New York Times, Thursday, February 20, 2014

ZHOUQIN (C.C.):

This idea occurred to me when I put WOODROW in a down slot one day & misread it as the two-word WOOD ROW. Don did all the hard work on the grid design. I initially used a 5 & 5 & 3 word break on the very top & bottom rows. Simply could not make the grid work, not to mention including a few long downs.

DON:

This idea places a burden on the construction, because we were stuck using lengths of words that must work out to rows and be symmetrically arranged. And then sticking WOOD ROW in the center made it even more difficult.

CC and I share filling and cluing. On a personal note, I was happy to get RUBINSTEIN into the grid. That was on my half of the grid. Way back when I was a senior in high school (1972), Rubinstein came to Cleveland to perform a recital of all Chopin music. I was in heaven, being a Chopin fan and a Rubinstein fan. I was witness to an extraordinary event. Other than that answer, it is not a very exciting grid for us to design, because we both like more complexity, with some longer entries. The theme really limited what we could do.

WOODROW parsed into WOOD ROW today, i.e. rows of short answers, each of which can follow the word WOOD. Who knew there were so many words that go with WOOD?

This may seem like an easy construction, given the short theme answers, but it is no mean feat. In some ways, it's actually harder to use short theme answers than long ones. Counterintuitive perhaps, but this sort of arrangement can be very difficult due to crossword norms, both related to integration of long fill.

First, the 78 word maximum. Today's grid would have been a piece of cake if C.C. and Don could have used 82 words. That would have let them break up entries like GOING OVER, PREDATORY, etc. But there's a reason for that 78 word maximum — those types of long entries are a big part of what makes a crossword spicy and interesting. Of all the entries today, my favorites were I DON'T BUY IT, POP DIVA, and RUBINSTEIN (I'm a fan too, Don!). Breaking up those entries would have been a real shame.

Then there's the presentation of said longest answers. Typically, solvers tend to think that the theme of a puzzle is contained within the longest across answers. And for good reason — that is the case 90% of the time! So when there's an anomalous grid like today's, the constructor(s) have to be careful not to mislead the solver. No doubt that the shaded (or circled) entries help distinguish the themers from the non-themers, but I couldn't help wondering what PREDATORY and ORIGINALS had to do with WOOD at first.

Finally, in this type of arrangement, the puzzle's zing is highly dependent on the long down fill, since the theme is basically a "words that can follow X" type of theme. In addition to I DON'T BUY IT and POP DIVA and RUBENSTEIN, CLAY COURT is particularly nice. But GOING OVER seems to me like a missed opportunity. Nine-letter spaces are meant for snazz. I realize that it might not have been possible due to the high constraints today, but that still doesn't keep me from wishing that entry had been something more splashy.

Tough construction challenge today with relatively smooth fill. Good workout.