New York Times, Thursday, December 7, 2017

Themes based on words that sound like letters have been done fairly often: a great example is this Sunday puzzle by Ashish Vengsarkar (May 21, 2006). The variation I came up with was to find two-word phrases where one word sounded like a letter, and the other word either began or ended with that letter. The theme answers in the first version of the puzzle were JOHNJAY, CARIBBEANSEA, BUSYBEE, BREAKFASTTEA and SNAPPEA. Will Shortz thought the idea was interesting, but wanted all the theme answers to be consistent.

In my next version, all five theme answers began with the letter in the phrase: they included JOHNJAY, CARIBBEANSEA, BUSYBEE, TAIWANESETEA, and UPTOYOU. Will liked this version better, but felt that TAIWANESETEA was too obscure. In version 3, I incorporated TEXASTEA and CHINASEA. I was worried that the theme square count would be too low, given how short all the theme answers had become, but Will was apparently unconcerned and accepted the puzzle.

Other than that, I'll note that this is the first time that KSTATE has ever appeared in a New York Times crossword. Glad to be able to give a shout-out to the alma mater of my high-school classmate Doug Rogge, whom I reconnected with at a reunion not long before constructing this puzzle, and who still lives in the vicinity of Manhattan, Kansas. Go, Wildcats!

Neat finds, multi-word phrases where the last word sounds like a letter, and the first word starts with that letter. JOHN JAY, BUSY BEE, etc. I liked CHINA SEA and UP TO YOU best since those were tricksy. At first, I wondered, shouldn't it be something like SULU SEA? D'oh! Silly Jeff.

Interesting approach, using the notepad to make a (very small) contest out of this. (GOLLY GEE is what Will and Dan were getting at.) It didn't really work for me since there wasn't any prize involved, only sort of a "hey, challenge yourself and see if you come up with the right answer!"

(That doesn't work with my three-year-old, BTW.)

I'd much rather have gone full meta-contest. Send in your answer! Win a prize if you get it right! It works very well for Matt Gaffney's weekly contest (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!), for the WSJ Friday meta-contest, for Will's weekly NPR Puzzler, for so many things. Why not the NYT crossword?

I've chatted with Will and Joel about their decision to not go down this road, and I respect their thinking — it can be very frustrating for solvers if you can't get the answer right away. Solver dissatisfaction! Angry emails! I get that. The solver is priority #1.

But it feels like the NYT is missing out on something great. Something stickily addictive. ARE YOU LISTENING, NYT BIZ DEV PEOPLE? STICKY = MO MONEY!

And if they decided to not go down the contest route, I'd rather have seen GOLLY GEE incorporated somewhere in the grid, with the theme left up to the solver to grok. Much more standard NYT-ish. This notepad approach is sort of miry, trying to make up its mind what it is.

I did enjoy thinking of what other phrases might fit. Came up with PRINCESS AND THE PEA (okay, no initial THE is a cheat), CAN I SEE? You wonder why those weren't included. Hey, YOU WONDER WHY!

Pretty good execution on the grid. I enjoyed the bonuses of KSTATE (hugely recognizable moniker in college bball), LOSS LEADERS, TRIPLE AXELS.

Not a fan of the ADUEL, NEAPS / ENJOIN kind of stuff. The last two are tough — are they worth it to get AM TUNER, GUNSHOT, TANGENT in that toughish to fill corner? For me, not so much, but I can see how others might say yes.

Overall, I enjoyed the theme idea. Wish the halfway nature of the "contest" had been thought through better.