BANDS TOGETHER

TRACY: Two years ago, Mike Black and I collaborated on this concept but received a rejection due to inconsistencies with the theme. Mike's career was really taking off so he encouraged me to give it another try with a new constructor. The puzzle lay idle until I teamed up with Andrea this past April.

Our first version received a "we're interested" from Will and Joel but they wanted us to rework the puzzle and change our theme entries to include either two or three band names, not a mix of both, for consistency and elegance. Since most of our three band name entries were too long (THE CARS RUSH ONE DIRECTION (23)), we concentrated on crunching together two band names, striving for theme entries with the best "surface sense." I was sorry to have to drop THE POLICE QUIET RIOT from our approved theme set since we couldn't find another (18) for symmetry, and my own personal favorite, STRAY CATS CROWDED HOUSE, didn't make the cut.

One of the memorable moments during the construction process was writing to and getting a response from "The Pretenders" band asking for a definitive answer on whether or not their name included "the" or not. Their response: "The answer is there is no definitive answer! It is both and either!"

Also, working with Andrea was a hoot! Her quick wit and sense of humor, combined with her "naming" talent, came through loud and clear from San Fran to Baltimore in the multitude of emails we exchanged. Thanks, Andrea — so glad we BANDED TOGETHER!

ACME: When Tracy approached me to see if I would collaborate on her fun and bouncy Sunday idea, I couldn't have been more delighted, because I love thinking about themes and am less fond of creating the actual grid! Although we'd never met in person, we seemed to be on the same page as to what needed doing. My favorite discarded entry was a bit darker, i.e. "STRAY CATS POISON TOTO."

I mostly create Mondays, though I have had three or four Sundays with new papa Patrick Blindauer. This is my first (accepted) Sunday-sized collaboration with a woman — I asked Will if that was a first. (It's not, there have been five or six in the past, all involving the quiet, often-unsung heroine Nancy Salomon … though it's been almost ten years since it's been two gals on a Sunday).

There must have been 500 emails back and forth on this puzzle and I'm thrilled it's seeing the light of day! And as Dick Clark might say, I hope you find that it has a nice beat that you can dance to!

I imagine BANDS TOGETHER inspired the puzzle theme, two pop bands glommed together to make either a real or a wacky phrase. My knowledge of pop music is woeful at best (huge jazz and classical fan, along with old-school rock and rap) so I'm glad Tracy and Acme used mostly giant-name bands. I still had to look up TRAIN, FUN, and FREE, but a quick Google search tells me that they are indeed bands. Huh.

I dug the neat discovery of RUSH THE DOORS. It's a phrase I've heard before in relation to Black Friday sales, so it's fortuitous that it just happens to be two bands put together. BOSTON CREAM pie is one of my favorites, so that was fun too. EAGLES WINGS and YES NO DOUBT also seemed like legit phrases in actual use.

I wish there had been more consistency though, as the rest of the themers are pretty made-up sounding. It's perfectly fine to have a crossword where every themer is as wacky as FUN SMASHING PUMPKINS or POISON FREE, but the mix of spot-on real phrases and kooky ones didn't do it for me. And ONE DIRECTION TRAFFIC ... it's neither real nor very kooky.

With any Sunday 140-word puzzle, there are bound to be a few minor gluey bits of the LAI, AUST, TGI, HOC variety. Pretty easy for me to overlook these short and common offenders. But throw in a few more AGTS, OAST, OGEE, ORIG, OLEIN entries, and it starts to affect my solving pleasure. I can understand why Tracy and Acme might have gone to 138 words in order to reduce their number of 3-, 4-, and 5-letter words (like Will's been looking for), but I'd much rather have more short words that are cleaner, than fewer that are gluier. Sticking to a 140 word count can help achieve that.

Some very nice long fill added to my solving experience, ISAAC NEWTON, UTTER ROT, and PRIMROSES my favorite. (PRIMROSES reminds me of Prim, Katniss's younger sister in "The Hunger Games," who Katniss sacrificed herself for. Hey, we get PEETA in the grid too!) A couple of neat single words were bonuses too, APTITUDE, INDIFFERENT, STALWART all adding ELEGANCE.