Interview with Daniel A. Finan

It's been a long time since we last had Dan Finan's puzzle. I really liked his "IT'S NOT YOU. IT'S ME" puzzle (April 17, 2009). Dan changed every ME in the theme entry into U. He later told me that he's a big "Seinfeld" fan, and he thought it would be fun to play with the breakup phrase.

Dan made his NY Time debut earlier this year with a Sunday "When in Rome" puzzle. Those who solve NY Times regularly probably still remember his inventive sailboat puzzle in April. When you connect those circled letters in alphabetical order, a sailboat takes shape.

In addition to LA Times and NY Times, Dan also had several puzzles published by the NY Sun. Enjoy the interview. I am confident that we will see more Dan Finan puzzles in the future.

Can you tell us more about the creating process of this puzzle? How did the theme idea come to you and what kind of changes did you make to smooth out the grid?

In order for the PARTS OF SPEECH puzzle to work, I figured I needed to take three-letter "parts" of SPEECH, i.e., SPE, PEE, EEC, and ECH. That would result in four theme answers (not including the central entry), each of which is workable but not too commonplace. I wanted to narrow down the possible answers even more, so I decided to place all of these parts at the beginning of the theme entries. And finally, for the sake of elegance, I wanted them to appear in order.

There is often a limiting factor of a puzzle that a constructor is forced to build around. For this puzzle it was the EEC answer. The only quality entry I could think of was EE CUMMINGS, a well-known author. Thus, given my other self-imposed constraints, I needed another 10-letter entry starting with PEE to offset this answer. There were a few to choose from, but I opted for PEEPING TOM, which is a colloquial English expression deriving from an interesting historical figure. Similarly, there were limited options for the ECH answer, but I thought ECHO CHAMBER had a nice ring to it. Finally, I thought that the offsetting entry SPELLING BEE would be fun to clue.

My favorite non-theme entries are PLETHORA (a great word; it reminds me of the classic "Three Amigos") and CLARK BAR (candy-related entries are always fun, right?). Also, I wanted to clue the common OMELET as "Denver ___" because I like to slip in as many references to my hometown as possible!

How would you describe your style? What kind of themes/fills fascinate you? And what words do you try to avoid in your puzzles?

I am a sucker for the gimmick puzzles--typically late-week themed puzzles. Off the top of my head, two puzzles that had a fun wow factor for me were Don Gagliardo's LAT 5/17/07 and Patrick Berry's NYT 3/9/08 "Splits and Mergers." I also love a good connect-the-dots puzzle.

Like any constructor, I try to avoid crosswordese as much as possible when filling grids. But I really like my long non-theme entries to be lively and fun; I'll gladly use a few dullish short answers if it means I can use a fun long one.

What is a perfect puzzle to you? And what's your view on low word/black square count?

To me the perfect puzzle is a simple, elegant, and subtle gimmick puzzle. I really like the crosswords that have a metapuzzle. For example, with some (themed) puzzles, I can fill in the entire grid, and I still don't "get it." So I have to really dig deep to find the theme... it's then that I get that satisfying "Aha!" moment. I wonder how many people miss the whole point of subtle puzzles like that.

I don't care so much about achieving a low word or black-square count. On the other hand, I really try to use cheater squares only when I absolutely have to!

Do you google a lot while constructing a puzzle? What kind of reference books do you use?

I definitely use google when constructing. And wiki. But wisely! They can be very useful tools. Sometimes, after I've resigned myself to using a seemingly ho-hum entry, I'll google it and find something interesting about it that I didn't know before. I regularly use other online resources like IMDB, OneLook, and a few dictionaries.

What's your background and what do you do for fun?

I recently finished grad school at UC Santa Barbara, and I'm now doing a postdoc at a university in Copenhagen, Denmark. My area of research is diabetes. I'm trying to figure out the Danish crosswords, which is a daunting task. I have the utmost respect for non-native solvers (C.C.!). Other than that, I love photography and I've been traveling a lot lately.