New York Times, Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The anniversary of the Gettysburg Address is what inspired the puzzle but deciding how to do it was a challenge. Originally, I wanted to have the first six and last six words of the address read as Across answers, along with ABRAHAM LINCOLN. That approach would have worked but I felt it was too straightforward and easy (even for a Tuesday) and didn't leave enough room in the grid for GETTYSBURG. The challenge of the puzzle as I finally did it was to be able to fit in six fairly long Across answers, in addition to ABE LINCOLN and GETTYSBURG, which I wanted to be Down answers.

Fun Facts: 1) The actual address was only about two minutes long and 2) Ken Burns, the documentary maker who was featured in "Wordplay", has been trying to get kids to memorize the address (as I did when I was a kid!).

I really enjoyed David's comments about having to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I recently finished "Across the Universe" by Beth Revis, where a girl is awoken from a cryogenic deep freeze aboard a ship where the history books have largely been altered. She attempts to recite the Gettysburg Address in order to prove that Lincoln was a good guy, but can't remember more than FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN YEARS AGO. This is why we need to memorize it, people! Is no one preparing for deep space multi-century exploration but me?

Really? That's weird.

Six full theme entries today, along with ABE LINCOLN and GETTYSBURG. Talk about a packed house! Smart that David gave himself a lot of flexibility, placing the key words in locations that work best. Look where GRAND OPERA and SALES EVENT overlap. Easy breezy 3x3 chunk right in the middle, right? Different story if SEVEN is moved one space to the right, making A?V, giving you only the ATV option. Smart placement.

At first I tried to jam ABRAHAM LINCOLN into 3-down, and then liberally spread LINCOLN into the ten spaces. I even thought this might be a crazy trick where in an alternate universe President ROBERT E LEE delivered the Gettysburg address. (Man, I read too much wacky "what-if" lit.) Funny that having ABE Lincoln bothered me a little, because I'm about as informal a person as they come.

For all the layers upon layers of constraints, the fill turned out better than I expected. Sure, there's the crazy ERDE and a TOSIR crossing ESSE, but nothing really bugged me too much. And David even segmented parts of his grid so that we get some chunks of real goodness. Even though the NE is somewhat partitioned from the rest of the puzzle, I liked all the Scrabbly action plus a shout-out to Geraldine FERRARO, who makes only her third appearance in the Shortz era. I was only 12 when she ran for VP, but it made a big impression on me that maybe a minority could also run one day. I'm lifting a glass to both her and LINCOLN today.

Get to work memorizing, people!