New York Times, Wednesday, February 19, 2014

This is my second NYT puzzle publication (the first was Jan. 9, 2012). As an educator, husband, and father, I have to credit my loved ones and students as the inspiration for my puzzle ideas. My wife lets me bounce my crazy ideas off of her, my dad filled my childhood with puns, and my mom taught me to laugh at myself and to use humor when things grow uneasy. For example, awaiting the needle before donating at our school blood drive, I tried to cut the tension by saying, "PRESENT ARMS." Nearby students thought it was funny, but my phlebotomist was all business. Later on, I was in dad mode when I told my boys to "FORWARD MARCH" upstairs to bed. My oldest gave me a mock salute and said, "SIR, YES, SIR!" Et voila! The theme was born.

From there, the trick was to come up with the right combination of military commands with matching letter counts. COMPANY HALT worked nicely, but ABOUT FACE didn't make the final grid. I thought the fourth entry, READY AIM FIRE, added a little extra challenge because it contained three words instead of two. Plus that pattern gets echoed in the three-word response, albeit as separate entries.

Upon cluing, I already had "what blood donors do first" for PRESENT ARMS, and the others followed fairly easily. Will's editing bailed me out on 20-Across; originally, I had "Blunt month?" as the clue for FORWARD MARCH. The grid went through a number of iterations (I played with moving the two "SIR" entries around the grid) before Will gave his final stamp of approval. Kudos to him for his patience! I was also happy to place DIPHTHONG, PRESORTED, and IMPIETY (three new NYT puzzle words, if I'm not mistaken) into the grid. Lastly, I offer a genuine salute to all of our past and present military personnel. Thank you for the sacrifices you make to keep us safe! Peace to all.

Fun reinterpretations of common military phrases, along with the bonus SIR / YES / SIR. There are very few puzzles in the Shortz era that have repeated words, and Michael joins the club today.

Interesting construction. Typically cross-referenced entries work best when they're close in proximity. If they aren't, it forces the solver to jump around the puzzle (or in my case, ignore the clue and move on). It was fun to see that bonus set of entries, SIR / YES / SIR, after I finished, but it felt a bit loosey-goosey to me. I think I would have preferred 1.) to see those three entries straight across the middle or at least closer, and 2.) if those entries had answered the themers more relevantly or something.

Some people might complain today about the appearance of two of our most famous crosswordy literary names, Melville's OMOO and Salinger's ESME, especially situated so close together. I'll admit I was a little put off by that at first, but looking back on the grid, I kind of like the echo between those entries.

I enjoyed Michael's note and totally agree that debuting (the incredibly hard to spell) DIPHTHONG and IMPIETY is cool. PRESORTED... not so much for me (although Jim really liked this entry; there's no accounting for taste). As I've told a couple of co-constructors now, debuting a snazzy entry is the bomb dot com. (I still have my 2002 Motorola Razr.) Debuting an entry for the sake of debuting an entry, not so much.

Note those big chunks of five black squares in the NE and SW, not terribly attractive. But given the arrangement of themers Michael has chosen, using zero cheater squares there would require the filling of a big 6x3 area in the west and the east, never a simple task. From an aesthetic viewpoint, I would have preferred to see zero or only one set of cheater squares in these areas (making the block above LOSER (and its symmetrical pair) white instead of black), but I do appreciate the relative smoothness of those sections. All in all, I would almost always accept extra cheaters if that allows for better resulting fill.

Finally, I'll leave all today by highlighting a clue that delighted me: "What might get you through a quiet stretch?" for YOGA. I loathe yoga (I know, blasphemy for a Seattle-ite!), but I would totally sun-salutate that clue.