New York Times, Wednesday, November 19, 2014

In the original version of this puzzle, I made the rookie mistake of placing NONAHEDRON at 56A without considering that I'd eventually have to write a clue for it. As I soon realized, there just aren't that many familiar nine-faced objects (and the preferred term is "enneahedron"). The best clue I could come up with was the unwieldy "Pyramid with an octagonal base, perhaps." Thanks to Will for changing 56A to the more clue-friendly NOMINATION, which I wholeheartedly accept.

I find that "literal interpretation" type themes are best when they do something unexpected. The ones that are exactly what the solver might first guess tend to get old pretty quickly, so I really liked Jacob's fun twist. THERES NO TWO / WAYS ABOUT IT translates to "phrases surrounded by NO and ON." Fun!

I recently found a new, very useful tool I wanted to share. The problem has been that if you wanted to do a search for themers fitting a simple pattern on onelook.com, you get a whole lot of crud, and if you select the "common words and phrases" option, you get nearly nothing. Alex Boisvert has come up with a Wikipedia Regular Expression search, which much more smartly works for you.

Using a "NO* *ON" search, I found some neat possibilities: NOISE POLLUTION, NOBEL FOUNDATION, and my favorite, NORM PETERSON. He's probably not quite crossworthy, but this reminds me that I'm still searching for that place where everyone shouts "El Jefe, Galactic Prime Emperor and Sovereign of All That is Divine!" when I walk in. Is that so much to ask?

Anyhoo, I would have liked NONPRESCRIPTION and NOMINATION to be more colorful. The former screams out to be OVER THE COUNTER, and NOMINATION is certainly a fine word, but not something I'd give points to in a themeless.

Not a lot of long fill today, but I appreciate the relative cleanliness of the execution. With a high number of three-letter words, it's good that Jacob carefully chose those such that they didn't stand out too much (for me, at least). If you're going to verge on the edge of too many threes — 23 is really pushing it — I think it's important to not use many ESE, ANE, OON, etc. type answers, as that makes them more noticeably stick out.

Here, Jacob does well, with only an OCH feeling a little odd. And even that is passable, as anything that makes me think of Groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons is okay in my book. The phrase cheese-eating surrender monkeys never ceases to amuse me.