New York Times, Wednesday, November 1, 2017

DISCLAIMER: No animals were harmed in the making of this puzzle.

I don't recall the exact inspiration for this puzzle, but I was probably hungry and noticed an animal split between two entries in another crossword. To limit the theme choices, I decided to use only animals in the current Barnum's box (according to Wikipedia) which were five letters or longer.

The other decision was where to place the revealer. I'm not a fan of center placement, and that would mean changing the grid to 14 or 16 squares wide or just having ANIMAL CRACKER which wasn't great. You can't eat just one! So I went with the "cracked" revealer that fortunately echoed the theme.

Will liked the concept but asked to remove some iffy fill and to replace HIPPO which was the only shortened entry. Of two revised submissions, the one that had the longest split entries was chosen over the one that had VEGANS crossing ANIMAL. Kudos to Will and Joel for the double "parked" clues for 49- and 50-Across.

Hope this satisfies your crossword snacking pleasure!

ANIMAL CRACKERS all broken up at the bottom of the box … "cracked," you might even say! Clever interpretation of CRACKERS, meaning that some black squares crack, or divide, an ANIMAL in two (see below, highlighted).

Even better was that Herre stuck to long-ish animals typically seen in boxes of ANIMAL CRACKERS! Would have been easy to pick short animals like HEN or FROG or ELK, but that would have felt odd. Speaking of odd, not sure why it's unappetizing to eat a hen-shaped cracker vs. a ZEBRA or an ELEPHANT. I call fowl! Er, foul.

Well, it's not that difficult to split up semi-long words so that half ends an entry, and the other half starts another. Even a long guy like GORILLA gives multiple possibilities for *GOR and ILLA*. The latter not so much, but still, with I'll ask, ill-advised, ill at ease, etc., that's a good amount of flexibility.

BUT! Even with that flexibility, it's no joke to work around five pairs of themers. PHANT* doesn't give many possibilities, and when you must obey crossword symmetry, things can get hairy. I thought Herre did extremely well in the top half of the grid, working in some beautiful OH COME ON, NO GO AREA, I HOPE NOT bonus fill — all without crossword glue! Some might complain about LON Chaney, but he was a famous actor. Fine by me.

The bottom half didn't come out as nice, what with AMO, RCMP, AJOKE, LSTS, SYS — that's almost too much for one puzzle, and certainly too much for half of a puzzle. It's a much more difficult section to fill since CRACKERS is fixed into place, whereas the top had much more flexibility (MCGREGOR could have been dozens of other things). Along with the fact that Herre had to spend many of his black squares in the middle of the puzzle, sometimes you just have to accept that there will be compromises like this.

Herre could have gone down to just four pairs of themers, but only three animals would have felt light. Although the SE wasn't very elegant, I think it was a reasonable trade-off to get the higher theme density.

Given how well the theme was obscured, my solving experience played out like a pretty smooth themeless, and then the a-ha at the end was delightful — so much so, that I was able to overlook the gluey SE. Such a fun experience overall!