New York Times, Wednesday, January 10, 2018

MICKEY: I am delighted when my puzzle appears in the New York Times so I always try to maintain three puzzles in the queue to feed that addiction.

Puns and quips are my favorite crossword puzzle themes. We should all know by now that it is difficult to shoot a quip puzzle idea past Will Shortz. I keep trying. Many of my recent puzzles including this collaboration with Indiana Senator Joe Donnelly are themed puns. Some of these puns made me laugh out loud. See 18 across.

It was a pleasure to work with Senator Joe Donnelly. I am not making a political statement here, but I was not surprised to learn that Senator Donnelly was recognized as the 2^nd most bipartisan Senator since 1993 by the Lugar Center, McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is easy to work with. I had originally intended to hide his name in the puzzle (don, nelly) but those letters didn't mesh well with the theme clues.

We chose a basketball theme for Indiana, a basketball crazy state that produced Oscar Robinson, Larry Bird and George McGinnis. McGinnis was recently enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (2017). You do not need a deep understanding of the game of basketball to enjoy this puzzle. I hope you like our effort.

Plays on basketball terms! ALLEY OOPS as a bowling flub made me laugh, as did FOUL LINE = something a censor has to bleep out.

Great to get so much bonus material, too. The grid was packed with such goodies as WISEASS, APPLE TV, HOOKS UP, and an ejected player hitting the SHOWERS. Along with Eric SEVAREID and a fun wordplay clue in DILATES (eye pupils, not student pupils!), that's a lot of good stuff.

It almost felt like a little too much. When your themers all have question marked clues, it's important not to have too many other question marked clues in the grid, for fear of muddying up theme vs. fill. With DILATES and WISEASS in such prominent positions within the grid, I wasn't sure if I was missing some theme material. I mean, Dennis Rodman is a WISEASS, right?

It's unusual to put themers in row 2, so that also muddied things up for me. It wasn't hard to pick out the five themers, but it wasn't easy, either. I would have liked a more standard layout, with themers in rows 3 / 13 instead of 2 / 14.

I know, us regular solvers are so annoyingly demanding about our crossword conventions!

A bit too much crossword glue in SKAT / ESTE, DBL, SOO, GIE. I can understand the constructors' decision to prioritize snazziness over smoothness, but it felt like the prices I had to pay as a solver were too high. I would have preferred a less audacious grid, perhaps breaking up WISEASS / TOPPLED, and/or SEVAREID / LINSEEDS.

As a big basketball fan myself (well, until I tore my Achilles playing one-on-one last year), I enjoyed the hoops wordplay. I also liked that the constructors selected terms that would be mostly accessible even to non-fans. As much as I like more specialized lingo like DOUBLE DRIBBLE, or SHOT CLOCK, terms like FAST BREAK are more accessible to a larger number of solvers.