Steps to crossword triumph

When we reached out to University of Michigan medical student Curtis Kuo about writing a crossword for the spring issue of Medicine at Michigan, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were delighted to learn that Kuo, an M.D./Ph.D. student at the Medical School, was an avid crossword fan and constructed New York Times-style puzzles. Although I frequently do the Times crossword, I mainly stick to the easier puzzles that are published earlier in the week, and I’ve never constructed one myself. 

But we had nothing to worry about. Not only did Kuo say yes, but he also asked all the right questions. How hard did we want the puzzle to be? Hmm … not too hard! Maybe a Tuesday or Wednesday level, in the Times parlance. (Those who do the puzzle can judge for themselves and let us know. Our casual office poll suggests Kuo’s puzzle landed somewhere in the Wednesday to Thursday range of difficulty.) Did we want a theme? Not necessarily, but a few clues that would appeal to Medical School alums wouldn’t go amiss. Should he write constructor notes? Yes, please! 

As you’ll see in Kuo’s notes below, he took his assignment very seriously. He not only created a fun “Easter egg” in the east quadrants (for those who don’t do a lot of puzzles, constructors discuss the grid in terms of cardinal directions), but also added in a few medical clues — including one whose answer can be found in our profile of Kuo, “Medicine, music, and crossword puzzles.”

To see the puzzle grid, clues, and answer key, scroll to the bottom. 

Curtis Kuo’s crossword constructor notes

Minor spoilers ahead! I just wanted to share a few behind-the-scenes tidbits from the construction process for this crossword. The Easter egg of the diagonals hiding “Michigan” and “Medicine,” using the center M, relies on a pair of coincidences, namely that they are both eight-letter words that start with M. With a 15-by-15 grid, which is standard for all major publications for most days of the week (21-by-21 is typical for Sundays), eight letters is perfect for a diagonal across half the grid, and with the shared M, the M can perfectly inhabit the center spot. I also decided that I wanted to have this not be part of any other word, so hopefully it came across as just a decorative M for readers upon first looking at the grid. Not wanting it to be part of any other words is why I added the four black squares around the center square, and it was pointed out to me that this can be seen as an unintentional homage to the shape used by the Red Cross, so that was neat.

Naturally, the fixed letters in the diagonal spots on the east side led to more constraints in the fill on that side, compared to the other. That’s why the northeast corner is the clunkiest, whereas the west side has higher-quality words, in my opinion. There’s another fun coincidence that SSE (south-southeast) itself inhabits the southeast corner, and it even crosses with ESSIE, a homophone of “SE”/southeast. In an ideal world, though, entries like SSE and NLE would be limited in crosswords.

After the fill is completed, the final step for a crossword’s construction is to write the clues. One challenge, in addition to trying to tune the difficulty to the requested level, is finding good ways to clue entries that have been used in other puzzles. For YAMAHA and SAO, I incorporated trivia that I found interesting, so I hope readers also learned something just like I did. My clue for PATH does require a bit of a scavenger hunt, so my apologies to any readers who tackled the puzzle without looking at the profile that accompanies this puzzle, as funding in honor of Gerald Abrams (M.D. 1955) endowed the position that is part of my Ph.D. advisor’s title. For OPERA ARIAS, I wanted to include the names of both an old famous one (“Nessun Dorma”) and a contemporary aria, so I settled on “I Want Magic,” sung by the character Blanche DuBois in André Previn’s 1995 opera A Streetcar Named Desire. I was unfamiliar with this particular opera, but many contemporary operas have arias titled simply after their characters, which made working it into this clue a challenge (I was hoping to find something from Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain, or either of Anthony Davis’ Central Park Five [which just had a production in Detroit] or X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X). As a musician, I wanted to use this entry to spotlight music from a more contemporary period.

Two other alternate clues didn’t make my cut, because they were additional sports entries in an area that was too close in proximity to NLE (clued for a star baseball player already): George “the Iceman” Gervin is an alum of nearby Eastern Michigan University, and played for my favorite NBA team, but I wasn’t sure if transporting the reader to the George Gervin GameAbove Center in Ypsilanti was a little too far. And ANGE is in that tough northeast corner, and I considered cluing that for Ange Postecoglou, past manager of several European soccer (football) clubs, but I didn’t think he was well-known enough. At least the French “ange” is etymologically related to our “angel,” so I would’ve hoped that this was solvable (especially for those who were able to use the diagonals to help).

I was thrilled to be asked to create a crossword for the issue. Thanks to editors Lauren Talley and Katie Whitney and the team at Medicine at Michigan for interviewing me and offering me this space to share this original work! And to the readers, I hope you had fun solving this crossword!

The puzzle

Clues

Across

1    Winter bug

4    Stick-to-it-iveness

8    James of The Godfather

12  Where cataracts develop

14  A pop

15  Punishment-related

16  Eccentric

18  Aquatic photosynthetic organisms

19  Zeno of Citium and Marcus Aurelius, for two

20  Organized crime connection

22  Rueful

23  Motorcycle company whose logo (three interlocking tuning forks) is an homage to its history

24  Volleyball divider

25  News network that got a name change in 2025

26  State of persistent unconsciousness

30  Where one’s arms can be found?

32  One-half of a rhyming candy couple

34  Brooch

35  Necessary

36  Like Meg, among the March sisters

38  Scottish refusal

39  Korean currency

41  Make bigger

42  Mode in The Incredibles

44  Wanderer

46  “Saint” in Portuguese (but only for names that start with a consonant)

47  Short-term stay, sometimes

49  “____ a dream …”

51  “Finally!”

52  Iridescent mollusk materials

53  1998 Louis Sachar novel

55  Act high and mighty

57  Clued in

58  Elvis Presley’s middle name

59  Salon service, briefly (also the osteria in Liberty and Division in Ann Arbor)

60  Withhold, as an offering

61  Distribute

62  A2-to-Toledo direction

Down

1    Hygienist’s recommendation

2    Ignored in a text conversation

3    Like some circumstances or consequences

4    Hair goops

5    Chinese Zodiac leader

6    He cometh in a 1939 O’Neill play

7    Clots that can form in the 43-Down

8    ____ disease, a condition with a gluten-mediated immune response

9    French celestial being

10  Small battery

11  Juan Soto’s current (and former) div.

13  Got around

15  Former dept. Of Gerald Abrams (M.D. 1955)

17  Slick, in a way

21  Behind-the-scenes, in the software engineering world

23  Parisian fashion monogram

25  Michigan native with seven Grammy Awards

27  Giacomo Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” and Andre Previn’s “I Want Magic,” for two

28  Runs, in a bad way

29  Pay to play

30  Green Gables girl

31  Novel

33  Right-angle shape

37  Vehicle accessory that may be helpful in an insurance claim

40  Email button to click when a message gets sent to the wrong place

41  Suffix with arbor

43  Angioplasty target

45  Ripen

48  “Anything ____?”

49  Knighted actor McKellen

50  Nail polish brand

51  Codebreaker Turing

52  Final option in some multiple-choice questions

53  Possessed

54  Need to repay

56  Pre-kindergartener, for short

Answer key