Sort of a do-it-yourself crossword dictionary. Nice.

Any crossword pet peeves, either as a solver, a constructor, or an editor?

Is reduced compassion fatigue a good thing? If all other factors remain the same but the staff continue to genuinely care and be emotionally invested for longer, do we know what effect that will have on burnout, mental health of staff, and retention?

I wish I had a better answer, but no, no particular word I've been dying to include. And I don't keep track of debut words, so I guess I don't have one to be proud of.

Is slat at bath university called “Bath salts”?

Filling grids becomes easier--you get to recognize which areas need to be tackled first and what words will fit. Coming up with new themes gets harder, since you feel like you've seen everything.

Thanks for the response! I appreciate your work.

I've noticed that too, but it is just coincidence. I don't collaborate with other editors to plant common words. (Though maybe there's a super-meta contest idea in that...)

My great-uncle spent years building up an alphabetized exercise book with every answer that appeared in his favourite daily crossword (it was a very repetitive puzzle.) And then every day he would look up every clue in his book and fill in the answer.

Do you approve or disapprove?

Obviously there's often something hidden in the Friday contest puzzles. Other than those, I've probably hidden messages in puzzles in the past, though nothing comes to mind.

Yes, lots of those words that appear so often they're hard to clue in fresh ways. But they do glue the rest of the puzzle together.

We have occasionally Friday metas from Patrick Berry and Peter Gordon. But since I need to test-solve every meta to gauge its solvability, I'm need to be picky about those I'll invite.

The only words I can't include are the really offensive ones, and anything longer than the grid will fit.

Thanks Maddie and adding that the hidden answer to that contest is a color.

Will and I are friends. We worked together for years at Games Magazine, and I'm a judge every year at his crossword tournament.

Me too. The newspaper business needs oldtimers like us. Good luck to you, and thanks for the reply.

I'm not too worried. I've been doing this for decades now, so if it goes away I'll be ready to retire. Though I hope it lasts another decade or two.

As you create more and more crossword puzzles, does the job get easier or harder?

Yeah, no favorites. Too hard to come up with fresh clues for those folks.

I didn't have those ideas until I got to college, where I made a crossword for the daily student paper. Then I thought it would be great to make a living making puzzles, but I knew that wasn't realistic. Years later, I'm still surprised.

Hi, Maddie here from the WSJ interrupting for a minute. Here's a link to Rainbow Connection: https://www.wsj.com/puzzles/crossword/20180629/41573/index.html?mod=wsjreddit

From time to time, I hear a song on one radio station and then a minute or two later hear it on another station. This may happen for a few songs in a row, and I'm convinced it's just the DJs messing with each other. Well, one time I was travelling for work and I was doing a couple different crosswords every day - I noticed that for that whole week, several words appeared in common between the two crosswords. Do you think it was coincidence or do crossword editors mess around from time to time like radio DJs?

How much of a prominent role does the big 5 factor into your work, for instance do certain traits such neuroticism and agreeableness play into the risk of developing compassion fatigue?

Is there a word or phrase you'd love to work into a puzzle but haven't been able to yet? And if not, are there any you're particularly proud to have included, especially if they were debuts?

One of my early favorites was "Play with matches" for TENNIS.