OLDEN GOLDIES

This puzzle originated when I heard "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits on my drive to work one morning. Like any good constructor, I started unconsciously fiddling with the song title, and it hit me that the tune's Spoonerism would be "LOCK OF WIFE." Moments later I had what I thought was the perfect accompanying clue (Chastity belt?) — and after a few days spent developing a list of other possibilities, I was on my way.

Or so I thought. I sent the resulting 21x puzzle to Will Shortz at the NY Times and, after he gave it the thumbs down, to Rich Norris at the LA Times, where it also failed to make the cut. After subjecting their short rejection notes to a level of scrutiny normally reserved for newly-discovered biblical scrolls, I detected just an inkling of interest and decided that one or the other might consider using a revised version. But based on the feedback I'd received, I came to the conclusion — sadly — that LOCK OF WIFE had to go (apparently it would be too obscure for many solvers.) I also jettisoned DUTIFUL BAY (which didn't work, phonetically speaking, since "Beautiful Day" has a "y" sound after the "b"). In their place, I substituted DOWNED HOG as the central entry. With those modifications, along with some resulting improvements to the fill, Will liked the revision enough to accept it.

As always, I was psyched to get a Sunday puzzle in the NYT, but in this case I was also a bit wistful that my favorite entry and clue had to be sacrificed in the process. What did I learn from all this? To paraphrase another old rock n' roll tune, sometimes if you love a theme entry, set it free.

Quite a challenge for me today, as my knowledge of popular music is sorely lacking. Still though, a fun puzzle, "spoonerizing" famous(-ish) songs into wacky results. I laughed when I hit MAD BOONE RISING — brilliantly hilarious resulting phrase, plus the base song (Bad Moon Rising) is actually something I know. A perfect entry for this theme.

It can be quite a trick to build a theme around "oldies", as a chunk of your solving constituency might be left in the lurch. I felt a bit left out when I couldn't uncover SHES SO HIGH or HES SO SHY, same with I CITE THE WRONGS and I WRITE THE SONGS. Hard to feel deeply engaged when neither the base phrase nor the "wacky" ending phrase makes any sense. But might be solely my personal issue of being an oldies dunce; I could easily be in the minute minority here.

Now that I got that out of the way, I really appreciated Dan's construction. Once I saw those big open corners in the SW and NE, I braced myself for ugliness. Each one of those — a 6x7 chunk, for goodness sake! — is as difficult to fill as a subsection in a themeless. But both of those corners are absolutely beautiful, packed with nice stuff like PIEBALD and LETS EAT. Same goes for the west and east sections, where I cringed at first sight of the huge white spaces and their potential for disaster. But again, quality results, ENCODER reminding me of "A Christmas Story" and NON WORD with its great Colbert clue.

Bear with me as I delve into some numbers. Typically most 21x constructions lean heavily on three, four, and five-letter entries — they're typically necessary to hold grid regions together. Unfortunately, these shorties aren't usually "exciting", because most of them have been used so many times that solvers are used to seeing them. Debuting JUBA (the capital of South Sudan) is a rare example where a shorty is cool.

So the real genius of today's puzzle: Dan did a great job of laying out his grid, incorporating a lot of six- and seven-letter entries (a total of 49!). That's very hard to construct, since you're purposefully eschewing the gluey type short answers, forcing yourself to make grid sections connect through long answers. Very, very difficult, akin to building a network of bridges across the Grand Canyon. And look at the great result: SHOULDA, HARPOON, GI JANE, SCARAB, etc. all make for a chewy puzzle.

Great workout, the type I usually only get in themeless constructions.