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This was my first attempt at what is now known as a "vowel run," a dismissive phrase I dislike. I like to think of them as a fun tone-poem. It's really fun to say HACK, HECK, HICK, HOCK, HUCK. Plus it's nigh impossible to get them in the right order while having the A match the U, the E match the O and the I to be odd-numbered, fun and straight across the middle.
And despite the fact I had made the Gilligan's Island puzzle with five themes (Tu 9/21/2004) I felt ill-equipped to construct this, thus my first collaboration! I had met Michael Blake at a constructors lunch I had organized after having met some constructors at Martin Herbach's lovely Los Gatos home the year before. Michael came as someone else's guest and we hit it off and became friends. He is very technically coordinated and offered to help lay out the grid as a favor. I felt I could not have done it without him and wanted to share credit/money which he demurred on.
We would often help each other with feedback and even a theme answer here and there but would submit as individuals. When he helped me again on PACK PECK PICK POCK PUCK (Mon 8/25/2008) I insisted we share everything. Although he felt it was my idea, fill, etc. I could NOT at that time, Luddite that I was, have ever figured out how to lay out the five themed answers. We've had at least a half dozen since then. He forced me to learn to use a computer so I could be more independent. The iron is, I enjoyed him so much that now when we collaborate, we merge our sensibilities which are quite different, and you can not parse out who did what.
I believe out of 40 published NYT puzzles (as of my writing this in November 2013) they have been almost evenly split between solos and collaborations.
1 G | 2 A | 3 R | 4 B | 5 B | 6 R | 7 O | 8 W | 9 A | 10 P | 11 P | 12 L | 13 E |
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14 O | R | E | O | 15 O | E | N | O | 16 F | R | I | E | S |
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17 H | A | C | K | 18 Y | S | A | C | K | 19 L | A | P | S | E |
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20 O | B | E | 21 A | C | R | E | 22 L | A | N | E | S | |||
23 M | I | S | 24 S | Y | O | U | 25 H | E | C | K | L | E | 26 R |
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27 E | A | S | Y | 28 P | 29 L | U | G | 30 S | I | N | K |
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31 N | 32 A | 33 G | 34 A | B | U | 35 T | 36 N | E | O |
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37 H | 38 I | C | K | O | 39 R | Y | S | M | O | 40 K | E | D | ||
41 R | O | D | 42 A | L | O | T | 43 E | G | O | |||||
44 A | L | E | 45 S | 46 D | R | O | 47 P | 48 L | 49 A | 50 W | 51 S |
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52 H | O | C | K | 53 N | E | Y | 54 R | 55 O | 56 M | A | N | I | A |
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57 G | L | E | A | N | 58 R | I | S | E | 59 G | P | S |
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60 B | R | A | I | N | 61 H | U | C | K | A | 62 B | E | E | S |
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63 E | A | R | N | A | 64 A | S | E | A | 65 B | L | U | E |
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66 A | M | E | S | S | 67 T | E | R | R | 68 S | A | P | S |
Answer summary:
2 unique to this puzzle, 2 debuted here and reused later.
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