New York Times, Monday, November 10, 2014

Not too surprisingly, this puzzle started with FUHGEDDABOUDIT, and I just needed to find three more entries that meant aboud the same thing. My initial impression was that I would need to use the FUHGEDABOUDIT (one D) spelling since that is the way it appeared in Daniel Kantor's NYT puzzle of 8/7/07 (unrelated theme). I had trouble finding another 13 letter theme entry, so I looked up FUHGEDABOUDIT and was happy to find that the "preferred" Wiktionary spelling has two D's! I wasn't familiar with the term "eye dialect" — a little embarrassing since I am an ophthalmologist — but apparently this is an "eye dialect" spelling based on colloquial or dialectal speech. I have to tell you this word-nerd stuff is really fascinating to me!

My first try at this puzzle had NINE entries that Will did not like — mostly plurals like SEPTS, CDRS, GRRS, and LSTS. My impression is that Will is not really enamored with plurals or abbreviations, so plural abbreviations might be a good thing to avoid when possible. This second try at filling the puzzle has slightly harder but more interesting words, and a lot less "glue." The only clue I was sorry to see on the editing floor was "trips the light fantastic" for DANCES at 46-Down — Wikipedia attributes that phrase to a Milton poem of 1645 and says it's been hackneyed since 1908, but NO WAY! I think it's a classic.

I don't remember starting with any desire to make my first pangram, but when I got down to just the northwest corner and all I needed was a J...

The Monday to Thursday puzzles this week were used last Saturday at the 4th annual Arlington Puzzle Festival at the Arlington (Va.) Public Library. During the past 12 months I've supplied unpublished Times puzzles for 12 events like this around the country — mostly for libraries or other nonprofit institutions. Crossword contests are happy affairs, and I'm happy to help.

"Donnie Brasco" easily made it to my Tier 2 list of movies, and I remember struggling with the decision whether to elevate it to the vaunted Tier 1. Loved, loved, loved FUHGEDDABOUDIT! It almost spoils the rest of the puzzle for me, since as soon as I uncovered it, I was off to Youtube, watching that clip roughly 143 times.

Strong theme answers, each of them ones I'd be happy to see in a themeless puzzle. I was hoping to see AINT GONNA HAPPEN or ARE YOU HIGH, but what are you going to do. Fuhgeddaboudit!

And what nice clean fill. As I solve puzzles, little ORTS or OLIO give me slight cringes as I go, but I had exactly zero of them today. I went back to evaluate afterward, and I was pleasantly surprised to see really nothing I'd personally avoid. Even the partial FOR A feels perfectly fine to me, since it can be clued to the plural of FORUM. This puzzle exemplifies the type of crossword gluelessness I like to see.

Back when I worked as a mechanical engineer, I'd tell people they could have two of the following three things: cheap, fast, high-quality. (There's a similar principle in macroeconomics called "The Unholy Trinity," which I'll just link to since it's bound to bore everyone except me and exactly one other person.) I'm working on a parallel concept for crossword fill: you can have two of the following three: clean short fill, Scrabbliness, and quality long fill. It's THE CROSSWORD UNHOLY TRINITY! Now, if someone could only figure out how to make a CUT above the rest.

Today, Bruce goes hog wild on the first two. I often worry when I see a lot of JQXZ letters, since these tend to compromise the "clean short fill" criteria, but he does great in these two categories, with nary a piece of crossword glue, and one each of the Big Four of Scrabbly letters (JQXZ). Ah, then the Impossible Trinity kicks in, the quality long fill going AWOL. I would have liked to see at least one pair of long down entries, perhaps by taking out the block between VEND and HIP TO, and its symmetrical partner. Or even extending 5D to seven letters — seven letter answers are harder to fill will sparkly stuff than 8+ letter entries, but it can be done.

Nice start to the week, four really fun themers, with a very clean fill. Off to watch that "Donnie Brasco" clip a few more (dozen) times.