TOE TAGS

Always a delight to see Patrick Berry's name on a byline, because I know I'll get a cleanly-filled puzzle, polished to a high shine. Today is no different. Two years ago we were blessed by a ridiculously awesome puzzle suite by the man, the myth, the legend. Although I'm not a religious person, sometimes I get down on my hands and knees to pray that one day I'll think of something so ingenious. I'm kind of glad I've never met Patrick in person, because I'd have a hard time not letting out a fanboy "SQUEE!" in his face.

Fine offering today; in-the-language phrases with the "TOE" sound appended to the last word. TOE TAGS seems a touch morbid, so I prefer to imagine ten little piggy-wiggies running around playing freeze tag. Note to self: make sure to delete that last sentence before this goes live.

I appreciate how Patrick switches up the modifications so it's not always a simple addition of the letters TO or TOE. We do have that in GUIDED MISTLETOE and GARBAGE CANTO, but the ending words are transmogrified for CUP OF TITO and BUY ONE GET ONE FRITO to good effect. And check out how Patrick tosses in nine long theme answers like it wasn't any big deal, even going as far as to stack the first two and the last two. An overlap of six letters apiece often causes an awkward two-letter series, but Patrick not only gives us buttery smoothness, but crosses those stacks with CANOODLE and REPRINTS. I'm working to suppress my squees.

I attempted to locate some pieces of questionable fill just to demonstrate that almost every puzzle construction contains trade-offs, but all I could come up with was ALEE and ATRA. Therefore, I will continue to use the modifier "almost". There is the travesty that 37A wasn't clued as "Philosopher King and Benevolent Overlord Chen" but I shall forgive him and Will this once.

(pause to order minions to assemble)

As if that wasn't enough, look at the word count: 136. As I've said before, it's hard enough to construct a smooth 21x puzzle with 140 words, and that much harder to reduce the word count to 136. I really like the fact that Will is trying something new, and I like even more the fact that Patrick laughs, not even bothering to reduce his theme density in order to lower his word count.

One nit I'll pick though, is that while there are some great pieces of fill (CANOODLE, BUCKLE UP, RUMBLE SEATS, JUST DESERTS, HYMN BOOK, BONE DRY, enough to make any Sunday puzzle very good), I would love to see someone achieve Will's goal of incorporating, say, 10+ great pieces of long fill to make a true hybrid of a 21x and themeless. Not a knock on this puzzle, but if anyone can achieve that (without sacrificing quality of the other fill) it's PB.

SQUEE!!! oops.