New York Times, Thursday, January 24, 2019

I was thrilled a year ago to receive Will's acceptance of the goo goo eyes puzzle; especially, since Joel was kind enough to add in the email:

"We're happy to say yes on your GOO GOO EYES 15x, which has a cute concept and lively theme examples. You've done a nice job with keeping the fill clean and interesting as well, which will add to the overall fun of the puzzle. This one should be popular with our solvers."

When I received the link to the final manuscript from Jeff, I was surprised to find that 33 words had been changed prior to publication. I was curious as to what led to the decision to revise 40 percent of the ‘clean and interesting' fill, so I asked Will (Jeff: response below).

To the right are the two grids (my original is on the left).

I'm, of course, always happy to have a puzzle appear in the New York Times. Hope you were happy solving it.

Hi Stu,

Thanks for your nice note.

Usually when we'd like extensive changes in a grid, we return it to the constructor to make them.

In this case, though, your puzzle had already been on file for a year. We selected it to edit the clues. In looking over the grid, we thought it could be improved. Entries that felt overly crosswordy or subpar included REVE, ENATE, OMS, ILONA, DAREST, ALOP, LENYA, and SCAG. At this point we didn't want to return the puzzle, which would have delayed its appearance even longer. So Joel made the changes himself.

One important thing to keep in mind is that the standards for fill keep rising. Puzzles that we accepted in the past might not make the grade today. And your puzzle, whose fill we thought was not bad at the time of acceptance, we thought by today's standards could benefit from a brush-up.

I hope this explains a little further — and that you're happy with how the puzzle turned out.

OO! OO! I know what this theme is!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

GOO GOO EYES is a hilarious term. At first, I wasn't sure if it described the theme well enough, though. Doesn't OO look more like "surprise" more than "puppy-dog adoration"? And why two pairs of eyes in each themer?

But sometimes you have to just go with it. Sure, why not.

I liked Stu's themer choices, all strong phrases in their own right. Especially nice to get the extra-long TOO RICH FOR MY BLOOD. It's not every day that you see a 17-letter phrase in a weekday crossword.

In that vein, it would have been nice to get more of them — perhaps CUTTING ROOM FLOOR (16), HOOCHIE COOCHIE MAN (17), SHOOTS FOR THE MOON (16), etc.? Maybe go even bigger with CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO 19 — with three pairs of goo goo eyes!

That speaks to a lack of tightness issue. In my quick search, I turned up hundreds of words / phrases with double-double-Os. It would have been nice to narrow the options down somehow, with an extra layer of cleverness. One example might be to use DOUBLE O SEVEN as a revealer, and pick phrases with OOs … related to spies!

But overall, a solid rebus offering. I liked that Stu even had a few good crossing OOs, like BASSOON and OO LA LA! All too easy to rely on shorties like OONA and DROOP to make things work.

Also impressive that there was relatively little crossword glue, given the high theme density (I like the as-published grid much better than Stu's original). I'd have preferred one fewer themer in exchange for less AREAR IFI OCTO IDEE, but I can understand why others might like the fifth themer, at the price of a little inelegance in execution.