Today we’re talking about a recent puzzle that’s pretty special to me: “Thinking Inside the Box” by Henry Lin-David & Frank S. David, published September 13, 2026 in the New York Times. (That’s me and my dad!)
For this post, we sat down and talked about different aspects of how this crossword came to be – puzzle construction, the submission (& resubmission) process, working with editors, structural trade-offs, and more.
Part of what made the conversation (and our collaboration) cool is our different crossword backgrounds. While Frank is a long-time solver, he’s less experienced in the construction game – this is actually his first published puzzle! Meanwhile, I (Henry) have bit more familiarity with the construction and rejection submission process. So it was interesting seeing our different perspectives on things. Please enjoy!
About the constructors: When he’s not making crosswords, Frank is a biotech consultant, professor, and author in the Boston area. Henry is a writer of journalism, marketing, and fiction (as well as puzzles), and currently lives in Pittsburgh.
Major Spoilers Ahead (click for solving link):
New York Times: “Thinking Inside the Box” on Sunday, September 13, 2026, by Henry Lin-David & Frank S. David
Initial Seeds & Early Theme Philosophy
Henry: About five years ago I had the initial idea and started working on the interior “mini grid.” That aspect wasn’t so hard, because I realized early on it would be really cool to have a MINI as the last entry. That meant two words would have to end with I’s, and there really just are not that many options. I think I had maybe three possible iterations, but this was by far the most promising in terms of words that can be reinterpreted or get reinterpreted clues.
Frank: Cluing the final MINI as SCALED DOWN with a mountain angle is related to something you’ve told me before, which is that many of the best themes have extra layers. I saw immediately that your idea would be fine if it were just any old 4×4, but the SCALED DOWN / MINI combo made it next level.
H: Yeah. If we didn’t have that pairing of MINI with SCALED DOWN, I don’t think we would necessarily have been as excited by this idea.
F: From there, I think we both quickly agreed that for the puzzle to work, you shouldn’t be able to get from A to C without passing through B. So instead of using a clue like [Small] to solve MINI and skip over SCALED DOWN, you should have to pass through that middle step. Looking back at our brainstorming Google doc, we were attracted to ones where there was a “Holy crap, how did you get from A to C?” kind of feeling.
H: Yeah, we were really focused on having the original clue and the mini be as disparate as possible.
Initial Feedback & Rejection
H: So when the New York Times puzzle editors responded, they liked that aspect of separation, but they really wanted it to be tilted a certain way. They wanted A to B to be the biggest jump, but then B to C where you fill it in the mini to be more straightforward.
F: That was a big philosophical difference for us, because we had a few that had quite large jumps from B to C that we really loved. Two theme entries from our original submission that sparked joy for me were [Fashion model’s move] cluing RUNWAY MANEUVER to clue TAXI and [Computer text-based interface] cluing COMMAND LINE to clue STAY. I think they were just such ballers, but the editors called those out specifically as being too hard. I was really indignant at that, but what did you think, and what do you think now?
H: Yeah, in retrospect I think they probably made the correct call. It’s good when all the clues are around the same difficulty, but in the original version, some of the mini clues were just much harder, which results in a more inconsistent and difficult solver experience.
F: I’m still not sure the editors were completely right, though, because the mini clues don’t have to be solvable in isolation. Even if you didn’t immediately get the jump from RUNWAY MANEUVER to TAXI, you’d probably get it eventually as you filled in the rest of the mini. So even if two of the entries are on the harder side, it’s probably gettable once you’ve solved the other six answers.
Revision & Resubmission
H: I had never resubmitted a puzzle to the same venue, but this time it felt possible because the note was so specialized and complimentary. Their email opened by saying they “want to praise the ingenuity and creativity” and “it’s hard to find a theme that feels fresh and fun, and you’ve done that in spades here.”
F: And at the end they said: “It’s a no for now,” rather than “It’s a no.”
H: Yeah. Though I forget if we were always like, “Oh, that means we should resubmit,” or if we considered “Should we send it somewhere else?”
F: I think we felt like we could fix those two themers, but we didn’t want to go too far down a different road without their signoff. So we went through a bunch of iterations with the editors to try to workshop new theme entries. But after several rounds of back and forth, we still weren’t getting a super enthusiastic response. By the third time it felt like they were getting a little fatigued.
H: Yeah, I think it got a little overwrought throughout that. The more we talked about it, the more it seemed like we were missing the forest for the trees instead of focusing on their knee jerk reactions and criticisms.
