New York Times, Thursday, December 26, 2013

By the time this reaches you, I hope all who celebrate have had a Merry Christmas.

It's unusual to see theme answers arranged like the second and fourth ones in this puzzle — with a "cheater"* and not spanning the rest of the grid. However, I had to do that. I tried not having the cheaters and using the 10's and 15's in all four combinations (I didn't want the revealer in the middle; I didn't want the top and bottom 15's only one row apart from the 10's), and found that the fill went much smoother with this arrangement. (That's even with IERI, which I definitely didn't want, but had to use.)

Two things about the low word count for a themed puzzle. One, I confess that I tried to go lower than that (tried making 9D or 10D 7 letters, tried making 3D 8 letters... but not at the same time!). Two, I didn't want to clutter the top with too many blocks, considering that I had to use a lot of them in the middle to make the themers work. Once I found that 6/8 worked in the top two rows, I didn't hesitate to use it. (Plus, I'm a themeless guy at heart, as you may be able to tell.)

About the theme answers — I didn't set out to make this kind of theme (I know we've seen these themes before), but I was fortunate to have my crossword sense (like "Spidey-sense", but a lot geekier) activated when hearing this phrase that would become the revealer. I thought that finding a mixed-up seven-letter sequence in crossworthy phrases would be harder, but I still had to think a bit to get the symmetrical pairs. I lucked upon the 15s, honestly — the 10s were much easier.

*Cheater = black square which doesn't affect the total word count. Today's has four cheaters, the short ends of the four L blocks of black squares.

When I started at The Times in 1993, I was cautioned that ANAL (23D) was not an appropriate word for the paper to run in a puzzle. But times — and standards of taste — change, and it seems OK to me now. Tim's puzzle has just 70 entries, which is two fewer than the maximum for a themeless puzzle, and this puzzle manages five long theme answers. I'm impressed.

Tim Croce is most well-known for his wide-open themeless grids, but he also works on themed puzzles, and today's is a stonker. GENERAL DISARRAY is interpreted as "phrases which contain GENERAL anagrammed", and Tim comes up with some beautiful theme entries, POTENTIAL ENERGY and NUCLEAR ENGINEER being my favorites (I'm a physics dork, so sue me).

At a certain point in their careers, most constructors tend to get comfortable with the basics of gridwork. Many stay at that point indefinitely, but some choose to push the envelope, trying to see what new and exciting developments can happen. I love Tim's effort today to give us a wide-open solve (only 70 entries!), imbuing the puzzle with a quasi-themeless feel. The theme itself doesn't contain the typical trickery we've come to expect from Thursdays in the Shortz era, but the addition of the wide-open grid really enhanced my solve.

Typically, most constructors would break up rows 1, 2, 14, and 15 into three entries apiece, but Tim has split them only into two entries apiece. This gives us the juicy TIA MARIA, MESS TENT, EMIRATES, OLD SAW, etc. And in addition, RAN RAGGED and SEAFARERS appear in the NE and SW; excellent entries. There are a few prices to pay, notably IERI and BEGEM which both seem to me like icky bits, but overall the trade-off is well worth it to me.

And there's the combination of ANAL and AREOLA clued as a site of some piercings. Buh-bye, old Gray Lady! I'm sure there will be some whose sensibilities are rankled by this, but count me among those happy to see more cheekiness mixed in. I also appreciated the vibe of the cluing, notably "Brobdingnagian" for LARGE and "Search for, in a way" for GOOGLE. A really fun solve today.