New York Times, Monday, October 26, 2015

I live in San Diego, but I've always felt that San Francisco is the most interesting city west of the Mississippi. I wouldn't call myself a liberal but you have to be impressed with San Francisco's role in the hippie counterculture, the sexual revolution, the anti-Vietnam-war peace movement, and the gay rights movement. It was certainly fortuitous that CITY BY THE BAY exactly matches SAN FRANCISCO, and the two biggest tourist attractions match also.

I knew the puzzle had to have the bridge, so I worked out a suspension to the 15x16 size. I spent quite a bit of time trying to design some grid art that looked like a bridge, but that proved to be more difficult than dogs, fish, and birds. I considered trying to work Haight-Ashbury in there somewhere, but my heart wasn't in it.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

SAN FRANCISCO honored today, the CITY BY THE BAY near where I grew up. Nice to see additional theme around iconic SF CABLE CARs, ALCATRAZ, and the GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. Not sure what this puzzle commemorates, considering SF was founded on June 29, 1776. Hooray for ... its 239^th anniversary?

I like Bruce's execution. In some of his earlier work I've seen more gluey fill than I care for, so it was great to run through the solve so smoothly. It's so tough to do this for a Monday puzzle, and even tougher when you have five themers.

The only hitch I had was around the south section, and that's understandable given the overlap of CABLE CAR over SAN FRANCISCO. That type of arrangement, especially leading into a southern section that's six letters wide, can be very tough to fill. So getting ORIG + SSW + ANS isn't too bad. Some may complain about COATI, but I like seeing non-North American animals, when the crossings are all fair. Learn something, people!

Pretty good longer fill, too. POLAR BEARS and SUPERMODEL are nice choices, and even the mid-length YOU WIN, SITCOM, WIZENS are not too SHABBY. With a wider-than-usual puzzle at 16 columns, it's so important to keep the solver's attention, and all these extras did that for me.

So overall, a well-executed puzzle, but I sure would have liked some rationale, some important date in order to justify running a list-like tribute puzzle. Without that, I would have liked something more to push the envelope, especially given how much SF has going for it. With its huge variety of nicknames (Fog City, Frisco, The Paris of the West, etc.), its current significance as the center of the dot com explosion, even its incredible history with the Gold Rush, it's ripe for themes that think bigger.

I would have loved to see a bridge made out of black squares (if it actually looked like a bridge)! That would have called for more trade-offs, I imagine, maybe enough that it couldn't be a Monday puzzle, but I love that idea.