New York Times, Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Today's theme occurred to me after I finished David Steinberg's 1/2/13 FROOT LOOPS puzzle and started brainstorming other "circular answer" ideas. Two epiphanies followed: that FIVE GOLDEN RINGS worked as a grid-spanning revealer, and that SLUMBERS wrapped neatly around its middle. Among the other four-letter "rings" I considered were two measurements (HOUR and MILE) and two animals (BEAR and CALF). Favorite answer: Monsieur HULOT, who's usually overshadowed by his alter ego Jacques TATI, at least in crosswords.

Debut! Neat to see another constructor enter the ranks of "published in the NYT". To me, it's much more an honor than the Fields Medal, a Newbery Award, and a Burger King crown all rolled into one. Although if the Newbery committee wants to make me an offer ...

A visual representation of FIVE GOLDEN RINGS; a nice Xmas day theme. I particularly liked the middle golden ring, "golden SLUMBERS", circling around the middle. Neat effect. The other four aren't quite as ring-like, looking more like golden squares than golden rings, but you can't always get what you want (plus, incorporating five rings like the middle one would likely have led to too many trade-offs in fill quality). "Golden MEAN" in the NE was especially cool; phi (the golden ratio) is one of my favorite irrational numbers (and the feature of a previous NYT puzzle!).

Anytime you have crossing constraints, as in each of the four corners, the difficulty level ratchets up. Jacob does well, impressively so in a debut, in these areas. I was about to make a comment about not caring to see HULOT, which seemed too esoteric, but I looked it up after reading Jacob's note and gained an appreciation of Jacques Tati. And thinking about it more, there's likely an entire generation for whom HULOT is not only a no-brainer, but a revered entry.

So putting that aside, getting out of those four tough corners with just an ALEE and a CYSTS (which carries negative connotations for some), while being consistent in the way the four-letter theme words (each of the four starts in the bottom-left corner and runs clockwise) is excellent work.

I typically like learning something new from xws, so any one of SYRIAC, OSSETIA, or HULOT would have been very much welcome. But to have all three in a single puzzle felt a bit like drinking eggnog from a fire hose to me*. They're certainly all fair game for a Wednesday though, especially since the crosses all seem reasonable to me.

There's a lot of good stuff in this puzzle, notably KABUKI, ICARUS, and LACROSSE, with the trade-offs of a couple of long partials (ILL DO and EAU DE). All in all, a nice debut. Merry Xmas!

*Mmm, eggnog out of a firehose ...