F: To give the editors credit, they were pretty clear about articulating their reasoning. It wasn’t just “We don’t like that,” it was, “Here’s why we don’t like it: It’s a little hard to get from the theme or answer to the mini. And here are the two entries that we don’t like specifically.” But even though the replacements we were suggesting didn’t quite land, we sensed that they liked the overall puzzle and we just needed to get past those two themers. That’s when we decided to really fix those and then resubmit with a brand-new puzzle. It took a few weeks to think of good replacements, but once we did, everything else fell into place.
Diagonal Symmetry & Trade-Offs
H: One thing that allowed this puzzle to exist was getting away from the idea that the whole grid had to be rotationally symmetrical, which I think was just super unrealistic.
F: Say more about that. You made an executive decision to change the symmetry, which I didn’t completely understand because I was newer to the gridwork part of it. What were the options?
H: This was unexplored territory for me, because common crossword guidance is that the theme answers should be in pairs of equal lengths to allow for rotational symmetry. But for this puzzle, it seemed more important to have the best theme answers, symmetrical or not – especially since we wanted them to be placed to be in order from top to bottom like they would appear on a crossword clue sheet.
F: I remember feeling like it was hard enough to come up with even one or two good themers for some of the mini answers, even without worrying about word length. Some clues like TAKE and STAY and TAXI had a lot of angles that can be experimented with, but an entry like YETI kind of sucked because there just weren’t many options.
H: Definitely. Another factor is that The New York Times isn’t too keen on asymmetry unless it’s for a good, often-thematic reason (unlike other venues). But diagonal symmetry maintains that symmetry requirement while also allowing for unsymmetrical themer lengths. I hadn’t really seen that sort of implementation in a themed NYT puzzle before, so it was a little risky for us to submit that.
F: Interestingly, we didn’t get any comments from the editors about that at all. I feel like they really liked the ambitiousness of the project and the added sizzle of SCALED DOWN and MINI in there. Maybe the lesson is that if you do something really crazy and pull it off at least somewhat, then you have a shot.
H: Yeah, I think my instinct was right – the trade-off with the symmetry was okay because it facilitated the ambitiousness of the project.
Grid Fill
H: We ended up having to remake the fill a couple of times – once when we changed the theme entries, but then again in the final stage when they had a couple of issues that required us to replace more than half of the grid.
F: Comparing the published version with our original version, the final fill is a lot better. for all. There’s not much “crosswordese,” and there are a couple of really lovely long entries, like SCORIGAMI and FLUGELHORN.
H: That was one benefit of the long process. Our standards and inclinations changed a lot about what we thought was “fun” grid fill compared to when we started.
F: I think fill is what makes a puzzle great for me at the end. Yes, the theme has to be great, but sometimes you just have that and the rest of the fill is sort of “ugh”. As a solver in those cases, even when I admire the fact that there was a good theme, it makes me a little sad at the end if it felt like a slog to get through the rest of the puzzle.
H: How do you feel now that you’re working on puzzles by yourself and doing your own gridding?
F: Doing this puzzle with you has made me keep a super high standard. If the program says a grid is fillable but I just hate one of the entries, I will not go down that road, because there’s a lot of “legal” stuff in word lists that’s dated or esoteric or crosswordy. Maybe occasionally you’re screwed and you have to throw in NNE for “north-northeast,” but the vast majority should not be like that. I like to get feedback from you and also my parents (your grandparents) so I get two complementary solver perspectives. And I think that’s what I am aiming for, where a puzzle is fun for all. If you’re in your 20s you’ll have fun, and if you’re in your 80s you’ll have fun too. I think we achieved that in this puzzle, and it’s a standard I like to keep in mind.
Future Puzzles?
H: We had a ton of fun making this puzzle, and I think if we were to do another Sunday, the theme would probably have to be similarly wacky and out-there. Making Sunday-sized puzzles is really a lot of work, so I think you need something that helps you get up in the morning.
F: I agree. Something you said while we worked on this puzzle that stuck with me is that some Sunday-sized grids can feel like bigger Wednesdays or Thursdays, whereas this one clearly needed to be a Sunday, for both size and structural reasons. As I’ve been brainstorming other themes, 99% are non-Sunday ideas – which are totally fine, and I hope to get them over the goal line. But one or two feel like they’d be extra special if we could pull it off, and those are more intriguing as Sundays because of that extra zhuzh.
H: For sure. I think the structurally interesting ones are our jam in particular, and I can’t wait for our next one.
Do you have additional ideas? Things I missed? Feel free to comment your thoughts! Or email me at thegridalchemist@gmail.com.
And be sure to subscribe below to read the next post as soon as it comes out!