by Mollie Cowger & Ross Trudeau

[.puz][PDF][Solution] Difficulty: 3.25/5

Jessie and I spent a lot of time on our honeymoon (in Bali!) talking about the habits and routines we wanted to established when we returned home to begin married life. And while I’m excited to implement some of the ideas we generated, they’re … going to have to wait a couple of days. I write to you now from the depths of a jet lag that I can already tell is going to be one of those multi-day transition periods. Worth it.

So, wide awake at 2am on a Sunday, I’m making the adult decisions not to spend too terribly much page space trying to capture the sentimentality of the last couple weeks of my life. Instead, here are a couple of images from the ‘moon and the weddin’. More to come!

Meantime, enjoy this week’s crossword puzzle! It’s a collaboration with Mollie Cowger, one of the puzzle luminaries I had the good fortune to meet and work with over the last couple of years. Mollie is an editor on the New Yorker crossword team, purveyor of Crosswords from Outer Space, and proud cat mom to Blue (pictured below).

Thoughts and spoilers for “Creature Comforts” below!

Mollie: It’s a joy and delight to be making my Rosswords debut. This was such a fun theme set to brainstorm and build a puzzle around, and I’m thrilled for it to find its audience here.

Ross: I didn’t intend to run back-to-back interlock puzzles, but I guess that just goes to show how near and dear they are to me. Mollie and I ideated pretty extensively on this ANIMAL + ANIMAL-SPECIFIC HOME pattern, and while there were a handful of other options, ultimately we really liked limiting ourselves to examples that expressed metaphorical situations. So, CROW’S NEST (an actual specific place) etc. were out. It just so happened that the material we generated happened to support the strange triple-interlock pattern you see here!

Happy solving, friends!