LITERALLY SPEAKING

It's always interesting to see what happens to my puzzles between submission and appearance. On this puzzle, I clued all the horizontal words with circles as (SMALL SPOILER ALERT) simply [See circled letters]. But Will decided to make it a bit easier. Not sure who was right; my clue had been used in a similar "Kangaroo words" puzzle in the ACPT one year, although that puzzle was much somewhat more straightforward, cluing for example "israELi AirLine" as [See circled letters]. So this would have been a bit trickier.

I thought of the theme itself while sitting in church one Sunday. Then I spent the rest of the service trying to think of examples to use. This was good because I stayed awake but bad because I didn't pay attention to the sermon. There was no test afterwards, so it all worked out ok.

Meanwhile, I seem to be losing my touch a bit on the cluing side, as many of the clues that I thought were clever or topical didn't make the editorial cut. I used [Seahawks' star Marshawn] for 21-Down and [Berry, repeatedly] for 44-Down. I used [Disney actor] for 67-Down in light of the (fairly) recent film. Perhaps I am simply too old to recognize topical when I see it. (I must confess that I transitioned from one ACPT age division to another a couple of weeks ago.)

Not that I will ever compete, of course. And Dr. Fill remains comfortably in the "juniors" bracket.

If you want to see Dr.Fill solving today's puzzle, here it is, below. I apologize for all the video flashing and whatnot; it's courtesy of my Mac's upgrade to Yosemite. I'll try and track it down before the next ACPT.

Not surprisingly, DF does pretty well on this puzzle, since all of the fill consists of actual words or phrases. It makes a few mistakes early on, but has no trouble correcting them. The solution is found in well under a minute, but it then spends bit of time checking its work and looking for a theme or rebus possibility before announcing that it's done. Correctly solved in a bit under two minutes.

I hope everyone enjoyed the puzzle!

Really nice finds; phrases that are self-descriptive of a word hidden inside. Sounds confusing, so here's an example: SPLIT SECOND = an order to split the word SECOND into S and ECOND. Another? CALL BACK is a hint that CALL is within CALL BACK … but backward = L L A C.

Matt gives us 11 themers, with a mix of anagrams, split-ups, and reversals. It got a little confusing to me, so I categorized them:

ANAGRAMS: 5

SPLIT-UPS: 5

REVERSALS: 1

To have just one reversal thrown into the mix — and at the very top of the puzzle — felt a bit odd. Sure would have been nice to have a second one to balance it out. Right in the middle of the puzzle would have felt more elegant, too, but CALL BACK is unfortunately an even number of letters, so that's not possible.

As neat as it was to realize that the letters L L A C were within CALLBACK, I think the theme would have cohered better with just the five anagrams and five split-ups.

A lower number of themers would have helped cut down the gluey oddballs, too. I had a rough go of certain sections where themers crowded together, notably in the DIGHT / STAGY area, which felt a bit FLIMSY. I can see the construction difficulty level there is high — that area needing to coordinate around three themers — but staying away from that type of intensely constrained arrangement might have been better.

A little better result in the symmetrical spot, but any time you have to rely on Maleskan words like ORLE, a shift in black squares or themers might be better.

I really enjoyed some of the longer material, TWO ROOM FLATS in particular. Neat that "lodgings" accurately describes a singular lodging. (I had to look that up after it stymied me.) PUBLIC ENEMY and START A FIRE were sure OKAY BY ME.

ME LIKE … well, me no likey that as it sounds odd without the final Y, but it could easily be personal preference.

Some cool finds; perhaps a bit too much packed into a single grid.