New York Times, Wednesday, May 21, 2014

This will be my tenth puzzle for the New York Times, my first during the Jeff Chen Era (long may he reign). It was submitted in October of 2012 and accepted two months later. The theme of the puzzle is: common two-word phrases with both words replaced by homophones. I made a list of possibilities in the hope of finding four that would work together. The seed might have been CEILING WHACKS but I couldn't find another 13-letter phrase to balance it.

One English-speaker's homophone is often another one's heterophone if they live far enough apart. A distant friend insists that WORLD and WHIRLED don't sound alike. Apparently Will thought they did and WHIRLED PIECE ("top?") was accepted. But KNIGHT MAYOR was rejected because MAYOR doesn't sound like MARE. I pronounce them the same but that may be because of where I grew up.

I was excited to get a preview copy of this puzzle (praise be to Jeff) because I wanted to solve it pretending I hadn't seen it before. I have a few puzzles in the pipeline so I didn't know which one it would be, also I knew that many, if not most, of the clues would be rewritten. It was hard going; the thematic content was easy to recall but a lot of the clues weren't familiar. I entered ART for 16-Across ("Wall cover") and got stuck in the northeast. Luckily my wife was nearby and helped me finish it.

The cunning misdirection of "Put locks on" for BEWIG was amusing, and "Ben Jonson wrote one to himself" for ODE was fun to know. I didn't write either of those clues. In fact, of the 76 clues, only nine are mine. I like to think that, because I don't know on which day of the week the puzzle will appear, I'm not able to write clues at the appropriate difficulty level. Or maybe I'm trying to be too clever (like "Pack with an extra suit" for TAROT) or too cute (like "Quarters for daughters" for GIRLS' DORM). That plus the fact that my acceptance rate is a mere 23%, reminds me I still have a lot to learn.

I had a "Mint on the grill" while constructing this puzzle and I hope solvers have a GRATE THYME too. (Sorry about that.)

Double homonyms today, both halves of phrases (or words) transmogrified into something wacky. PLAIN WRAPPER becomes PLANE RAPPER, BAND LEADER into BANNED LIEDER, etc. Whoo, was it a toughie for me, causing me slight panic toward the end at possibly not finishing a Wednesday NYT puzzle for the first time in years. What a feeling of relief to finally uncover PLANE RAPPER!

Matt Ginsberg had a puzzle along these lines a while back, and I struggled mightily with that one as well. It's odd — so many theme types snap into place naturally to me, add-a-letter or sound change ones requiring not a lot of thought to work out. But the double homonym, whew! I'm curious if others have the same mental block (and to figure out why).

Loved the longer fill Mike worked into the grid. Check out GIRLS DORM, HONEYBEE, RIP TIDES, TV VIEWERS, RED SCARE, BREATHER, all running in the vertical direction, all really nice stuff. But Mike kicks it up a notch, nosing in an INDY CAR and some CASABAS in the across direction. A huge slice of goodness to spice up his grid.

I often worry when there are more than six pieces of long fill, because this introduces so many constraints that a grid gets difficult to fill cleanly. It's a tough trade-off — you want to give the solver extra juice, but you also don't want him/her to notice an excess of glue-y short entries. I wasn't wild about some of the trade-offs today, the southeast chunk in particular. I like a BUONA flair here and there, but not when it's compounded with the odd ABOIL and SHU and SASES. Granted, BREATHER and CASABAS are both great entries, but their price of inclusion felt high. I wonder if adding a cheater square at the S of CASABAS might have helped?

And I loved seeing Sergey Brin's name in there — he and Larry Page were just a few years behind me in undergrad (look where they are now, look where I am now... hmm.). But wow, did I get tripped up at the ARMCO / ACS crossing. I like to think my knowledge of corporations is pretty good, but ARMCO makes me think otherwise.

Tough trade-offs, always. Anyway, a tough workout, good for keeping the mind both sharp and flexible.