New York Times, Wednesday, January 13, 2016

CLERICALHEIR was the seed of the theme. And then HORROR, ERROR, MIRROR, and TERROR came together as a nice quartet. There's something reassuring as a crossword constructor when only a handful of words fit a restrictive word pattern: here, *RROR. I rest easier when not leaving out other possibilities.

I considered a reversal of the puns, where HOAR FROST becomes HORROR FROST, MERE MORTALS becomes MIRROR MORTALS, etc. But ultimately couldn't nail down a strong, consistent theme set I liked.

I found a reduction of "THREE R's" more satisfying — instead of revealing the common word pattern in every theme answer. Chopping off the last syllables of *RROR words seems closer to how most people pronounce them anyways. HOAR, HEIR, MERE, and TEAR pack more of a familiar punch when read out loud.

Being from Texas, I can assure you: these are spot-on pronunciations when spoken with a drawl. "Hold on. Gotta adjust this here rear-view mere."

Hope this was a fun solve!

Sound change theme, two-syllable words ending in -RROR getting their last syllable dropped, and the first syllable replaced with a real-word homonym. Complicated! I liked that all of the final words had a replacement that made me work to figure out the base phrase (ROCKY HORROR, CLERICAL ERROR, REARVIEW MIRROR, SHEER TERROR).

REARVIEW MERE felt like the weakest of the bunch, as I kept on staring at the word MERE, wondering what I was missing. (The dictionary lists "a small lake or pond" as a secondary definition of MERE. Curious.) I wonder how many solvers actually looked it up vs. shrugging and moving on.

I like that Jeremy used a complete set — can you think of any other words ending in -RROR? — and all four sound changes worked in exactly the same way. Such completeness is so elegant. It would have been perfect if MERE had been a more common noun, but what can you do.

I'm mixed on THREE RS as a revealer. What about the poor O in -RROR? The THREE RS just doesn't seem to describe what's happening very well. I think I would have preferred to do without it.

Speaking of doing without, ADOLF next to SHEER (terror). Yikes.

Jeremy always does such a nice job with his long fill, and he goes big today, working in an astounding eight (!) pieces of long fill as well as some mid-length stuff. Very few constructors would tackle such a task, and cramming in CHINA SHOP, PEN NAMES and SAYS A LOT into a corner which already has a theme answer is a bold move. I don't like the long partial A HOME, but APRS and AMI are minor.

The CRAZY EYED corner is easier, with just one long piece of fill, but working in the bonus of GO AWOL makes it tricky as well. Again, Jeremy executes well on it.

And some beautiful pieces of languages in BUM A SMOKE and I SURE WILL. Jeremy is such a star at working great long fill into his puzzles.

Although some aspects of the theme execution didn't quite work for me, I still really enjoyed this one.