New York Times, Monday, June 29, 2015

TODD: This puzzle started with an e-mail to my fellow constructors about my WORD LOOP puzzle (squee!), where I mentioned I was now just a Monday short of hitting for the cycle (or, as one clever solver called it, a "Shortz top"). Andrea offered to help me create a Monday puzzle. How could I refuse?

Well, actually, I *did* refuse at first. Because at the time I wanted to hang up my spurs and stop submitting (this was *before* the WORD LOOP puzzle was published ... and reviewed). I felt like I was letting solvers down, and once my puzzle was published I couldn't fix it. Andrea said she understood, but urged me not to quit. So I suggested a couple of theme ideas to her, we went with the second one.

First, she came up with two improved theme entries, then I created a workable grid for our theme, which she filled. The grid had some nice entries we removed (like BARACK and BB KING) because it meant using entries like ABAD (a bad idea) and OTAY (less than okay). We fixed these, but couldn't fix DACCA in the upper left or EERO and SROS in the lower right.

Andrea sent Will our puzzle in late January of 2014. Will accepted it in early June, and a year later it's ready to solve. We hope everyone who crawled, walked, ran, or flew (or just logged in) to get a copy will enjoy our joint creation.

ACME: The nice theme was Todd's idea but I changed two entries (T-BONE WALKER became ALICE WALKER and AISLE RUNNER became BLADE RUNNER). He was a fun and easy to work with collaborator.

CRAWLER to WALKER to RUNNER to … FLYER? I'm hoping my final step in this evolutionary process comes soon!

I had to think about that last entry. Is there some sort of developmental progression that this describes? I don't think so, but in the end I decided I liked FLYER's curious leap into the air. I was expecting SPRINTER or something akin to the riddle of the Sphinx, but I like it when a Monday puzzle throws me for a loop.

I also liked the choice of themers. BLADE RUNNER and WEB CRAWLER are colorful.

A few nice touches in the long fill — TAXPAYER and ET CETERA make a strong pair. That arrangement of two consecutive long downs is so rough to execute on, though. It's not easy to find a colorful pair that doesn't require little gluey crossing bits like XCI and SROS.

And poor EERO Saarinen. He's an accomplished architect, clearly gridworthy because of his artistic contributions to industrial design, but he gets maligned because of crossword overuse. I personally struggle with using EERO in any of my grids — on one hand his presence is deserved, on the other, it draws criticism as "crosswordese." Tough call.

Todd points out DACCA as undesirable, and that might confuse some. It's a world capital, so it should be fair game, right? But DHAKA is the modern name, so DACCA does feel less than desirable.

Mondays are so difficult puzzles to construct, because a preponderance of gluey entries can potentially turn off beginning solvers. This puzzle felt just on the cusp in that regard (what with the abovementioned plus TINTER, YAH, etc.). Adding a set of black squares into the grid, cutting EMERALDS and ET CETERA into two words apiece, would have helped, but it would have cut out two nice long words. The constructor's eternal dilemma — if adding more colorful entries in the puzzle necessitates more gluey bits, how far should you push it?

A fun idea, making me think at the end. I like it when a Monday puzzle does that.