IT WAS 50 YEARS AGO TODAY

Listening to the Beatles' classic "Sgt. Pepper" album a few months back, I heard them sing, "It was 20 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play". This led me in short order to discover that the Beatles made their much-touted U.S. TV debut (spoiler alert!) on the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday, February 9, 1964. Once I noticed that February 9 is also a Sunday in 2014 — which would be 50 years later to the day — I was launched on the puzzle.

I realized that the theme would become apparent to solvers of all generations, and wanting to make the puzzle something special beyond including an ample supply of phrases and songs relating to the Beatles, I came up with the idea of incorporating the names of the Beatles into the shape of a guitar. This took a few iterations, as the combination of their four names required 47 letters to produce the shape (rendered in gray squares in the print puzzle), and a bit of organization to get the surrounding black squares properly placed. Since some musicians could speculate as to whether this shape resembles an instrument that all but Ringo might actually have played, I decided to include the word "guitar" at 102 Down. I very much appreciate how Will streamlined the fill in a couple of corners. Trust this puzzle is fun — and that solvers "can work it out" without too much "help".

Ah, the Beatles. There have been several puzzles incorporating JOHN, PAUL, RINGO, and GEORGE, including a stealth one by Peter Collins, but none incorporating their full names quite like this.

I found the most interesting question to ponder today: how the heck do we fix the answers up so the database is clean and accurate? Jim and I take great care to reverse entries, unbend them, do whatever it takes to make the entry make sense to the clue. This often requires judgment calls, and we try to just be as consistent as possible. We ended up splitting the theme answers into two, so that if solvers later want to find this puzzle, a search for *JOHN LENNON* (the asterisks being wild card operators) will turn up PAUL MCCARTNEY JOHN LENNON. Perhaps there are better ways to do it? (shaking fist at constructors who defiantly break the molds)

Neat change of pace; it's rare to see a long entry sweep around like this to form a single gigantic theme entry. The shape isn't bad, although it struck me as more of a banjo than a guitar. A few slight indentations in the body of the guitar might have helped, but could also have made the construction even harder than it already is.

This mirror-symmetry grid may not come across as tricky, but as soon as I saw it I knew there would have to be some compromises here and there. Just look at 9D and 11D separated by only one column, and they stretch almost the full length of the puzzle. And to top it off, they spread out, forcing a very tough section within the "body" of the guitar. Stuff like AAU and NEUER in the center is bound to happen with this many constraints. Not only that, but you have to spend so many of your black squares in the middle of the puzzle, that the outer regions are forced to be big white swaths, hard to fill. A real challenge.

Some compromises in execution today, but I find that it's always fun to remember the greatness that was the Beatles.