New York Times, Monday, August 25, 2014

This puzzle was pretty straightforward ... I ran across the word BLUNDERBUSS and soon found suitable matches and just went for it. The placement of the main entries led to SORRY, MYBAD and KLUTZ symmetrically. I like using those "extra" themers, as was the case in my Monday debut last year. No revealer, but this one turned out pretty well. See ya next time.

One tiny thing I debated on this puzzle was whether or not to clue UH-OH (42D) as "Oops!," as the main theme answers are. But doing so would naturally have led solvers to look at its symmetrical mate, DREW (21D), which cannot be clued as "Oops!," causing a letdown. It would have looked like the constructor had tried to do something but failed. So ultimately I decided to clue 42D nonthematically.

Just a few months ago, my wife pointed out the word BLUNDERBUSS, saying it would make the seed for a nice crossword. We never got any further than that, so it's impressive to see Greg's discovery. Four fun words, symmetrically paired, all starting with a synonym for "error"? That's crossword gold.

For only his third NYT puzzle, Greg has gotten up the learning curve extremely fast. Monday puzzles are so challenging to construct, because the best ones not only avoid rough crossings and esoteric entries, but also steer away from those inelegant partials, pluralized names, excessive initialisms, etc. And look what Greg's achieved today. There's an ASST here, an ABA there, but it's all minor dings within a smooth body. He's even managed to work in two pretty good long entries, GAME TABLE and CAMERA MAN, which can be tough to do using this "pinwheel" arrangement of themers.

Perhaps the only subsection that could have used a tiny bit of cleanup is the SE — because it's not heavily constrained, it shouldn't be hard to redo that to remove SKEE and AERO. I do like that [___-Ball] can make life easier for a starting solver, but I don't think it's a terribly elegant answer.

Amazing that Greg found these four entries. I especially like that etymologies of BLUNDER-, BUMBLE-, and BOBBLE- are different enough from the "error" meaning that it hides the theme a little, giving the solver a chance to discover this nice a-ha. It would have been perfect if STUMBLEBUM didn't already refer to as "A person regarded as blundering or inept." But again, that's quite a minor issue.

Nice touch with the symmetrically placed "bonus entries," SORRY, MY BAD, KLUTZ. I hadn't noticed them; nice to see those Easter eggs!