New York Times, Wednesday, August 17, 2016

I'm really pleased to make my NYT debut in the Wednesday slot — it's my personal favorite place in the weekday lineup. I like to think of the Wednesday puzzles as "stop and think" difficult. Seldom tough enough to stump the average solver, but usually interesting and clever.

This puzzle's theme (revealed at 38-Down) is in a category that I call "clue-play", in which the chicanery is found in the clues instead of the answers. We've seen several in this vein recently including one with symbols and one with "half-letters" in the clues. I suspected that most solvers would sniff this theme out after they got one or two of the theme entries (or maybe immediately, if they peeked at the reveal entry, which I personally try not to do). I constructed another puzzle similar to this one in which the blacked-out parts of the clues weren't the same word, but rather members of a category. That one's a little trickier.

In terms of the incidental fill, there were some revisions (actually quite a few, I must admit), but one surviving entry that Will really wanted to deep-six was ARNE. Perhaps I'm the only person that does crosswords and also has a CD of Thomas Arne's music on the shelf next to my computer. Despite the objections, Arne could not be expunged from the grid, so there he is for all the classical music haters to gripe about. I don't really see the problem! Arne is obviously more popular than Beethoven, as evidenced by his 17 appearances in crosswords so far this year (compared to only one for Beethoven)! ;)

I like when a puzzle baffles me — as long as I eventually figure out what's going on. Today, we get a fun debut offering, using DARK ARTS to hide the "arts" in certain clues: MARTS, WARTS, TARTS, PARTS, DARTS. I'm curious to see how the NYT's solving app handles this — the Across Lite version with its pound signs in the clues (shown below) so disappointingly fails Mark's fun idea.

This is essentially a "definitional" puzzle, where the clues and answers are swapped. Generally, I like these best when the entries in the puzzle are colorful; of themeless-quality. EXCHANGES (for MARTS) and MOVIE ROLES (for PARTS) are fine answers — but more neutral than assets. I couldn't think of perfect examples off the top of my head, but something like STRIP MALLS or LEAD ROLES are so much more colorful. (Those don't quite work since they're too specific.)

And if only PUB PASTIME didn't sound so definitional — it feels like there might be a solid, snazzy answer that could perfectly define DARTS, but again, I couldn't think of one right away.

Mark does a nice job of working in six themers; rarely an easy task. I was a little worried to see PASTRIES and MOVIE ROLES having so much overlap, but Mark filled nicely around them (not a surprise that ARNE popped up there!). SEMIARID going through that section works, although it's not the most stellar piece of fill.

GLADRAGS, on the other hand, caught my attention. Even when I was down to the last letter, I couldn't quite make sense of it. Not sure I'd ever use that term, but it was fun to learn; a weird combination of two words.

So overall, a nice debut puzzle. Not a lot of crossword glue used to hold six theme answers together (SCI, MAJ, IRES = mostly minor dings), and an interesting find with so many ?ARTS words in existence. Neat to be stumped on the idea until I finally hit DARK ARTS to lift the curtain.