New York Times, Tuesday, December 31, 2013

I am excited to have my fifth puzzle published in the NYT today! The inspiration for this puzzle came from a beer I was drinking at the time. Not any old beer, mind you, but a nice, smooth LAGER — and a wonderful word that I found could be anagrammed an additional four ways. Of the nine total puzzles I have had accepted by the NYT to date, this one was the easiest for me to construct, and when I look back at my construction notes, I only had these five theme entries from the get-go. At the time, I was running most of my theme ideas by my mentor, Nancy Salomon, and her response to this idea was "works for me" and I was thrilled when I heard it had "worked" for Will Shortz as well!

Hope you enjoy the puzzle — have a safe celebration this New Year's Eve and a wonderful 2014!

Everyone understood the theme here, right? There's no answer that explains that each of the five long Across entries ends in some arrangement of the same five letters. An "explainer" is needed only when the theme is more subtle than this.

I often say how hard it is to construct a smooth but interesting early-week puzzle, and Tracy has succeeded today. I really liked the theme (phrases whose final words are anagrams of each other), and the solve was silky smooth. Beautiful work!

Note how snappy the theme phrases are. It's rare to see a puzzle with such strong themers, because most of the time a theme is heavily constrained by demands of consistency and/or specificity. But here Tracy picks out five winners, each one a phrase I'd be happy to use as long fill in one of my own puzzles. Some might deem ROCKETS RED GLARE as a partial, but I think it works on its own quite well. As an aside, notice how Tracy chose a 15-letter middle entry, which makes the grid construction MUCH easier than if she chose a 9, 11, or 13-letter entry.

And really nice use of Scrabbly (JQXZ) letters in the fill today. Sometimes a constructor will shoehorn one in where it doesn't really fit, causing a jarring solve. But J in DEEJAY, Z in ORZO, and X in XANADU are really nice. JUNCO was unfamiliar to me, but since it was the only thing I had to look up (and it's a common bird), it was welcome. Sure, nobody likes to see ULE in their puzzle, but since there's not much else on the offenders list, it gets a pass.

Interesting that the toughest part for me was the SW. I took six years of French in high school, but could barely pull out PLAGE. Then again, I can barely keep "Chen" and "chien" straight. (Makes for awkward family reunions.) I have a feeling there will be complaints today about PLAGE (and how the corner could have been "better" filled), but sometimes a constructor uses certain words for a reason. Perhaps they have a special fondness for the entry, or they like the similarity to the Spanish word PLAYA and its Burning Man associations, who knows*? If this were a Monday puzzle I might object, but I found it to be a useful exercise in recall.

Very well done!

*ADDED NOTE: Tracy and I exchanged emails, and she said: "I absolutely did choose the word french word PLAGE for the lower SW corner having just been to the French side of the island St. Maarten when I constructed this puzzle. Since it translates to 'beach', I thought it tied in nicely with my mini-theme of islands/beach towns such as Ibiza, Malta, and Avalon." Cool!