New York Times, Thursday, September 5, 2019

I'm a bit surprised to see this puzzle running on a Thursday, as it was initially clued and slated for Wednesday. I suppose the gimmick was harder for the test solvers than expected. That said, minor day-of-the-week publication queue changes are not unusual in my (admittedly limited) experience.

I enjoyed reviewing the editorial revisions to the theme answer cluing. Beyond minor adjustments like "less than a trade occupation" in place of the original "less than an occupation," there were a few more substantial modifications. For example, instead of "a jerk" cluing TWITCH, I had "a Nintendo console" cluing SWITCH. In general, the edits made the theme clues easier to decipher, which is consistent with the gimmick proving harder than anticipated for solvers.

Working with 55 theme squares spread over 11 short entries puts some strain on the grid. Every vertical word goes through at least one themer. Likewise, the puzzle doesn't contain any entries longer than nine letters and only has 15 words of length five or more, which makes for a choppy solve. If instead the 55 theme squares had been contained in entries of length 10, 10, 15, 10, 10, the grid could have been more balanced.

Another unusual feature is having across entries that are longer than any thematic material. Usually, that muddles a puzzle's theme. Here, however, with so many short themers, I had to include some longer, horizontal non-thematic material to keep the puzzle from exceeding the 78-word limit. For example, breaking GAS TANKS at the T would bring the word count up to 80. Fortunately, because the theme entries are apparent from the cluing, there's no danger of confusion.

I hope deciphering the 11 theme riddles is a fun change of pace and makes up for the puzzle's other shortcomings.

Jim and I worried that solvers would miss all the symmetric, but short, theme material, so we've highlighted it below.

Interesting concept, playing on "more than" and "less than." EMOTION is more than a MOTION, but less than a DEMOTION, for example. The concept reminded me of a genius puzzle by David Steinberg that won an award in 2015. Puzzles so rarely blow my mind, but seeing what David pulled off there required a hundred Q-Tips to wipe away the gray matter oozing out my ears.

It made me wonder how many words fit that double beheading possibility. Five minutes of coding showed there are hundreds of them, including many long ones — longer than EMOTION even. My favorite from that list was CHARMLESS HARMLESS ARMLESS. It would have been great to use at least one pair of long ones since all the shorties got lost in Alex's grid.

Obsessive as I am, I wondered how many triple beheading words there are. Surprisingly, also hundreds! My favorite: GESTATE ESTATE STATE TATE, although ISLANDERS SLANDERS LANDERS ANDERS was fun too, as was NASCENT ASCENT SCENT CENT.

We all know I can't leave well enough alone, so onto quad and quint beheadings! Dozens of quads, but just one notable quint: BRAIDING RAIDING AIDING ID'ING DING ING (the Dutch bank).

Overall, Alex's idea was solid, although it was unsatisfying to never see the missing letter, e.g., the D in front of DEMOTION. I wondered if they'd spell something out — now that would have been neat! S T was a good start, but then it all went to hell with S T P B, etc. Given how many double beheading options there are to choose from, having a secret answer would have been doable and would have elevated the puzzle concept.