New York Times, Thursday, December 17, 2015

I'm proud of the trick in this one, but I think I'm even prouder of the fill. I tried very hard to have very little crosswordese — did I succeed? You be the judge =) I originally submitted this puzzle with no partial phrases. Will since changed the clue to ASA from "Botanist Gray" to "__ whole ..." Totally understandable.

I'm always fascinated by the unwritten rules of crossword making: not too many 3-letter words, nice looking patterns of black squares etc. In this case, I learned that even though 78-words is the limit for a daily puzzle, Shortz prefers not to run 78-ers on Thursdays.

So I got the word count down to 76, which was not an easy task! And I'm pleased how it turned out. I think the long themers are fun, and I'm glad LONGISLANDICEDTEA breaks up the letters between two words. RUSHDIE was a must-have for me, and I am so glad I was able to get that word to span two of the long themers.

Hope you enjoy it!

There seem to be two camps when it comes to rebuses — the haters and the lovers. Given that there have been SO many rebuses, I lean slightly toward the former side, but I really like when a rebus is not just a rebus. David's interpretation of DIE + DIE = DICE made for a highly entertaining solve.

Not only was the concept really fun, but I loved David's selection of themers. BO(DICE) RIPPERS was my favorite, evoking images of Harlequin Romance covers. PRIDE AND PREJU(DICE), CAN(DICE) BERGEN, and LONG ISLAN(D ICE)D TEA are all great picks, too. It would have been nice to get one more where DICE was broken — perhaps COME(DIC E)FFECT or NOMA(DIC EMPIRE)? — but there are a very limited number of phrases breaking like that. And a second D / ICE break would be tough since not much starts with ICE that wouldn't have the same etymology as ICED.

I also liked how David only used DIE once by itself in the fill, in DIE OUT. Hiding the rebuses in RUSH(DIE), (DIE)TS, GRENA(DIE)R avoids duplications. With so rebus-filled entries required for this puzzle, it's impressive to not dupe DIE.

I also liked the big, open corners in the NE / SW. Sometimes this sort of thing is optional, but today David used so many black squares in the middle of his grid — necessary to partition all the various DIE entries — that he was forced to keep the corners wide open. They came out well, with some nice long stuff like INCENSED and ABROGATE, with very few gluey entries like ASSOC.

I wasn't a fan of the lower right corner. Yes, there's a lot to work around with two DIE answers and a relatively big corner, but HEIL … yikes. Maybe I've grown too sensitive over the years. At least clue it to "The Producers" or something? And A DUE / ASA / CTRL / TSURIS are all fine(ish) on their own, but they sure pile up in that corner.

Perhaps a little too easy for a Thursday puzzle, but it sure provided me with a lot of entertainment. Well done.