New York Times, Thursday, October 8, 2015

When I submitted the final manuscript of this puzzle to Will, it included an "Easter egg" — the longest familiar word that starts and ends in a vowel with no vowels in between.

Here is a lesson I keep learning: no substandard fill goes unpunished. SO TO, HEREAT, RESAT, US DO, ELIO, A TRIP; all gone. US DO may even qualify as a puzzle killer. Fortunately for you, the puzzle solver, Will and his team were able to remove all of the offending fill before it went to press. I did hate to lose RABBIT HOLE.

Word trivia is a gold mine for crossword themes. I ran across the DESSERTS / STRESSED reversal a few years ago, but it was nice to learn that it was the longest common word showing this property. Nice to have the flexibility to put it in the grid as either one of the two words!

UNCOPYRIGHTABLE was another one I learned of in my years of crossword research. There are other 15s — HYDROPNEUMATICS, DERMATOGLYPHICS, and MISCONJUGATEDLY — but it'd be hard to argue that any of them are common.

QUEUEING and SPOONFEED are really interesting finds. I hadn't considered "the most consecutive vowels" or "all letters in reverse alphabetical order." Alphabetical order, yes, with CHINTZ and BIJOUX being nice ones. But cool to find a long reverse one in SPOONFEED.

TORTUROUS was a little more, well, torturous for me. The last 12 letters of the alphabet … doesn't that seem awfully arbitrary? Feels like it was supposed to be "... the last half of the alphabet" and then someone found a longer one including the letter N.

I like the effort to put in six long themers. This is a tough layout, with GLASNOST and ROSE TOPAZ abutting. This parallel down structure has the tendency to result in 1.) neutralish entries like LOSE OUT ON and/or 2.) gluey crossing fill like USLTA and IDLERS and OMOO. I do really like RABBIT FOOD, such a colorful answer. But I would have liked perhaps just four long pieces of fill and more cleanliness, given that there's already some ESOS / OTROS / SO I / DYERS kind of stuff around the rest of the grid. Each one of these is a pretty minor offender, but taken as a whole, it felt like a lot.

Some interesting finds; I especially liked the QUEUEING one.