BLOOD CURLING and the Long Road to My Wall Street Journal Crossword Debut

One broken pun, three rounds of New York Times feedback, a postponed Olympics, and 92 black squares stood between me and publication.

BLOOD CURLING was supposed to be clever.

The clue was “Fauxlimpics event for gore hounds?” The answer took curling, the Olympic sport, and tucked it into a familiar phrase. Or so I thought.

There was one problem: the familiar phrase is blood-curdling.

Not blood-curling.

The editors at The New York Times noticed.

That single missing “d” was the biggest problem in the first version of an Olympics-themed Sunday crossword that would occupy me, on and off, for more than two years. It would survive multiple rejections, the postponement of the actual Olympics, a nearly complete reconstruction, and some deserved lessons in the difference between a fun theme and a publishable puzzle.

Eventually, it became my first crossword in The Wall Street Journal.

But first, it had to fail at The Times.

The Fauxlimpics begin

The basic idea was simple: take ordinary phrases whose final words could also be interpreted as athletic events.

BEAT BOXING became an event for rappers. SOCIAL CLIMBING was for debutantes. LEGAL HURDLES was for defendants. DUMPSTER DIVING was for freegans. WEB SURFING was for code monkeys.

And BLOOD CURLING was for horror fans.

I called the puzzle “Fauxlimpic Games” and submitted it to The New York Times in 2019. That August, an editor wrote back on behalf of the editorial team.

The response was encouraging enough to keep me going. The editors thought the idea was fun and could imagine an Olympics-timed puzzle built around it. But they had too many problems with the theme set to accept that version.

BLOOD CURLING was the most fundamental problem because the underlying phrase was wrong. They also felt WEB SURFING did not change meaning enough to produce a satisfying pun, and wondered whether Olympic climbing was sufficiently familiar to solvers.

They passed on the puzzle as submitted, but explicitly invited me to revise it.

That mattered. This was serious editorial consideration, not a form rejection. It was also not an acceptance, a commitment, or a place on the publication calendar. The distinction became clearer with every revision.

A core idea that still made them smile

I removed BLOOD CURLING and rebuilt the theme.

The revised puzzle, now called “The Summer Fauxlimpics,” included CHAIN LINK FENCING, SATELLITE RELAY, TRACTOR BEAM, LEGAL HURDLES, ALUMINUM FOIL, TOURIST TRAP, DUMPSTER DIVING, and MONARCH BUTTERFLY.

In December 2019, the same editor wrote back again on behalf of the Times team. “The core idea still makes us smile,” the note said.

The rest of the message was another no.

SATELLITE RELAY depended on a base phrase the editors thought some solvers would not know. Trap was less familiar than the other sports. ALUMINUM FOIL and CHAIN LINK FENCING created two jokes involving fencing. The group did not love the overall puzzle enough to move forward.

I asked whether one more revision would be welcome or whether I should drop the concept. The editor generously offered to look at another proposed theme set by email before I built an entire new grid, and was careful to say that this was not preapproval.

I took my time and sent a larger menu of possibilities in January 2020. Among them were BANK VAULT, ALIEN RACE, SLEEP CYCLE, BEAT BOXING, TRACTOR BEAM, FRUIT MEDLEY, LEGAL HURDLES, WEDDING RINGS, DUMPSTER DIVING, and CHANNEL SURFING.

The list went to the rest of the editorial team. On January 23, the final verdict came back.

Nothing had leapt out strongly enough to proceed. The editors found some of the puns difficult to imagine in a real-world context, and worried that the device might become predictable once solvers caught on.

They encouraged me to keep constructing, but the Times chapter was over.

Thirteen days later, I sent the theme to The Wall Street Journal.

A yes, with considerable risk attached

On February 5, 2020, I emailed a theme proposal for “The Summer Fauxlimpics” to the team behind the Journal’s Saturday crossword.

The editors liked the idea.

By the time the Journal replied in March, however, another problem had arrived. The coronavirus was spreading, and no one knew whether the Tokyo Olympics would happen. A crossword tied directly to the Games could become unusable overnight.

The Journal gave me a choice: withdraw the idea, or build the grid knowing it might be killed by events outside anyone’s control.

I chose to build it.

Then the Olympics were postponed until 2021.

Amazingly, that did not end the project. The editors were willing to hold the concept for the following year, provided I eventually completed a version that met the Journal’s standards. In the same note, they mentioned the paper had recently declined similar Olympics-themed submissions; mine was holding the slot.

Again, this was not yet acceptance. It was an opportunity, and a substantial vote of confidence, but the crossword still had to pass.

Ninety-two black squares

I returned to the puzzle in earnest in March 2021.

The first completed grid included MOUSETRAP, with trap shooting as the Olympic event. The editors worried that solvers would not make that connection and rejected the entry. I replaced it with ALIEN RACE.

Then came the grid feedback.

My 21-by-21 puzzle had 92 black squares. The Journal’s rule of thumb was roughly 71 to 75. The black squares were also clumped into large blocks. Several long non-theme answers competed visually with the actual theme entries, and some of my fill ranged from borderline to unacceptable.

I had done the part that felt creative. Now I had to do the part that required discipline.

I rebuilt the grid.

The next version was much better, but the editors found more problems: SPEEDS and SPED in the same puzzle, too many answers containing ONE, a few unpleasant or distracting entries, and a word count at the high end of what the Journal would allow.

I rebuilt it again.

On May 19, I got the green light to proceed to the clues. I finished them, sent the puzzle to friends for test-solving, stepped away for a few days, and returned for another pass. On May 25, I submitted the completed, clued version.

On June 8, the message I had been trying to earn arrived:

“Congratulations on having your first crossword accepted by The Wall Street Journal!”

Publication day

The publication date was confirmed on July 14. “The Summer Fauxlympics” (the Journal’s spelling; mine had stubbornly been “Fauxlimpics” for two years) would run Saturday, July 24, 2021, just as the postponed Tokyo Games began.

The published puzzle had eight theme entries:

• CHANNEL SURFING
• ALIEN RACE
• TRACTOR BEAM
• FRUIT MEDLEY
• BANK VAULT
• DUMPSTER DIVING
• LEGAL HURDLES
• WEDDING RINGS

The final puzzle was not the one I originally submitted to The Times. It was not even the first puzzle I submitted to the Journal. It was the survivor of repeated editorial pressure, a global pandemic, and more grid revisions than I care to count.

BLOOD CURLING never made it.

The idea behind it did.

You can see the completed grid in The Wall Street Journal’s official solution PDF. Crossword Fiend also archived a contemporary recap of the July 24 puzzle.