New York Times, Wednesday, November 14, 2018

I thought of this concept while running, which marks the first time I've ever had a cogent thought while running. More specifically, I thought of the "build a word" idea, hoping that I'd be able to find a nice enough selection of words which could be built up that there'd be a shot one would have an apt revealer. I wrote a script to find all the 5s in my word list which would work (daring not even dream a 6 might work — I did confirm this later though!) and was very happy to see BEARD pop out, immediately thinking of today's revealer. The theme fell nicely together after that. I like how as you solve, it seems like a homonym puzzle, and then BEAR shows up and hopefully provides some temporary confusion (as a bear showing up is wont to do). And shoutout to mom and sister, both gigantic 34-Across fans.

Some people dislike the structure a central 9 often forces, with lots of 7s in the corners, but I'm a big fan. Because this usually means each corner only interacts with one themer, I find I can usually convert a decent number of those 7s into assets (e.g., I like A-LISTER, PLANET X, and JANELLE in the NE). And I was able to get down to 72 words, allowing for some additional nice answers going across (again, some people dislike having non-theme across answers as long as theme answers, like FALSE IDOL and THIS IS WAR, but I think it's almost always fine, and especially so here because of the circles).

Happy No-Shave November!

Ha! Ian Livengood and I wrestled with this exact theme almost ten years ago, wanting it to end with BEARD TRIMMER [Device needed after finishing this puzzle]. I don't remember why we abandoned it. Drat, I wish we had followed it through! BEA ARTHUR was our middle themer, and I'm pretty sure we had BEAR TRACKS on our list of potential phrases.

Double drat!

Ah. One of the big reasons we gave it up was that we couldn't find a starting themer that matched the length of BEARD TRIMMER. We were dead set on having B start that first phrase so that every themer consistently began with the BEARD growth. I think that's why we stalled out.

Funny. Now that I see BEARD at the end of the last phrase — the only one not at the start — it doesn't bother me. Makes me wonder if I should be less anal about consistency in themes. Four at the start and one at the end seems perfectly fine.

I like Sam's gridwork, especially in the big NW / SE corners. At first, I was skeptical, wondering if things like AFFAIRE and RESEAT were worth it to get FALSE IDOL and THIS IS WAR. I'm still not sold on the cost of AFFAIRE, but FALSE IDOL is such a colorful bonus that it's hard to pass up.

Speaking of added color, there's so much goodness packed into those four corners. THAT GUY made me laugh, as in "don't be THAT GUY who takes all the fun out of crosswords due to his annoying overanalysis." Along with MALWARE, AT LARGE, and PLANET X, JOB FAIR, MALL MAP, it's a ton of gold worked in.

I think I'd have loved it if the themers had been vertical and the BEARD grew from left to right (or the BEARD was in the middle column, at the bottom). But it is easier to read the themers horizontally.

Overall, a solid concept. Along with really strong gridwork, it made for an enjoyable solve.