CLUED IN

The first puzzle I ever sent to the New York Times was so God-awful it's amazing Will Shortz didn't tell his people to throw anything else from me right in the trash. Check this beauty out:

Clue: _X_VMDCCIIII (16,704)

Answer: MXLIIIITIMESXVI

Hoo boy … Anyway, over the next year and a half things got better and better, yet I still received those emails from Paula Gamache ending "He did appreciate seeing these, tho." Then about a year ago Will wrote that he liked a Sunday of mine but wanted to talk about it on the phone as there was just too much to discuss in an email. So I got to talk to Will Shortz, which was quite a thrill! He told me he "liked the puzzle or we wouldn't be talking now" and went over two or three things he'd like changed to improve it. After a few weeks I emailed him the new puzzle with the changes he'd requested and got a reply that the theme now looked solid but he had issues with some of the fill in the southeast and southwest grids. After re-doing those two grids yet again, BANG, my first puzzle accepted (though third to see publication).

I'm very curious to see what Will did with the southeast grid. As I wrote to him, I wanted that section to be so difficult that without knowing the answers to the Clue accusation not even fastest-solver-in-the-universe Dan Feyer could solve it in under 10 minutes; yet with the answers to the Clue accusation entered (around 35% of that grid) it would become typical Sunday-hard. I felt this was necessary because, if people were able to figure out the accusation by solving the SE quadrant before the other three, then what was the point of the puzzle? I wanted solving the other three before the SE to be of paramount importance.

One of the aspects I love most about the NYT crossword is the constant desire to stretch the limits of the art form; to create something never seen before. I enjoy xws from many different sources, but what other daily xw pushes the boundaries like this? Neat idea to incorporate the game "Clue" today. It's been made into a movie, why not a crossword as well?

Interesting layout: four "rooms", three of which give clues to the fourth one, which reveals the SUSPECT, the ROOM, and the WEAPON. Each of the three "rooms" give hints in a different way, i.e. the first room contains three words which can be preceded by the word SCARLET. Ah, our old crossword friend the SCARLET TANAGER makes itself useful in a fun way, giving an insider's nod to all the times it's been (over)used in triple-stack creations due to its very friendly crossword nature of common letters and mostly alternating consonants and vowels.

I enjoyed the solve, but I'm not sold on the total segregation of the four rooms. Small diagonal "doors" three blocks long could have been a fun way to keep the sense of a house layout while maintaining the usual crossword rule of "no isolated sections". It could also have made for a natural progression, moving from one room to the next, gathering clues as you went. It also would have been really cool to have multiple possible suspects, rooms, and/or weapons, using a Schrödinger-type puzzle. Not sure how that would have gone over though; perhaps too tricky for many.

I was amazed to see that this was Alan's first construction for the NYT (though third to be published). The quality of fill is not at all what I would expect from a beginner, with such long goodness as PTERODACTYL, DIET SODA, ABANDON SHiP, ALIEN ATTACK, etc. Yes, there are instances of the dreaded (and not really a thing) ENOTES and the old-timey ISTLE in close proximity to ARACE, but I'm willing to wager that Alan will work hard to avoid these types of entries in the future. Themeless grids are hard to fill, and this xw has effectively four themeless-style mini-puzzles. Good job of filling them with some nice entries and a minimum of ugly stuff; looking forward to more from Alan.