New York Times, Monday, February 9, 2015

I can't come up with a whole lot to say about this one, which I submitted almost exactly a year ago. Maybe I was specifically thinking about a word to "hide" in a puzzle — with Carmen Sandiego being out of the running! Or maybe the idea just came out of the blue, who knows. Regardless, I played with various letter combinations that seemed like possible candidates for answers, making sure that all of the letter sequences were different. And voila, a puzzle was born.

No clue changes stand out particularly. Some are slight rewordings, and others seem roughly parallel, like "Loathe" instead of my "Abominate" for HATE, or "Breathe hard, as after running" to replace "Gasp for breath" for PANT. For the COLD WATER clue, I do like "What may be poured on a bad idea" as opposed to my more pedestrian "Wash cycle option." On the other hand, my FALSIES and WIG clues survived intact. I mean, what else was I to do with falsies for a Monday?

When Will accepted the puzzle, he said he might leave off the circles, which surprised me because other times he's added them in. But as you can see, the circles remained so Waldo is perhaps disguised if not quite hiding here (I'd used "camouflaged" in the clue). Much easier to spot than in those books!

Beautiful construction today. Parker Lewis and I had coffee the other day, and he mentioned how tough it is to cleanly incorporate five longish theme answers into a 15x. So true, especially when the middle one is 9, 11, or 13 letters long, forcing awkward black square patterns.

Lynn if known for her smooth Monday grids, but this one is a cut above. I'd happily hand it to beginner friends as a gateway puzzle. It's got an ESE, plus a MER and a USTA (which could be hard for novices), but the crossings are very fair.

And on top of that, check out how colorful her corners are, typically very tough to get clean in this type of arrangement. COVETOUS, MAHLER, FALSIES, UPSURGE. Not at all FRUMPY!

The connection between WHERES WALDO and anagrammed W-A-L-D-O sequences seems tenuous to me, as I would have imagined more a WALDO hiding diagonally or behind black squares or having red herring W-A-D-L-O and W-A-L-O type strings to hide him. Putting that aside though, Lynn chooses a great assortment of theme answers. SUPER BOWL AD is so timely (although we Seattleites don't need any reminders).

So maybe the theme didn't do much for me, but I found the execution to be DREAMY. (Pete Carroll's slant pass call, not so much.)