Hello! It’s nice to be back here in this space. Let’s see if I can remember how this whole “writing crosswords” thing goes since I’ve been spending the last two months learning to do something far more challenging.
A million thanks to guest constructors Paolo Pasco, Rebecca Goldstein, Kate Chin Park, Patrick Blindauer, Robyn Weintraub, Laura Braunstein, Jesse Lansner, Neville Fogarty, Elizabeth C. Gorski and Sid Sivakumar for filling in for me while I took time off to be a new dad. The first puzzle I wrote at the end of my paternity leave, not surprisingly, was about just that.
Captain Obvious is now a proud papa and he has a few things to say to his new child:
Every Captain Obvious puzzle I’ve written for The Washington Post until today has had exactly seven theme answers. But there’s been a big addition to his life, so now there’s another theme answer in the grid in the bottom-right corner. 122A: [Elliot James Birnholz, e.g., whom Captain Obvious is addressing in this puzzle] is CHILD.
Elliot may not be big enough to solve this puzzle yet, but it’ll be there waiting for him when he gets a little older. By then I might be writing a crossword called “Captain Obvious Teaches His Teenage Kid How to Drive” or something like that. As a bonus, the very first answer at 1A is BLISS, clued as [Immense joy]. Being a parent isn’t always blissful at every single moment, of course, but joy is still a nice place to start from in any crossword and with any child, and it’s giving me a ton of joy being Elliot’s dad.
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