Hello, and welcome. My name is Ruth Ann and I have been constructing crossword puzzles since 1983, when the editor of our county weekly got tired of paying a syndicate for a puzzle nobody liked and asked whether anyone on staff could make one. I said I would try. Sixteen years and something like 800 puzzles later, I am still trying. The paper runs one of mine every Thursday, and every Thursday somebody stops me at the grocery store to complain about 14-Down. That is how I know they are solving it.

My daughter set up this page for me over Labor Day weekend so that I would stop mailing photocopies of puzzles to her friends. She says nobody mails things anymore. I still do, but now I have a web page too.

People assume the clues come first. They come last. Here is the order I actually work in.

1. The grid. An American crossword grid has rotational symmetry: if you turn the finished grid upside down, the pattern of black squares looks exactly the same. A black square in the top left corner means a black square in the bottom right. Every letter must be part of both an Across word and a Down word (we say every square is "checked"), and no word can be shorter than three letters. A standard daily puzzle is 15 by 15; a Sunday is 21 by 21. The one on this page is a little 9 by 9, which is a good size for learning on.

2. The theme entries. In a themed puzzle, the longest answers are related somehow: puns on a phrase, words that all hide a color, that kind of thing. Theme entries go in first, in symmetrical spots (a 9-letter theme entry in row 3 wants a 9-letter partner in row 13), because they are the hardest thing to move later. A small grid like my 9x9 really has no room for a theme, so it is what we call a "themeless." I did sneak a little autumn into it, but that is just me being seasonal.

3. The fill. Now every remaining white square has to be filled with letters that make real words in both directions. This is the part that takes the evenings. You work from the most constrained corner outward, and you erase a lot. A good constructor tries to keep the fill lively (real words that people say) and to avoid what we call "crosswordese," those little three-letter words like ERN, ESNE and ANOA that live only in puzzles. I do not always succeed. You will find an ERR in my puzzle below and I apologize for it in advance, but it holds a corner together.

4. The clues. Only when the whole grid works do I write the clues. The clue must match the answer in part of speech and number: a plural answer gets a plural clue, a past-tense answer gets a past-tense clue. Monday clues are straight definitions; Saturday clues are sneaky. A question mark at the end of a clue is a warning that it is a pun. Abbreviated answers get abbreviated clues ("Ave. crosser" for ST). It is a whole little grammar and once you learn it, you will solve faster.

• Start with the fill-in-the-blanks. A clue like "___ and crafts" is practically a gift. Do all of those first, then build off the letters you have.
• Do the short ones. Three- and four-letter answers are the scaffolding. The long showy entries come together once the little words around them are in.
• Think plurals and tenses. If the clue is plural, pencil in an S at the end. If the clue is in the past tense, try ED. If it says "more" something, try ER. You would be surprised how often that alone breaks a stubborn corner open.
• Read the clue's part of speech. "Fast" can be an adjective (QUICK), an adverb (APACE) or a verb (ABSTAIN). The crossings will tell you which one the constructor meant.
• Watch for the question mark. "Sound investment?" is not about money. It is probably about a STEREO.
• Use a pencil. I know people who solve in ink to show off. I have been making these things for sixteen years and I still solve in pencil.
• Put it down. If you are stuck, walk away for an hour. The answer that would not come at breakfast will be sitting there waiting after lunch. I do not know why this works, but it does.

My sister-in-law sends me the puzzles from the London papers and they are a different animal altogether. In a British-style grid, the black squares form a lattice and only about half the letters in each word are checked (crossed by another word); the rest sit alone. That means you cannot lean on the crossings the way we do here, and so the clues have to give you more, which is why British puzzles are usually cryptic: each clue contains a straight definition and a bit of wordplay (an anagram, a hidden word, a homophone) that both point to the same answer.

In an American grid every letter is checked, the black squares are fewer and the words interlock tightly, so the clues can afford to be plain definitions. Neither is better. The British kind is a puzzle about language; the American kind is a puzzle about knowledge and crossings. I make American ones because that is what my editor pays for, but I do a cryptic on Sunday afternoons for my own amusement, slowly, with a cup of coffee going cold next to me.

People ask if I use a computer program. I have one on the Gateway (my daughter installed it and it does find words I would not think of) but honestly, here is what I actually use:

• Quarter-inch graph paper. A pad of it from the drugstore. I draw the grid with a ruler and fill in the black squares with a felt-tip.
• A word list. Mine is a set of index cards in a shoebox, sorted by length and then by letter pattern. I have been adding to it since 1983. There are cards in there in my late husband's handwriting. The computer has a bigger list, but it does not know which words are good.
• A No. 2 pencil and a big pink eraser. The eraser wears out before the pencil does. Always.
• A dictionary and a one-volume encyclopedia, because if I am going to clue a river I would like it to actually flow where I say it does.

If you solve it, let me know how long it took you. If you find a mistake, let me know that too, but gently. The paper's readers have already used up my quota of ungentle letters for 1999.

I would like to put up a new little puzzle each month, and my daughter has promised to show me how to change the page myself so I don't have to call her. There is also a page in the works about how I got started and the very first puzzle I ever sold, which had a mistake in it that nobody caught for two weeks. Check back around Halloween.