New York Times, Thursday, September 22, 2016

The seed entry for this puzzle theme was DREI MARTINIS. I simply noticed the homophonic relationship of the word DRY to the German DREI, and took it from there. I'm glad that I could find enough foreign language numbers that really are extremely close (and occasionally, just about perfect) homophones to English words. For example, the French HUIT provides the initial H sound that most dictionaries indicate should be voiced for words starting with WH. (In my Webster's, the primary pronunciation of "wheat" starts with a HW sound, and the secondary pronunciation starts with just the W sound.)

I'm anticipating some commentary on the inclusion of the foreign language numbers DIECI (at 6-Down) and EIN (at 36-Across) in the grid. There seems to exist a certain notion of grid purity, suggesting that words relating to the theme (or even letter combinations) should be purged entirely from the fill. Otherwise, a degree of "inelegance" intrudes. I can understand that to some extent, but I don't see it as compelling in all cases. In fact, I mentioned to Will that I could probably get rid of DIECI if necessary. But this was apparently not a problem, and I'm happy to be on the same side with Will on this. As for "EIN Heldenleben", the translation is "A Hero's Life", so one can argue that this EIN is not a number, but an indefinite article.

And finally, I was delighted that my clue for 1-Across was accepted! I hope solvers find the puzzle enjoyable.

Homophones of foreign numbers making kooky phrases. The chemistry nerd in me really enjoyed TRES ELEMENTS, and I liked DREI MARTINIS (DREI = German for three) a lot, too. I've seen a lot of foreign number crosswords, but this is a new take on it. I enjoyed it.

I was so curious to see what pattern would emerge from the themers. Would it be a numerical progression? (7, 3, 6, 3, 8 … no.) One number from each of five major languages? (French, German, German, Spanish, French … no.) It looks as though Jeffrey chose based on what would work with crossword symmetry and in-the-language base phrases. That's perfectly fine, but I sure would have loved some extra element to tighten up the theme or make it feel less random.

Neat to see LIAM NEESON's full name. I had a more ambivalent feeling about the TECH SECTOR. I invest money for friends and family (passive indexing / asset allocation, nothing fancy), and TECH SECTOR is definitely in use. I think "tech stocks" is a more common term, though, what with that term being thrown around all the time on MSNBC. And the clue … [Part of the Dow] didn't seem quite right. Yes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average does have some tech companies in it, but there's no "tech sector" component to it. Why not clue TECH SECTOR to the NASDAQ, which houses a much higher percentage of tech stocks?

There were only a few gluey bits in the grid, really just EVENER ("more even," yeah?) making me wince. I would have said it was a pretty nicely put-together grid, but DIECI really stuck in my craw. First, 10 in Italian isn't something I see that often. More importantly, it muddies the theme for me. I kept thinking maybe it tied together the themers somehow? There's no rule against having an extra foreign number as fill when your theme is all about foreign numbers--I guess I fall on the other side of the fence from Jeffrey and Will--but it strikes me as extremely inelegant.

So, a fun twist on foreign numbers, but it felt like there was a lot of potential left on the table.