New York Times, Thursday, June 18, 2015

The idea for this puzzle originally came from the observation that there are a lot of METONYMS in New York City. Mulling this around led to the idea of NEW YORK METS becoming NEW YORK METONYMS, and I was off to the races!

The race turned out to be a marathon. Most of my NYT puzzle submissions result in a direct "yes" or "no". This puzzle unusually went through four iterations before reaching the final product --the difficulty was coming up with acceptable theme answers. For the curious, here are some rejected theme answers, and why they didn't make the cut:

• WRITE HOMONYM (I apparently have been using a non-standard pronunciation - d'oh!)
• QUEEN ANONYM ("anonym" was too obscure)
• (E)N PSEUDONYM ("ensued" is boring and it is an outlier in that the base phrase isn't two words)
• OLYMPUS MONONYMS ("Olympus Mons" is obscure unless, like me, you read too much science fiction).

Two other points:

My penultimate submission had the four themers in a different order. Will and Joel pointed out that starting with two plural themers creates the expectation that all themers will be plural. So, I reworked the puzzle to alternate them singular, plural, singular, plural. Will and Joel were even willing to sacrifice a tiny bit on the fill to get this pattern.

My difficulty in coming up with theme entries means that there are only four of them in the puzzle. In retrospect, I really like how using only four themers let me open up the grid and work in some fun longer answers. This is a nice tradeoff, and I plan to try it again in future puzzles.

Worthy Thursday idea, kooky blends of normal phrase + ___ONYM(S). A nice workout. I had to look up TOPONYM (place name derived from a geographic feature) and METONYM (name used as a substitute for something which it's closely associated) — good terms to learn.

Glad to read Jason's description of the puzzle's transformation. It did strike me as inelegant that the themers weren't all singular or all plural, but having 2/2 (alternating) is the next best thing. And it does look like there isn't a huge assortment of potential themers to choose from.

I would have liked all of the spellings to work similarly, though. It was odd to me that MORTAL SIN became MORTAL SYN … I know, I'm a stickler for consistency, perhaps too much so, but I love the elegance that comes with a perfect set of four themers. (Side note: the "top" of "toponym" is actually pronounced like MOUNTAINTOP, not like "taupe.")

Liked many of the clues. [Rainmaker?] is fun for MONSOON, and I wish NINTENDO would do something awesome with the Seattle Mariners, like have them all dress up in Super Mario outfits. King Felix in a Princess Peach outfit would be much more entertaining than this groaner of a season the Ms are having. I would have liked more fun clues like these, as most of the clues felt too esoteric to me.

The 15/13/13/15 arrangement is a tough one. I like how Jason worked in some colorful material like LOOPHOLE, RAN TRACK, SPARE RIB, and NINETENDO. And going down to 70 words gave him a few more longer spaces to fill than usual — AEROSMITH and ATHENIANS are a good way to use those.

However, there was quite a bit of gluey material holding it together. Not sure A WHO, IM NO, KAL, is worth the price of ATHENIANS, especially when there's already a good amount of unslightly bits. I do like a low-word count themed puzzle, but I also value a smooth solve.

Overall though, a tricky Thursday; glad to see something I haven't seen before.