New York Times, Thursday, November 9, 2017

"There's no turning back!" reinterpreted as THERES NO GNINRUT! Try saying that three times fast. As a mediocre solver, this is exactly why I will take my chances on a typical Friday puzzle any time over a Tricksday puzzle like this. If you are programming a computer to beat humans at crosswords, how do you teach it to both reverse a word and infer a word that is not even there? In chess, Go, and backgammon the rules are fixed, but with crosswords, constructors are allowed to change the rules dramatically as long as they do it consistently.

As a mostly early week constructor, I did enjoy being able to open up the grid a bit and throw in some difficult entries (RIVOLI, MORDECAI) without feeling guilty. I found it difficult to clue INNER BEAUTY — I came up with something like "Hidden assets," but I like "What kindness and honesty reveal" a lot better. This reminds me of an NYT puzzle a year ago when I clued INNER CHILD as "Psychoanalytic entity, " and it got changed by Will and Joel to "What might make an adult jump in a pile of leaves". Wow — way better, and it "leaves" you with a warm nostalgic feeling. Great cluing takes a ton of experience and insight.

My least favority entry is YARNED. It's in plenty of dictionaries, but I think any attempt to vindicate it would seem like it was yarned by me. Hope you enjoyed the solve!

We've seen a lot of puzzles where entries have to be entered backward for some reason. They can provide great entertainment when there's a good rationale for the backwardizing. Too bad this one wasn't run on Backwards Day! (Really, it's Jan. 31!)

This one only reverses the final word of phrases … at least, the final word before BACK. (The BACK gets implied by reversing said final word.) I remembered a similar puzzle from a few years BACK — luckily, it's been a while since that one ran.

Although the concept didn't feel novel, I liked the theme phrases Bruce chose. WE'LL BE RIGHT (BACK), I TAKE THAT (BACK), THERE'S NO TURNING (BACK), GUESS WHO'S (BACK), AND DON'T COME (BACK)! Snazzy and colorful, the entire lot.

Great bonuses too, SOLAR CAR my favorite. Not only a great entry but an even better clue, referring to it getting (solar) cell service. INNER BEAUTY, PRIMAL URGES, NEW IDEAS of Ted Talks, even EMISSARY and MORDECAI. That's way more than expected for a five-themer puzzle, and they're all good to great.

It's so tough to pull off such a wealth of bonuses when you have five longish themers. With ICER, IONA, NOL, ONAT, UBS, REG all toughies or inelegant entries, and with GCHAT dead now (been replaced by something called ... "Google Hangouts"? huh.), that's too much for my taste. Toss in the toughies RIVOLI, NISEI, and INGRAM, and the entire thing didn't feel as smooth as I like.

I appreciate the effort to give a ton of extras, but perhaps putting a black square at the D of MORDECAI would have balanced things out better.

Not different enough from the canon of backwards puzzles for my taste, but all the great themers and bonuses did help keep me engaged.