New York Times, Monday, December 2, 2013

Making a Monday puzzle is harder than it seems. It must be interesting enough to pass the increasingly high standards of the NY Times, but simple enough that a beginning solver can still master it. As a lifelong resident of Ithaca, NY and a graduate of Cornell University, aka "Big Red," I also attended our local high school which is known as "Little Red" and so have long held a certain affection for the "Caped Crusader" of fable. The idea of using a book, song or movie title and breaking it up into pieces is one I have used often. I fact when I am going through a dry period, I can usually count on this technique to generate another puzzle and keep the creative juices flowing. The theme is not terribly original, but the four themed phrases seemed to flow pretty naturally. Throw in a big bad wolf and, well, you're practically out of the woods!

Bio: Adam Perl is a graduate of Cornell University with a BA in music. He has been the owner of Pastimes Antiques in Ithaca NY for 35 years and has constructed well over a thousand crossword puzzles. In addition to making puzzles for the NY Times and various other publications, he loves to make custom crossword puzzles for friends, family or for hire. Last year he created three different difficulty-levels of crosswords for the first ever Finger Lakes Crossword Puzzle Tournament which raised money for the Tompkins Learning Partners, which tutors children and adults in reading and math.

A simple,straightforward theme for the start of the week. Apparently, Adam thought this was geared for a Wednesday or Thursday, as he wrote fairly challenging clues. As a result, most of the clues here are mine, to make them Monday-friendly. Adam owns an antique store called Pastimes in Ithaca, N.Y., which I'm looking forward to visiting sometime.

Hiding a four-word phrase with a revealer is a tried and true theme type, and what makes or breaks it is 1.) the quality of the themers and 2.) the interest level / a-ha factor of the hidden phrase. On both counts I think Adam does pretty well. Four very nice long theme entries today, all answers I'd be glad to use as fill in any of my own puzzles. I especially liked HOOD ORNAMENT and RED HERRINGS, fun and snazzy answers.

Curious to put the revealer at 1-across though. I think if I had encountered WOLF at the very end, LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD would have been a fun hidden phrase. As it was though, having WOLF at the beginning sort of deflated my balloon. It is interesting to break conventional patterns once in a while, but for me, this didn't quite work.

I loved seeing INERTIA as long fill, a great use of a seven-letter space. Even better that it got a real physics clue! ON A TEAR is a nice one too. But with only a few places for long fill, it feels like a waste to use a slot on ERELONG. I suppose it could be a favorite entry for some people, but it felt like an ERE, but LONGer. (That sounded a lot more brilliant in my head.) How's this: it felt like filler stretched out on a medieval rack.

Finally, I do like a bit of bonus theme content every once in a while, but having BIG / BAD felt haphazard to me. It's not symmetrical with anything else, and it forces some fill compromises in the East section, the IDEES/GARDE/SSE/COE pileup. Call me conventional, but I would have preferred for the final theme answer to be BIG BAD WOLF. That would have necessitated five theme answers though, which of course is much harder to execute on than a puzzle with only four themers, so who knows how something like that would have turned out.

Trying something new is important to advance the state of the art. Who knows, perhaps I'll look back on this day as the dawn of a brave new era. And if not, I'll just appreciate the four minutes of puzzly diversion plus some very nice long entries.