New York Times, Thursday, October 29, 2015

Hey all! Excited to be making my NYT debut today.

I came up with this puzzle during my last few weeks of college (I know, I was pretty wild). I'd only recently begun constructing seriously, and was brainstorming phrases I could literalize in some new way. I hit upon TIMESHARE, I think, and thought of the sharing mechanic you see here. In that version, just the first four theme entries would have had the sharing mechanism, but luckily I hit on the dual theme entry/revealer LION'(S)HARE at some point before getting too far along. This way is much more elegant.

This was actually one of the first puzzles I ever finished. Were I to redo this I'd definitely have put more effort into getting rid of some of the gluier bits of fill (IGA, LUC, UAE, AVI, ANSE, IPSO stick out), but overall I am happy with this puzzle. I like the long downs a lot, and the medium-length stuff is generally OK too. I wish my original clue for TENT [Pitcher's base?] had been retained, but I'll get over that (in time). The cluing was definitely improved overall.

Until next time, happy solving!

It's very infrequent that I see a debut this smooth, this colorful, this well-executed.

Fun theme — L I O N repeated in four themers, all at the end of one word and the beginning of another for perfect consistency. How cool is it that the LIONS SHARE revealer exhibits the exact same quality!

Sam doesn't push the boundaries too much today, what with a 78-word puzzle (the maximum allowed), but he executes on it so well. Look at the long fill: IDIOT PROOF and SEE IF I CARE. Great choices; colorful answers. The 7-letter ones are excellent too, DR SEUSS and INKBLOT. Even tossing in some MYSTIC PRIEST helps with zest.

And such little glue to hold it all together. I like that Sam has the self-awareness to point out some of the gluey bits he really wanted to work out, but I actually don't mind AVI. The one-named author (real name: Edward Irving Wortis) is a giant in kidlit, having won one Newbery Medal and two Newbery Honors. Agreed that ANSE is pretty esoteric, but he's more crossworthy than the lesser-known of the Kenan and KEL duo, isn't he? And I don't mind UAE and IGA at all, as they're commonplace acronyms. So I think Sam did a tremendous job in his short fill.

With all the gushing praise, why didn't I give this the POW? As much as I enjoyed the solve, I found it too easy, especially with the circles giving away the game. It also would have been nice to have the five circles appear a bit less haphazardly — probably too much to ask given the constraint of the theme — but I could have forgiven the circles if they had all been in a straight line. Plus, given how smooth Sam made this puzzle, I wanted to see him challenge himself to go with a 76- or 74-word puzzle and incorporate more long fill.

But those are minor details. I debated between today's vs. yesterday's puzzles for the POW. Looking forward to more from Sam.