New York Times, Thursday, April 10, 2014

I constructed the first version of this puzzle in December 2012, intending to run it in The Orange County Register, because Six Flags Magic Mountain is a major Southern California attraction, and I'm always short on crosswords with themes that tie into California. I was pleased with how the puzzle turned out, so when I discovered that Six Flags also has a branch in New York called Great Escape, I decided to submit this one to The New York Times instead. Will liked the idea but didn't feel that green flag was as in-the-language as the other five flag phrases, so I suggested replacing my green entry with a black one (as in Black Flag, the insecticide). Will felt this would be an improvement but still had concerns about a handful of entries in the nonthematic fill, particularly LGE and, ironically, OCR. I added two more cheater squares and produced a fill that we were both happier with, so I proceeded to reclue entries that had been changed.

Assuming this puzzle would run on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I wrote up a set of midweek-level clues, erring on the side of easiness, and sent the puzzle back to Will. Will told me he planned to run the puzzle on a Thursday and mentioned that I might want to beef up the clues a bit. My favorite of the harder clues I wrote is "It might come with a bill" for MINT, though my favorite clue in the puzzle is definitely Will's "Made it?" for TAGGED, which I had to stare at for quite some time before having that "aha!" moment! Coincidentally, Will chose to run this puzzle the week of my AP Physics class field trip to ... Six Flags! I hope you have as much fun solving this puzzle as I did hanging out with friends, consuming a sapid pulled-pork sandwich, going on a few roller coasters, and thinking about physics, of course ;) !

72 word grid from David today, a nice construction made even more so given that there are seven entries, one of which effectively splits the grid in half. The theme revealer is SIX FLAGS, hinting at the starts of six answers: BLACK flag, AMERICAN flag, RED flag, etc.

Not the most mind-blowing of themes, especially for a Thursday, but once you take into account 1.) the extremely high theme density (remember that time five years ago when three themers was fine?) and 2.) the 72-word grid, a construction on par with the weekend puzzles, it's impressive. Making a 72-word grid is in itself not easy, but when you add in so many constraints — it's not like the SEVEN themers are short, either! — it's quite the feat.

Amazing how little crossword glue David uses consider the theme density. When you have so much overlap like RED SKELTON over CHECKERED PAST, it's wild that there's really no ugliness where POLIO sits (a five-letter overlap like this usually produces some cringing). And in the symmetrical section, SMEAR produces a perfectly clean set of intersections. Really nice stuff — I can only imagine how many options David tried before finding POLIO and SMEAR for those spots.

Note the "L" block of black squares on the left and right sides of the grid. Not the prettiest of arrangements, so I delved in to figure out why David did this. It's not unusual to see smaller "L" blocks (ones that look like a knight's move in chess) but these stand out a bit today. The reason is twofold: first, the 13-letter answer in the middle makes things hard — as I already mentioned, it effectively splits the grid in half. Second, look at those NE and SW corners, which wrap around. It's hard enough to work with a quadruple-stack (AUSTIN over SBARRO over HOWARD over AMERICAN PIE) but when it wraps around to TRAPPERS and IRRITANTS, you've got yourself one heck of a challenge. So it's not hard to see why David needed to deploy those extra black squares.

Although there are a couple of EMETIC and ASTA answers, it's impressive how clean David filled those big corners. I found it interesting to compare the NE and SW: look at how snazzy the SW is. CSI: MIAMI and MOPPET and PAISAN, that's great stuff! It comes at the price of the aforementioned EMETIC and ASTA though. Now look at the NE. So smooth, nary an ugly answer (hey, I like SBARRO's pizza just fine). But it exactly demonstrates the usual trade-off constructors work with: great, snappy stuff at the price of a few less-than-par answers, or ultra-smooth with no ugliness? Always a judgment call.

Fun puzzle, maybe not as ground-breaking a theme as I would like on a Thursday, but what a nice grid filled with goodness. And I absolutely loved the TAGGED clue: [Made it?]. Not as in "he made it big," but "he was made it." Awesome repurposing of a common phrase for a stellar clue.