12 Down, he gives a shout out to his friends in Africa with the entry TSWANA, a Bantu language spoken in the area in which he taught.
And he’s mischievous, too. The clue of the day in my book is at 24 Down, “Hindsights?” I will leave you to solve that one on your own.
Let’s meet Mr. Lewis:
Constructor’s Notes
I am thrilled and honored that my first ever “real” crossword has made it into The New York Times and that all of you fine people will be solving my creation. I’ve been asked to share my story, so here goes…
Like many others, my grandmother was the catalyst for my current crossword habit and she taught me the tricks of the trade as we worked on the puzzles together. I grew up in Kirkland, Wash., and our family went down to their ranch in California just about every summer. She and I would trade off writing in answers and we usually followed up the crossword with games of Scrabble, Hearts and Tile Rummy (Rummikub). By my senior year of high school, I was solving the puzzle every day during class and managed to keep up my stellar grade point average while stealthily avoiding detection from teachers. During the height of senioritis, I thought I would try my hand at constructing and cobbled together an 11×11 in which I asked my date to the senior prom. Although she said yes, that first puzzle broke about every rule in the book save for symmetry, and I remember one clue reading: ___fy Duck from Looney Tunes. Needless to say, DAF was not the only unsavory entry in the grid. After that, I stuck to solving until about six years later, when I again found myself with a lot of time on my hands…
I graduated in 2004 with a degree in mathematics (who could have guessed?) from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and shortly thereafter, headed to Namibia for two years with the United States Peace Corps. I had been to Kenya and Tanzania on a semester abroad a year or so earlier, and that three-month adventure got me hooked on Africa. My goal was to somehow return for an extended stay. For a variety of reasons, the Peace Corps turned out to be my favored option and I ended up in a rural village in Namibia, where I taught math to grades seven to 10. For two years, I lived with a local family, ate the local foods and learned to speak Oshiwambo fluently. It was an amazing experience, and if you feel so inclined, I kept a blog chronicling my adventures called “Paka in Africa”.
The desert heat was intense, and a lack of electricity made for some sweaty sleepless nights. I kept myself busy by reading countless books and, of course, solving puzzles. My parents and friends sent me care packages from time to time, and they would print off months worth of current New York Times puzzles to send to me. The days when those packages arrived were glorious. Weekends in the village tended to be slow and mellow affairs because of the heat, so crosswords were the perfect diversion. Toward the end of my second year there, I decided it was time to get back into constructing and started thinking of potential themes.
Teaching different topics to my four classes every day meant that I had math in my thoughts quite often, and naturally this influenced my ideas for puzzles. One day, when I was preparing a test for my 10th-grade class, I was creating problems that required the kids to recognize a pattern in a certain string of numbers and come up with an equation that would produce the same string of numbers. This led to me writing out various equations in words, some of which turned out to be 15 letters long. With this revelation, I was off and running. It took some finagling to get the related down entries (3 Down and 37 Down) to intersect, but I think it provides for a more complete theme. Besides the theme, I like that I was able to include such entries as 12 Down, 46 Down, and 50 Down. Five Across was also special because I spent many hours playing that game during my teenage years.
I attended my first American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year and while there, submitted this puzzle to Will Shortz. The tournament was such a great experience and I will definitely be back next year, where I hope to meet more of you awesome puzzle people! I would love to hear feedback on this first effort of mine as I have a few ideas for future puzzles.
Happy solving!
Welcome to Wordplay, Mr. Lewis. We hope to see those puzzles soon.
Your thoughts?