New York Times, Friday, November 11, 2016

About a year and a half ago, I was listening to a podcast and somebody said THAT'S A BIG IF. I was on my computer at the time, so I looked to see if that term had ever been used in a crossword puzzle before, and when the results came back negative, I decide to make it the seed answer in a themeless puzzle. Because… why not?

Looking back over this grid with fresh eyes, I'm mostly pleased with it. I think I pretty much nailed the long answers. It's got some glue I don't particularly care for (notably SRS and ELEM — if I made this puzzle today, I probably wouldn't let these two stand). But I think (hope) the trade-off is worth it.

The clues for this one are a mixed bag for me. Quite frequently when Will changes my clues, I feel they get better — and there are some examples of this in this puzzle (e.g., the clue for BOOM MICS) — but there are also some for which it is not the case. My least favorite clue is "Hook remover, perhaps" for NOSE JOB, because it evokes the term "hook-nosed," and although the dictionary informs me there is nothing inherently derogatory about this term, it feels kind of slur-y to me. Using "hook" to describe somebody's nose is just not something I like or would ever do. (My clue was "Profile alterer" if you were wondering.)

I also had a great clue for LA RAM, but I came up with it too late: "Noted NFL returner of 2016". Get it? Not bad, huh?

For more on this puzzle and other tangentially related topics, feel free to visit my blog: scrabbledamon.blogspot.com.

A ton of great stuff packed in! Big, interconnected skeletons can be tough to work with, but Damon did well. WELL SHUT MY MOUTH to JESSE JAMES to CHEESE PIZZA to THAT'S A BIG IF to JUST DESERTS (yes, that's the correct spelling!) to SCAM ARTIST to YOU LOOK FAMILIAR — that's seven long answers locked together, each one of them strong to fantastic. THAT'S A BIG IF was my favorite, so it was great to see it smack dab in the middle.

And there was more, a nice surprise given that interconnected skeletons can quickly become inflexible. NOSE JOBS, FOG LAMPS, KARAOKE SO SUE ME, HOT TUBS, even the bizarre-looking BOOMMICS (BOOM MIKES?). And being a kid of the late 20^th century, getting NEW COKE crossing MCRIB was really fun. All these great entries spread throughout the puzzle made it feel like the grid was jam-packed with goodies.

Interconnected skeletons are notoriously difficult to keep smooth, since so much of the puzzle has to be built around various long answers locked into place. I think Damon did a nice job keeping the crossword glue to just minor stuff. EVILEST is the most evil to me — I once choked down EVILER into order to get a puzzle to work, and still feel ill about it — and ACE TEN feels a little arbitrary, but some ELEM SRS OZS (abbrs.), ARA (esoteric name), OSH (partial) aren't bad at all.

Some solvers balk at ENO, but I think he's perfectly fine. I don't buy the argument that ENO should be avoided, since he appears much more in crosswords than in real life — my feeling is that if you're crossworthy, you're crossworthy.

And for years, LARAM (such a beautiful vowel consonant alternation!) was frowned upon, because the Rams had moved to St. Louis. They're back, baby! (I just changed my scores on the XWord Info Word List to reflect this.)

Even though there's a little more crossword glue than I like to see in a themeless, there was so much great material that I usually would have given this one the POW! But there's one coming up that I liked even better.