New York Times, Tuesday, October 1, 2013

I really liked the base idea of this puzzle (the V's representing a flock of geese), but I struggled with coming up with good surrounding theme material. With the left/right symmetry and all the Vs locked in place in the top half of the grid, I didn't have much flexibility in the bottom to include more theme answers. With the current grid design, I worked for a while trying to get themers to work in those bottom 7 stacks, before eventually deciding that the fill was either undoable or the themers too strained. I'll be interested to see if solvers are annoyed by the lack of theme answers in the bottom half of the puzzle or if they appreciate the effort to keep the overall fill more clean and lively.

You don't see left/right symmetry often in American crosswords, but it's just as legitimate as the regular kind. This puzzle is light on theme material, but I think it makes up for it with liveliness — especially LOVER'S LANE, LIVING WILL, UP TO YOU, and NICE JOB. Joel just started his senior year at Pomona College in California. He has been my intern for the past three summers and intends to return full-time after graduating. Virtually all the clues in this puzzle are his.

Winning time for this puzzle at the 17th Westchester Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held last Friday in Pleasantville, NY:

Jeffrey Schwartz, New York, NY, in 4:33.

What a treat to get something different on a Tuesday! Joel Fagliano, a very well-rounded constructor, shows off his chops with a (relatively) rare "mirror symmetry" puzzle, one which exhibits left-right symmetry. It might not be apparent why he chooses this option, but consider the pattern of V's that's central to this theme. If Joel had used normal (180 rotational) symmetry, the black squares might have visually overwhelmed everything else, a point Michael Sharp (aka Rex Parker) has noted many times in the past. As an added layer of elegance, there are no other V's in the puzzle.

It's a thing of beauty to imagine a flock of MIGRATING/GEESE flying straight overhead (I would have preferred MIGRATING/GEESE or MIGRATING/BIRDS over GEESE/MIGRATION, as the latter feels slightly stilted as a phrase). All crosswords are works of art in their own right, but this one I could imagine up on someone's wall.

Will and Joel's notes about the relative thinness of theme are well-taken, and I would have liked to see something else — not sure what though. V SIGN would be cool, but it would also throw a loose V into the puzzle (or require a "????V" theme answer to preserve mirror symmetry). So I like Joel's compromise of making the rest of the puzzle a quasi-themeless, giving us such great stuff as the long fill Will mentioned. I also appreciate the cluing, which felt Joel-ish (more modern than average). Neat when the constructor's cluing vibe comes through.

KISLEV...I scratched my head when I ran into it while solving. I polled a few Jewish friends afterward, and indeed KISLEV is important because of its relation to Hanukkah, so I'm glad to have learned it. But IYAR, ELUL, and SIVAN, you're on notice.

This puzzle gets my POW! but let me tell you, we have a couple of stonkers coming up. Gareth Bain assures me that "stonker" means "something good". It's possible he's pulling my leg, but I like the word too much not to use it. "Stonker of the Week", that's catchy.