New York Times, Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Surfing through the tv channels one summer 2013 night, I passed by an old rerun of the soap opera "AS THE WORLD TURNS" and a crossword idea was hatched. I then looked for other phrases where something was rolling, spinning, rotating, revolving, or going around. I was initially surprised at the constraints I ran into when filling the grid, especially since I only had four theme entries, but that was due to the four or five letters "rolling" 360 degrees beneath each theme entry (and I use the term "rolling" in quotes as it's impossible to make a perfect circle in crossword construction). However, with the exception of a few unsavory fill words including everybody's favorite crossword washstand vessel (EWER) and coastal inlet (RIA), I am satisfied with how the puzzle turned out.

Curious that this wasn't run on a Thursday! Given how hard it is to come up with new gimmicks, methinks this would have slotted in well.

This theme plays on "spinning" or "rolling," where part of the answer (loosely) circles around. SPINNING WHE(ELS) was really nice, evoking an image of the WHEELS actually spinning. Actually, all of them are pretty appropriate, the MERRY going round, the WORLD turning, and the STONES rolling.

It's so difficult to pull something like this off. Each of those little circles causes difficulty in filling, as so many answers have to cross through those tough sections where multiple letters are fixed in stone. It's impressive that Tracy worked POWER NAP and YELLOW SEA around the SPINNING WHEELS. That did make OCH and OSTEAL and OSS necessary, but that seemed a reasonable trade-off given how difficult it is to fill around that section.

And Tracy did a nice job spreading out the esoteric bits. I struggled with IRENEE, MAISIE, YARROW — all names I hadn't heard before — but at least they were weren't concentrated into one region so that I didn't get completely stuck anywhere.

Hilarious clue for LSU. I wondered if they really shouted "Geaux Tigers!" … and apparently they do! Check out the "Geaux" button (groan) on the link.

Overall, I would have liked a more circular shape in the things that circled — the poor STONES chunk down and cut across instead of smoothly circling around, for example. Reminded me of an invention called "Shark Wheels." They look impossible and there's no way they could give a smooth ride, but they do.