New York Times, Thursday, May 26, 2016

I think all parties were enthused about the finds in this quirky theme and about the number of theme entries that were able to be incorporated. The tricky thing here, though, was the issue of double cluing—how could I clue the long and short forms without making the puzzle too easy? Joel and Will's solution is elegant. To me, it seems to make the theme fall into the (unexpected) category of "wordplay on a base phrase," in which the base phrase is assumed to be a common expression that the clue doesn't actually refer to. (So, you'll have to accept that GUEST SPOT is a "thing," since only G-SPOT is referenced in the clue).

Being a musician, I'm happy to see the reference to Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" retained (I've known many a composer to use these lateral thinking cards for stimulus), and for the NY Times, the omnipresent producer gets a novel clue. Estonian conductor PAAVO Jarvi breaks up the cluing monopoly hitherto held by the Flying Finn Mr. Nurmi. The TAJ Boston reference is also new; I distinctly remember the Christmas parties I attended there years ago (as a plus one when I lived with my more "adult" roommate who worked for a company that would hold holiday parties at such establishments).

Looking back, the inspiration for this theme must have come from some (ironic) attempt at doing "teenspeak," wherein everything that could possibly be shortened does. Totes.

Fun idea, playing on phrases starting with a single letter. VITAL SIGNS is clued as if it were a long form of V SIGNS (winning symbols). ONION RING shortened to O-RING, GUEST SPOT to G-SPOT, etc. I don't remember seeing this exact concept, so it was fun to get something innovative and new. Very rare for me.

I did wonder what the "shortening" really meant, or how accurate it was. This would have been a mind-blowing puzzle if O really was short for ONION, for example. And I also wondered why Andrew chose TAPAS BARS for T-BARS rather than TIKI BARS, TACO BARS, TOOL BARS, TOFFEE BARS (besides having to fulfill crossword symmetry, of course).

But it's pretty hard to find so many examples of this kind of "shortening." There aren't a lot of phrases that are an expansion of O-RING besides ONION RING; same goes for V-SIGNS and VITAL SIGNS, etc. So overall, an interesting idea.

The grid is really, really well filled. Andrew has seven (!) mid-length themers — hard to cram all of them in, period. Nice crossing of QUICK TIPS / ONION RING and GUEST SPOT / TAPAS BARS to create good spacing, and excellent overlapping of VITAL SIGNS / GUEST SPOT and ONION RING / BLINDSIDES. Impressive layout of the grid's skeleton.

Given so much interlock / overlap, I would have expected 1.) not a lot of bonus fill and 2.) a bunch of gluey bits strewn about. Incredibly impressive to work in SPIKE LEE (a "Mississippi MASALA" tie-in would have been awesome!), SPAMBOT, and even BONZO, OPTIMAL are nice. All that with just a LAIRD, and even that I don't have much a problem with since it's a real-world word. Perhaps too much reliance on Greek letters — TAU, RHO, SIGMA, even ETAS — but overall it's a real feat of elegant construction.

Love seeing something new and different on a Thursday.