New York Times, Thursday, October 1, 2015

This is one of the earliest puzzles I submitted, when I was trying to put twists on rebuses. I hope solvers will enjoy the theme. It might be a tad easy, which may explain why Mr. Shortz toughened up most of the clues in the upper half. As a Florida resident, I can only wish for the temperature change hinted at in the ladder. Our seasons are pretty much summer, summer, SUMMER, and summer. Then again, being able to go snorkeling and play ultimate on the beach in January has its own charms!

FWIW, when I first started submitting puzzles, I received two rejection letters which said, in effect, ‘Nice idea, but we are about to run this same theme.' I got into the bad habit of rushing to pop a puzzle into the mailbox five seconds after finishing the fill, to get a jump on the imaginary competition. I've learned to let puzzles cool off for at least a couple of weeks.

Upon a fresh solve of my own puzzle, I usually find many areas for improvement (and, of course, a couple of entries I wish I could improve, but just have to live with). This was perfectly illustrated when, a couple of months ago, I stumbled on the printout of this puzzle at the bottom of a stack, and realized I could do a better job. Actually, I think I gagged. The second row, for example, consisted of ULNAE, ALAE, and CAEN. I managed to decrease the word count by two, work in snazzier long downs, and improve the overall fill. It's not perfect, but it's better.

I must be a glutton for punishment, because this is my third Thursday in which I've used bendy or intersecting themers, which don't allow a great deal of flexibility. I'm thankful for Will and Joel giving me the opportunity to improve.

Now here's something I haven't seen before: a word ladder incorporated into rebus squares, WARM changing to COLD one letter at a time. I liked John's layout, the WARM WORM WORD CORD COLD progression flowing (sort of) along the diagonal. Sort of like a titration curve, with its inflexion points.

A lot of nice long fill. SCREEN SHOT and BESTIARIES = excellent use of the longest two slots. BESTIARIES reminds me of my old D&D days. Nerds of the world, ride our gryphons to world domination!

Nice selection of theme entries, too. PASSWORD HINT has a modern feel, and FOR THE RECORD and WARM BODY are great. WORMS EYE VIEW … I glossed over the clue and put in the only thing that seemed possible: BIRDS EYE VIEW. Given how many tricky ways people are rebusizing the crossworld these days, I figured this was some sort of BIRD gets the WORM rebus — maybe a BIRD to WORM word ladder?

Guh.

Now I appreciate WORMS EYE VIEW as a fun and interesting answer, but boy oh boy it didn't sit well with me when I was struggling to figure out the BIRD to WORM word ladder.

I liked John's care in short fill. For so much strong material packed in today, a bit of TSOS, TAY, I SAW is darn good. TSOS is minor, and I SAW is actually perfectly fine to me, as it can be clued relative to Caesar's famous boast.

AZOTH is an outlier, but it gets a neat clue related to alchemy. I like it.

I might have liked all the four-letter rebuses to be hidden better, as with FOR THE RE(CORD), since those are harder to uncover and thus a little more fun for me. And I bet solving on paper would have been a better experience — in Across Lite, it's hard to see rebus entries, since they show up truncated as "WA." and "WO." I know the technology is old and limited, but it sure makes for a less than satisfying solve sometimes.

Especially when you're trying to figure out how to change a BIRD to a WORM and you can only see the first two letters of each rung.

*headdesk*