New York Times, Wednesday, November 6, 2013

The theme I came up with for this puzzle seemed to warrant a later in the week, lower word count grid which forced me to come out from under the shelter of the 78 word puzzles I had been constructing up to this point. I didn't stray too far, though, wanting to take baby steps toward the quagmire that is low word count grids, and so settled on a 76 worder.

Thanks to Michael Sharp, Neville Fogarty and Tyler Hinman who were gracious enough to give me feedback on this and one other puzzle I was working on. I have found the crosswording community to be very supportive, and extremely helpful. Thanks to you all!

What a fantastic theme today! Years ago, I had toyed with BETWEEN YOU AND ME as a revealer for a puzzle, but mostly around phrases starting with U and ending with ME (USERNAME, UNWHOLESOME, etc.). It had never occurred to me to develop a theme the way Jacob did, and I bow to him for the spark of genius. YOU TALKIN TO ME; I love it. Very well done.

And generally such a clean puzzle! Jacob is fairly new to the construction game, which made this puzzle even more impressive. It's really hard to make a smooth puzzle, especially when you're working with five themers. And I loved hearing about his desire to push the envelope, stepping outside his comfort zone to include two long downs. Hopefully he'll continue this trend, next aiming for two or three sets of long downs. Possibly even a 74-word puzzle with a quantity of quality long fill.

I was absolutely loving the puzzle, having quickly cottoned to the clever theme and the awesome revealer, really appreciating the cleanliness of the fill...and then I hit BLAU. "When a four-letter word hasn't been used in the NYT xw crossword since 1998, there's usually a good reason," I thought. Luckily, Jim asked me why my reaction was so negative. I thought about it for a long time and decided that BLAU really isn't so different from AZUL, or even ETE/ENERO/NIE. Should those entries be more acceptable, simply because they're used all the time in xws? If that's the only reason, then my reaction shouldn't be such a knee-jerk one. Seems to me that I overreacted.

Out of curiosity, let's take a look at that region and see why BLAU occurred. The challenge starts with needing a four-letter word ending in U; only about 30 decent options available. Then, the adjacent I????A pattern (19d) is also pretty limited, IBERIA, ICE TEA, IMPALA, ITALIA being some other choices. Finally, the open area of parallel 6s in the NE is hard to fill in itself. Everything taken together, all those constraints cascade into that BLAU region, giving limited options. I absolutely love the fill in that NE corner, with BLOTTO, BONNET, and three-card MONTE, but BLAU still feels like a high price to pay.

Anyway, enough picking of nits. When it comes down to it, the crossings of BLAU are all fair, so it is what it is. The rest of the puzzle is so finely tuned, so well-designed, so clean. I appreciate the obvious care and time Jacob put into it. Overall, a finely executed puzzle with a clever trick and well-chosen themers.