New York Times, Wednesday, April 24, 2019

It's been a little while since my debut, but I'm thrilled to be back in the New York Times Crossword! Every year, I visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my family — I highly recommend it if you find yourself near Ashland, Oregon. While I was there last year, I was thinking of themes that hadn't yet been done involving Shakespeare, and this one seemed pretty promising.

My original theme set was the same, but with THRONE OF BLOOD (a Kurosawa film based on Macbeth) included instead of the SHAKESPEARE PLAY revealer. Will and the team thought it was too obscure. I'm inclined to agree with them.

I'm very glad they kept in my favorite clue at 4-Down. My only regret is that TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU is a little too long to fit in this puzzle.

Happy solving!

Jim and I had a long debate over this one. I love the idea here — it can be surprising to see just how many films were adaptations or loosely based on Shakespeare. WEST SIDE STORY provided a great click, as it reminded me of the parallels between the plots. Capulets : Montagues :: Sharks : Jets, that sort of thing.

But something was missing. Took me a while to figure out that there were two factors:

1.) Some of the movies were unfamiliar. That's partly due to my knowledge gap in movie trivia, but SHES THE MAN hardly seems like cinematic gold. For this theme, it's less than ideal to use a movie where the plot isn't immediately apparent.

I found two lists right off the bat of movies inspired by Shakespeare. THE LION KING and STRANGE BREW both based on Hamlet? Now that's a cool point of trivia!

Ooh ooh! I would have loved a theme where all the films (you could open it up to musicals, plays, etc.) were based on Hamlet. Now that would have been a stand-up-and-clap a-ha!

2.) It would have been great to more strongly hint at the parallels between plots. Crossword clues generally can't be as long as [Movie in which the Jets and Sharks go to battle, kind of like the Capulets and Montagues, and then people get stabbed or otherwise maimed. And the main woman and man still try to pursue their forbidden love, but end up dying tragically].

But why not [Movie in which two star-crossed lovers defy their household blood feud, to tragic end]? And then you could clue SHAKESPEARE PLAYS directly to the ones referenced: [The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew]. That would have provided a better click.

Great clue for ARCADE. I used to bring a stack of quarters down to the local ARCADE (Donkey Kong was my jam), and my MBA self was tickled by the "computed quarterly" terminology.

Bold attempt to spice up the gridwork, Evan leaving himself large corners in the NW / SE. It didn't completely fly for me, as the price of ESS + ALII wasn't worth the longer material in the NW. But STAMPEDE / ARCADE / MY SIDES were decent bonuses in the SE ... so, a reasonable decision, albeit not one I'd have made.

Overall, a strong idea whose execution didn't generate an equally strong a-ha moment. Some structural changes and it might have been POW! material.