New York Times, Thursday, May 12, 2016

Inspiration for this ONE came to me in a grocery store parking lot. Though I've never seen the film, (M)AR(A)THO(N) popped into my head and struck me as being theme-worthy. Excited by the prospect of a new project, I brainstormed suitable revealers as I shopped. Fellow consumers undoubtedly questioned the sanity of a grown man talking to himself while counting out the length of familiar phrases on his fingers. Somewhere in frozen foods, INITSELF (one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight…aha!) came to me. A phrase that's in the language and conveniently equal in length to MARATHON! A theme was born, even if in my preoccupied state I forgot to bring home the EDAMAME.

Over the next few days I scoured word lists for other thematic candidates and came up with a couple more. LABO(R)(A)(T)ORY and C(O)N(V)(E)CTIO(N) seemed legit and rounded out the first grid. Will and Joel liked the concept behind the original submission, but wondered if there could be more consistency in the theme answers. RAT was the only example with consecutive circles and OVEN was the only 4-letter example. I gladly went back to the drawing board to find ALIST good enough to cut the cruciverbial mustard.

It took several weeks of editing to yield today's offering. This is by far the most workshopped of all of my puzzles. The revealer INITSELF ended up on the cutting room floor. (S)(E)N(A)(T)E and PRE(S)ID(E)NTI(A)(L) were promising FINDS, but lacked symmetrical partners. A final set of theme answers was eventually assembled. Grids were constructed. Grids were reconstructed. Clues were written. Much time and CARE was taken to ensure a quality product. It's a MARATHON, not a sprint, right?

Thanks to Will and Joel for your advice on this one. I hope you all enjoy it!

What a cool idea, two-word phrases where all the letters of the second word are contained in the first. ABSTRACT ART displayed as ABSTRACT is so much fun. Great finds in MARATHON MAN and WRESTLING RING too. TRANSPARENT TAPE and ESTIMATED TIME are definitely real terms, but they're not as exciting to my ear.

James goes down to 74 words in an attempt to add in extra bonus fill. There is a good amount of nice stuff like DECREPIT, TENTACLE, EDAMAME, DRUM SET. Even the mid-length material adds spice: DAHLIA, GENOME, TV CREW, DO RE MI, SEA COW. That's a ton of extra material!

There are trade-offs, though. After I encounter maybe four or five gluey bits, I have a hard time shrugging it all off. I don't care at all about a bit of DEG, A NET, ESS here and there. But when there's more of SAE, RST, STOA, OLIO, SERER, etc. it's just too much for my constructor's brain to ignore.

It's annoying to have that constructor's perspective that I just can't turn off, because the rest of the puzzle was so much fun and entertainment. I think cutting the amount of gluey stuff in half — maybe by going up to 76 or even 78 words, shrinking the wide-openness of those big corners — could have turned this puzzle into a very good one into a great one.

Still, puzzles with such a neat theme idea don't come around all that often, and I really enjoyed this concept.