New York Times, Thursday, October 19, 2017

An earlier version of this puzzle went over the word limit, so was essentially DOA with the Times. It also crammed far too much theme material into the grid, forcing some pretty ugly fill in places. In short, it was a bucket of bolts. Solution? Rethink it, keep the same theme idea, but scale back on the theme material and keep things as clean as possible.

The main challenge, of course, was stacking good theme answers — and the central HEAD OVER HEELS revealer provided extra challenge since it doubled as a pair of theme entries in its own right, and needed its own set of accompanying head and heel. DIRTY RAT dovetailed nicely, but I struggled with 36-Across until I kept digging and chanced upon BIG WHEEL.

62-Across was originally POTOK, and I loved the curiosity that both author Potok and 47-Across actor TOPOL shared the same first name — CHAIM. But it forced some unwieldy and convoluted cluing, so I'm glad Will and company changed Potok to NOT OK, which was very OK to me. Another one: 31-Across was RUMI in my version (a debut), with MIR at 32-Down, but I noted to Will they could choose RUDI and the abbreviation DIR if they wanted. And they did. But RUMI, an oft-quoted 13th-century Sufi mystic (and a favorite of my wife), has to be acceptable in future puzzles. You think?

Three literal HEADs OVER HEELS. Fun finds, NUMERO UNO, BIG WHEEL, TOP BANANA all snazzy synonyms for HEAD, and SCOUNDREL, DIRTY RAT, and NOGOODNIK juicy equivalents for HEEL. I'd happily use any of those six as fill in another crossword!

It's a shame the NYT hasn't caught the Wall Street Journal's meta contest madness. This would have made for a nice one: "What phrase is hinted at three times within this puzzle?" As much as I liked HEAD OVER HEELS in the center of the puzzle, it did make for a very easy Thursday solve. Would have been a neat a-ha moment, staring at the grid, wondering, wondering, wondering ... and then finally, ba-bam! HEAD OVER HEELS! Love those great moments of discovery.

Seven long themers? In one 15x15 puzzle? Man oh man, that's usually asking for serious trouble. And stacked pairs of answers as well? Along with three themers slammed up against each other in the center? Zoinks! I'd usually not even consider trying something like this.

Not a surprise to get so much crossword glue needed to hold everything together. I stopped keeping track after EUR, DIR, OLA, MTNS, STA, but then couldn't stop my OCD constructor's brain from pointing out OTYPE ("type O," yeah?), ETAT, IND, TOD, TSR, aaugh, stop it, you stupid brain and just enjoy the puzzle!

Luckily, that same annoying brain pointed out the fact that the slew of crossword glue was almost a necessary result if seven themers were to be used. And for the most part, I thought it was a reasonable trade-off, considering the fun pairs along with the revealer. The only part I didn't like much was that BIG WHEEL wasn't over DIRTY RAT like the others. But you'd need an off-size grid (maybe 16x15) to put that pair in the center (and you'd have to move HEAD OVER HEELS somewhere else — another reason to make it a meta puzzle!).

Overall, I thought it was a neat concept, even with the necessary flaws. I would have given it POW! consideration if it had been cleaner — maybe two pairs of longer answers and two pairs of shorter ones? — or if I'd had to work for my Thursday a-ha moment more.

ADDED NOTE: Astute reader Brian Greer pointed out that BIG WHEEL is over HEEL, and HEAD is over DIRTY RAT. Nice catch! It doesn't follow the same pattern of the other pairs, but it's pretty cool.