DO THE SPLITS

The idea for this puzzle languished for years. I could never decide if it was good, or uninspired. Then, if I looked at it for the umpteenth time, I couldn't decide which ideas were the best to use. I might like one choice for a symmetrical pair, but be lukewarm about the other one.

Finally, this fall, I emailed a friend here who I know does Sunday NYT puzzles, and asked her what she thought. She started bugging me to do this. And here you have the result.

I was amazed how fast it went from submission to publication. I mailed this in early December and it was accepted in mid-January.

Probably the genesis of this puzzle was somehow reading "Colorado" as "color ado." That would make PUEBLO COLORADO into something like [Big fuss over how to paint the Indian village]. I still like that, but was afraid it wouldn't pass muster since "Colorado" actually comes from the Spanish word for "color", and thus the meanings wouldn't change.

I would have preferred more answers that divided the words in unusual ways, like MARSHALL PLAN, which I liked [Spec for an interplanetary campus building?] or MADEIRA WINE, which in the end seemed kind of blah [Aged a glassful for Mr. Glass?]. A few others that got left out were RAMBLING ROSE [The price went up on some flashy NFL jewelry?], TAKE A PLACEBO ["Park yourself somewhere," to a onetime White House pet?] (I wasn't sure whether that qualified as an "in the language" phrase), and GOLF CADDIES [Headline for the obit of a country club scoundrel?]. If the current grid hadn't worked out well enough, I would have gone back and tried other options.

As for clues, mine remained intact for the most part. I think that Will's changes, overall, tended to make things a bit easier; for example, the clues for MALE and ORANGES—both sort of gimmes--were his. And I would never have come up with that clue for MOTH—totally not in my wheelhouse. All the theme clues were basically the ones I wrote except for UNFUNDED MANDATES. I think I'm reading Will's revised clue a bit differently than he intends, because it seems somewhat off to me. (Mine had been "Watching TV on Saturday nights with a cash-strapped beau?")

Oh, and one last thing for all of you who wonder about clue-grid duplications. Looking at the preview copy, I happened to notice that Will changed the ELMO clue to read "Kids' TV character …" when KIDDIE LIT was fairly nearby in the grid. His response:

"I think bloggers accord way too much importance to this sort of thing, which average solvers don't give a hoot about. My rule is: No answer word in its entirety can be part of a clue, and no clue in its entirety can be part of an answer. But in most cases, partial to partial duplication, as in this puzzle, doesn't matter."

Anyway, I hope you had fun with this. That's the whole point.

DO THE SPLITS, apt title for introducing spaces into regular phrases for kooky results. I enjoyed GO OFF ON A TAN GENT, and BRA IN WAVES evoked a funny image.

Humor is so subjective. I found some of the resulting phrases stilted, especially POE, TRY READING. Not only grammatically does it feel odd, but I imagine Poe wouldn't have needed much prompting to read. And FAT AL ATTRACTION … something there makes me cringe. Not sure what.

UNFUNDED MANDATE as a base phrase. I vaguely recognized it as a thing, but even after researching it, it still doesn't sing to me.

Some nice long bonus fill, RAW RECRUIT matching well with a TROOPSHIP, and … GOOSESTEP. That last one is a regular term for a common military practice (especially outside America), but boy, does it have uncomfortable connotations. Perhaps recently reading about the siege of Leningrad colored my thinking.

Lynn is so good with her short fill — she usually focuses on Monday puzzles, giving us some of the smoothest Monday offerings around — and today is no different. Although it's a tough task to build a 21x 140-word puzzle — I'd estimate it to be about five times harder than a Monday, since there are necessarily much bigger swaths of white space to fill — this is such a smooth offering.

I did hitch at DAVA, but 1.) all the crossings were fair, 2.) Pulitzer Prize nominee, and 3.) if that's one of the few quasi-gluey bits you end up with, that's a win.

Although most of the themers didn't resonate with me, a few great clues helped to elevate my solve:

• [Gives an order] made no sense for RANKS until I realized that it wasn't a sergeant giving an order, but a spreadsheet jockey.
• LADLE delivering a punch sounded like it should be "delivering punch" or "a cup of punch," but I still liked the clever wordplay, nonetheless.
• ATOMS are indeed at the "heart of the matter" — all matter, to be precise!