FOUR BY FOUR

I sent Will the initial version of Four By Four in early June. I heard back in late July, saying he liked the puzzle but wanted me to change two entries that repeated words: BADA BING BADA BOOM and KISS KISS BANG BANG. Those were the two entries I liked most ... which is why I put them in the upper left and lower right. Sigh. But that misplaced enthusiasm meant they were easy to exchange for two replacements Will suggested. First time I recall him doing that.

I mailed the updated grid in early August, and got this e-mail about a month later:

Hi Todd,

This is Joel Fagliano, writing on behalf of Will.

Thanks for sending us the revision to your "Four x Four" 21x. The theme looks good now, and you've done a great job with the fill. We've made a few changes to the grid to remove GHAT and GARS.

So, this is a yes. This should run relatively soon, as our Sunday files are pretty low.

--Joel

GHAT was at 42 Down and GARS at 97 Across.

I was happy I could include a fair number of nice entries, starting with MAHARAJA and ending with WILDCARD. Also happy I could use NOGOODNIK.

Thanks for the "relatively soon" publication, Will and Joel! This was a lot faster than I expected.

After finishing the puzzle, I was itching for BADA BING BADA BOOM to be in there, so I was glad to see Todd's notes (this is partially why I run constructors' notes above my own). Too bad, but I can understand Will's hesitation to use repeated words in this particular theme, which might act to cheapen the feat.

Speaking of the feat, I was curious how hard it would be to find other 4x4s. My first impression was that it should be pretty easy. BADA BING BADA BOOM, nope. I came up with ALLY ALLY OXEN FREE, CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP, DON'T MESS WITH BILL (awesome song), GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, ONLY TIME WILL TELL, TURN LEAD INTO GOLD, and a few others, but it's a oddly tough constraint, especially if you throw out any with repeated words. So to my pleasant surprise, it made for more tightness than I had first thought.

Nicely laid out grid. Interlocking two pairs of themers really opens up the rest of the grid, leaving plenty of space for snappy fill. Only 136 words makes for a very tough task, but Todd pulled it off quite smoothly. There are plenty of neutral words in there (ANABOLIC, NEGOTIATE eating up two precious long slots) but JOAN OF ARC, NOGOODNIK, WILDCARD, MAHARAJA do add a lot of spice. There's not that much glue required — what's SMEW with you? — less than we see in a typical Sunday. I did really appreciate the smoothness of the solve (especially given how hard that is to do with a 136-worder), although I would have been okay with a little more glue if I could have experienced more great entries in the vein of JOAN OF ARC. Trade-offs, as always.

It did seem odd to me to have a dupe of WITH ARMS WIDE OPEN and OPEN SHOTS. I wonder if that was an oversight or it was considered a necessary evil to enable the 136-word grid? To dupe a word like this in a single grid is a usually big crossword no-no.

A final thought. The title seemed perfect to me when I uncovered the first themer. Four four-letter words = four by four, yes! Then the mathematician in my head (the devil, of course) whispered into my ear about how inaccurate the title was, more appropriate to 4x4 matrices. Alternately, FOUR by FOUR should indicate a single four-letter word next to another single four-letter word, or four of them next to four more (for a total of eight). Luckily, the angel came out and smashed the devil on the head, appropriately with a 4x4.

And they say you'll never use math in real life.