New York Times, Thursday, October 17, 2019

As with many puzzles that start as Sunday ideas, this one ran out of gas when I couldn't come up with enough pairings on the theme title "Joint Session" for a 21x21 puzzle. I settled on four good pairings and placed them in a weekday grid. Then another phenomenon, not so unusual for me, I tried to create as open a grid as I could, thus only 68 entries. So this puzzle has a theme that is probably on the easy side for a Thursday, but gridwise is more like a Friday or Saturday themeless with fewer than 72 words. The result is an amalgam — an open not-too-tricky themed Thursday.

I have been guilty of being one of those constructors who enjoys the challenge of creating grids with "chunky" white sections just because it gives me personal pleasure to interlock long entries. Often this results in some not so great short entries, and I might not get as clean a puzzle as some solvers might like. I believe when constructing crosswords, the solver's pleasure should be paramount, but I confess to being a little selfish about not taking simpler routes to finish themed puzzle constructions by having more of my grids use the allowable maximum of 78 entries.

I also challenged myself by having stacked the longer theme entries. This too creates puzzle construction challenges that are probably otherwise avoidable, but I like the challenge of lining up not so easy to find crossing entries that are restricted by a series of crossing adjacent pairs of letters created by the theme entries. Answers like GAL GADOT, ALAN HALE, REORG, LEADFOOT, SIDEBURNS, and COSTCO are not found often in themed puzzles, but I think they are interesting enough to make up for a less elegant partial like A FUSS or the crosswordese Jewish month of TISHRI.

Anyway, as with many of the puzzles I have constructed over the years, I have learned you can't please everyone every time. But I continue to try my best to please some of the solvers most of the time and continue to enjoy puzzle construction as a hobby that challenges me and indulges my love of wordplay, symmetry and the idiosyncrasies of the English language.

Randy had such nice consistency in his themers, always using exactly one overlapping letter in the clue. WILDER + RAYBURN = WILDERAYBURN -> two Genes put together, or SPLICED GENES. Get it?

What, you don't know who Gene Rayburn was?

Huh. That makes it harder to figure out.

I vaguely recalled his name from my youth, watching hours of afternoon TV as a latchkey kid. It didn't matter how bad a show was; it was better than not watching TV at all. That says a lot about "The Match Game" (and me, too, sadly).

It's not the tightest theme since there are so many synonyms for "joined." ASSOCIATED PRESS, MARRIED MEN, JOINED HANDS, etc. could have all worked. Not every theme needs to be tight — a set of four examples is perfectly fine — but tightness does add elegance.

A 68-word grid like today's destroys elegance. There's no doubt that it makes for a harder solve (which is what Will wants above all else in a Thursday puzzle), but no one likes to run into A FUSS of DESTE, ENOTE, UNARM (disarm), KTS, RFD (when you have to say "outdated" in the clue …), SRTA, TSE, and on it goes.

I did love getting GAL GADOT, who looks awesomely bizarre as GALGA DOT, as well as LEAD FOOT, SIDEBURNS, even CONSULATE. That's a good amount of colorful bonus material designed to elevate the quality of a solve. However, you can do still do that and a also achieve a much, much, much smoother grid, by sticking to a more traditional layout. Even going to a 72-worder (without stacking themers), could have been fruitful.

Now, the puzzle does have many entries that aren't seen every day — the mid-length slots in particular — so one might think it would lend a feeling of freshness. It's so hard to fill big swaths of white space with sizzle, though. It's not worth putting solvers through such a rough experience when all you have to offer them are neutral words like ADDUCE, and iffy ones like MOSHER.

Will Shortz and I have a fundamental difference about what makes for an entertaining low-word-count themed puzzle. I'd have sent this one back for a redo.

I did appreciate exchanging emails with Randy about this topic. It's good to hear that he's constantly struggling to find the right balance between his needs and those of solvers.