New York Times, Saturday, November 8, 2014

My puzzle essentially had two seeds: EARTHRISE and GREENTAPE. I was inspired to use EARTHRISE in a puzzle after looking at a photograph with that name taken during the Apollo 8 mission. My original clue for EARTHRISE referred to the photograph. I ran across the use of GREENTAPE in an article about excessive environment regulations and thought that was would be a cool entry for a puzzle.

I don't recall the whole construction process for this puzzle, but when I fill a grid, I try to strike a balance between 'interesting' longer entries (BATSIGNAL, BIOWEAPON, e.g.) and high-scrabble value fill (GASTAX, CEREALBOX, QUARK, e.g.), although puzzle didn't turn out to be as scrabbly as I'd prefer.

Nice offering from Barry today, a good example of his "crossword voice." A lot of strong material — EARTHRISE, BIOWEAPON, BLOOMBERG, what a great triplet — along with a smattering of crossword glue, plus a nod to the Phillies. Quintessential Barry Silk.

I'm usually not a fan of themeless layouts featuring seven-letter words, as constructors often fill those slots with neutral entries rather than colorful ones. But look what Barry does today in the NE corner. The triplet of LA BAMBA, STEP MOM, and AIR TAXI is really strong, plus everything around it is solid. He does sacrifice a little in terms of grid flow in order to achieve this, as there are only two entries that can help the solver break into that corner. But when those two entries are super strong ones like CEREAL BOX and GAS TAX, I don't mind as much.

A note on "clue echoes." Repeated clues work really well for me when they refer to completely different things. For example, POOL ROOMS and AILERON both are clued with respect to banking, but that word has wildly disparate meanings in the two clues. For POOL ROOMS, it's talking about banking shots off of rails; for AILERON, it's referring to a plane banking to turn. That sort of creative connection is a huge plus in my book.

I personally don't like clue echoes as much when they're within the exact same wheelhouse. [Searchlight element] for example, clues both XENON and BEAM. Along with (the awesome!) BATSIGNAL also being clued in a similar fashion, this repetition gets a bit tedious for me. Personal taste.

There aren't any ugly entries, just minor offenders. It's a shame that the weakest entries — L RON, SOLS, EL AL (SHEB Wooley ... he seemed to reach decent fame during his time, so he seems okay) — are concentrated in one region. L RON might have been something like FRED or FRAN (TAIL becoming NAIF; most of that section changing) but it would have required PICT, the ancient Briton, in the place of PACT (see left). I have a peculiar distaste for partials, but I can see how others would deem L RON as "gettable" and PICT as "too esoteric." As always, subjectivity is such a big part of construction.

A lot of tough but clever clues in this one. For those of you still mystified by [Binder?], think not of a school binder, but a bind-er, as in "something that binds."

Finally, I wish crosswords could evolve faster with respect to new technology. I hadn't looked up the "Earthrise" picture until Barry mentioned it. Super glad he did, because I forgot how breathtaking it is. How cool would it be to have a visual clue, just the picture, similar to Jeopardy? No idea how to do this given the medieval state of the art in crossword programs, but a guy can wish. Seems like this is a huge opportunity for someone enterprising, given the rapid evolution of crosswords.