New York Times, Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Don:

I remember clearly that I was in my car in Columbus, Ohio, listening to a local radio show host, John Corby of 610 WTVN, and the subject was "words that were at one time trademarked but have now become accepted everyday words". It seemed like an excellent topic because I was not aware of many of the entries on his list. I thought that if we could make phrases with some of the words, it would be fun. Many thanks to John Corby.

Beyond that, I can't remember how we approached the construction, but most likely, my resourceful partner, C.C., came up with a thorough list of qualifying words, and we both made phrases from these, and chose the ones we thought worked best. We always share the construction and cluing about 50/50, as we like it to be a complete collaboration.

Zhouqin:

As Don mentioned earlier, we narrowed down our choices to words that were once trademarked but have since lost their legal status. Lots of words that we use generically are still trademarked.

This is actually the first puzzle that Mr. Shortz said "Yes!" to us. Don and I were very excited when we got the "congrats and welcome aboard!" from Paula.

An etymologically related theme like today's, is always welcome. The resulting theme answers here are a lot of fun, too. Among the nontheme entries I particularly liked SCOOBY-DOO, TOO TOO, OAXACA, and IT'S A GO.

Another strong puzzle from an emerging powerhouse duo, Don and C.C. Very fun theme, something I was vaguely aware of while solving (I had some intellectual property responsibilities at my old company, Acucela Inc.). A nice a-ha moment when I hit the TRADEMARKS revealer.

What I like best about this puzzle is that Don and C.C. could have easily listed the themers as individual words: ESCALATOR, YOYO, GRANOLA, thereby making room for others that fit (ZIPPER, LINOLEUM, ASPIRIN, etc.), but incorporating them into snappy phrases served two purposes: 1.) making the puzzle livelier with the inclusion of more in-the-language phrases and 2.) camouflaging the terms.

An unusual choice in grid layout today, to overlap pairs of themers. It's usually much easier to have some space between themers, but nothing suffers here. It's impressive that with seven down answers needing to cross both GRANOLA BAR and TABLOID BUZZ, the crosses are super clean. Well done; a bit of construction flair.

As is becoming Don and C.C.'s trademark, lots of long fill. With five themers, long down fill can be difficult to achieve. But entries like SCOOBY DOO and ITS A GO really spice up the solving experience. I wasn't as hot on TOO TOO as Will was, but perhaps I'm a bit lowbrow (no "perhaps" about it). LANDSAT and ECOTONE are not as nice as the other long fill IMO, but they certainly provide additional color.

The short fill is generally pretty good, although I winced a tad at the NE, with ABAB, I ATE, and OSIER all in the same location. There's nothing wrong with any of them, and some people might even really like OSIER (shout out to my basketweaving peeps!). But for me, these types of crossword-glue entries are easier to swallow when spread out (same issue for ATA and ASSNS in the SE). This can't always be achieved, especially with audacious grids.

Fun, well-done puzzle with an interesting theme. Curious quandary that companies with popular trademarks find themselves in. They obviously want people to recognize and use their brand name, but if the public starts doing so in a generic way, the company runs the risk of losing their trademark rights. If you're curious, go google it; google google google it hard*.

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