New York Times, Monday, October 7, 2013

Ah, my first NY Times crosswords. I'm very happy to be here.

For me, this puzzle was a lesson in "fresh and lively." As a newbie, "fresh and lively" can be a difficult accomplishment. I was happy just to complete a grid with no Tibetan yaks, references to drugs or disease, Roman numerals (one of my own pet peeves) and still fall within the word count guidelines. Mr. Shortz liked my theme but found my first grid a bit too "crosswordy," asking me to try again.

So I tried again. I didn't exactly get a "meh" in his response but Mr. Shortz did not find the puzzle all that exciting for solvers. Again, he was willing to take another look if I wanted to try again. "Really?" I thought and walked away from the project for a couple of weeks. Coming back to it with fresh eyes, I was able to produce what you see today. Is it fresh and lively? I'll let you be the judge of that. I will say it is much improved, a "fresh and lively" lesson I hope I can carry over into other crossword constructions.

There have been a couple of puzzles over the years whose themes involved words that combine with BLUE, but this is the first one that uses only song titles. Great punch line at 63A, too!

A great debut from Amy. I've said before how difficult it is to make a Monday puzzle, and this one fires on all cylinders. I really appreciate Monday puzzles which I could give to non-crossword friends to get them hooked on the NYT xw, and this is one of them. We have some fun puzzles coming up this week, but this one deserves the POW. Here are the reasons why Amy's works so well for me:

Interesting, consistent, specific theme. There is a huge range of solving abilities in the NYT xw universe, everyone from total novices to the speedsters (Dan, Anne, Tyler, Plot, ZigZag, Shazbot, Commander Chewie) who don't even look at the theme, so finding something that works for everyone is near impossible. Amy gives us a theme that beginners can grasp (songs all ending in a word that's a shade of blue, plus another song as a "revealer") and advanced solvers can appreciate, given the catchiness of the three songs. As for specificity, there may be other well-known songs which also fit the theme, but I couldn't think of any right off the bat.

Long fill. Often the best source of added snazz is 8+ letter fill. Amy has some nice stuff here, GETTYSBURG and ARE WE ALONE (although I would have preferred to see a clue like "Secretive whisper" to get more specific about its usage). But she also incorporates some shorter good stuff: ST PETER, WOE IS ME, RUB IT IN, and HAR HAR. Nice.

Surrounding fill. This is the category that makes Mondays so difficult to create. A late week puzzle often must use an esoteric or crosswordese entry to hold the grid together. In my own late-week puzzles I've often had to let the likes of an OEO pass because of tough grid constraints. That's usually fine for a late-week solver, but it can badly trip up the novice solver. Amy has filled her grid professionally, with just a couple of the lesser uglies: ENNE, PHYS, ESE, STDS, GSA. GIDE is an outlier for a Monday, but the crosses are all common words and the Nobelist Andre Gide is gridworthy. I also appreciate Amy's use of a set of black "cheater squares" at the very NW and SE. As Patrick Berry has said, he'll always choose to incorporate cheater squares if that means the surrounding fill is of higher quality.

Cluing. It's tough to come up with fun and tricky cluing on a Monday, because that usually makes it too difficult for the novice solver. There's nothing spectacular here, but nothing too tricky for its own good. A slight ding is the sheer length of the clue for SINGING THE BLUES. It would have been nice to concatenate that somehow, maybe "Soulful activity describing the ends of 16-, 27-, 49-across"?

Looking forward to more work from Amy. P.S. There sadly is no ZigZag, Shazbot, or Commander Chewie in universe of NYT xw solvers. But there should be.

ADDED NOTE: Erik Agard shall hereafter be known as ZigZag. BTW, check out his indy crossword site, Glutton for Pun if you have a chance. Good stuff.