New York Times, Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Obviously the simple concept for this puzzle was the visual animation of a pendulum clock (going further I was thinking of those "moving eyes" cat clocks). I realized early on that I was in some trouble when the only entries I could come up with that did not have a S-TOCK ending was an old and probably unfamiliar to many John Wayne movie and of course the "bum" entry. Those two entries would dictate the length of their partners on the other side of the puzzle, also limiting those entries as well. So to critics I would say I recognize that the puzzle fill is not as good as I had hoped it would be. If I had to do over again I might have tried to add a central vertical entry in the vein of say "time marches on" but again I don't know if I could have pulled it off given the constraints of the grid. I'm delighted that Will Shortz thought enough of the concept of the puzzle to accept it, and I hope that solvers take some enjoyment in the visual play here. Time will tell.

Interesting Tuesday puzzle, one which ping pongs between TICK and TOCK down the grid. I searched all over for some sort of element to tie it together, some revealing theme entry or visual of a clock? Maybe if I squint really hard, I can sort of see a little hand in the black squares?

(Squinting harder... nope)

Ambitious grid today. I like that Ed has done something different, something I've never seen before — that in itself is admirable. Too often, Tuesdays run the risk of being a slight variation on a theme, and this definitely is not that. Being a financial guy, I really like the entry COMMON STOCK, although I can see how some puzzlers might not common, er, cotton to it as much as me. Seeing BUTTOCK also gave me a immature giggle. So some good choices in his themers. I even appreciated McLintock! as pretty much anything starring The Duke is good by me. And the exclamation point at the end of McLintock! made me laugh. Easily amused, I guess.

Those NW and SE corners are hard to construct. Even as separated as they are from the rest of the grid (you can only enter them through AFLAC and HATER, respectively), any constrained 7x4 chunk of white space will be a challenge to fill. Ed does quite well in the SE corner, working in OPEN TOE and HATER, without much muss or fuss. BOS is probably the weakest element there, given that the clue [Cow genus] was mystifyingly hard for a Tuesday.

That NW corner gave me pause. I absolutely loved I GOOFED, a wonderful, colorful entry. Along with the shout-out to Eartha KITT and her smoky voice, that's a ton of good stuff in a single section. However, AGIO left me scratching my head, especially for an early-week offering. After studying finance for two years and being steeped in the finances of my start-up company, I had never heard of AGIO. ARBS, IPOS, LBOS, MBOS, totally fine terms in everyday use; AGIO... not so much. It's quite possible that it's commonplace in some financial niche, but yikes. Super, super tough for me and nigh impossible for some. I like learning new terms from crosswords — I think it's a great boon to a daily diversion — but AGIO 1.) strikes me as ADITesque and 2.) doesn't seem too fair to have crossing KAMPALA, which maybe should be better known in general knowledge but didn't come easily to me. As always, could just be me.

With such a novel grid and relatively high theme density, I appreciate seeing some of the great stuff Ed packed in, NUTCASE, MOBSTER, even Nat HENTOFF, who I had read about in a jazz history class in college (a reviewer reading about a reviewer, how meta). With even DEARIE and LOOFAH, Ed does well to slot in some nice stuff.

Overall, a nice idea for a theme. I would have loved an additional layer somewhere, either as a revealer (as Ed mentioned in his comments), or some sort of visual related to a kitty-cat shaped clocks. Really, what problems can't be solved with a kitty-cat clock with its cute little tail swishing back and forth and its cute wittle eyes... oops, I've said too much.