New York Times, Tuesday, February 19, 2019

For me, the best crosswords are those with the most entertaining theme answers, involving the most ridiculous images, the most absurd incongruities. Mechanical consistency, such as might result from a simple computer algorithm, doesn't interest me. I want a puzzle obviously created by a human being, preferably one with a sense of humor.

The more answers a theme generates, the more a constructor has to work with. In this puzzle, for instance, COB SALAD (Side dish with extreme roughage?) would also fit the theme, as would the similarly salad-related BIB LETTUCE (Consequence of infant salad consumption?), the bilingual HONEST ABBE (Trustworthy French cleric?), the grim RUSSIAN RUBBLE (Crimean war consequence?), the grimmer BOMB BAY DUCK (Weaponized waterfowl?) — and no doubt there are others. I chose what seemed to me the best symmetrically fitting possibilities consistent with my groan-worthy pun revealer, and I'm delighted that the Times has published the result.

If you want more such puzzles, try my website, where I post a new one every Saturday.

Embarrassing how long I stared at COLD SOBBER, trying to figure out what the base phrase was. (Before I hit the revealer, mind you.) I took it as a personal challenge to decrypt the theme, from a single themer!

Fail.

COLD SHOULDER was my first thought.

Then COLD SLOBBER. (Can you tell I have a two-year-old?)

In the interest of full disclosure, I even considered OLD SOBBER. Wasn't that a sad movie where the dog dies?

Even sadder, when I hit the revealer, it still took a minute to figure it out — my mind went back to COLD SLOBBER. (GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR SLOBBERY MOUTH, JAKE!)

TO BE OR NOT TO BE has been played upon many a time for crosswords, including a clever rebus that came immediately to my mind, but I can't remember one exactly like this. There aren't that many double-B words that form other words when single-B-ified, so it's a tidy theme set.

I did find it odd that CHINESE CAB AGE was the only one that required parsing, but that's a minor ding.

Another interesting aspect of this puzzle is that it's one of the few containing repeated words. TO BE / OR NOT / TO BE — the question is, how many other puzzles have had repeats?

Not many.

I didn't find this one as interesting as other repeated word themes since this is more a by-product of a decision that facilitated easier crossword gridding. TO BE OR NOT TO BE could have been placed as one entry in the middle row, which would have been more elegant. But a central 13 is tough to work with, especially what with two other 13s to work around too.

Given that there's already a good amount of crossword glue needed — note AMAT squeezed in a tough section between themers, for example — I'm okay with the splitification, considering that keeping the full revealer together would have made things even messier.

Curious to see the next novel implementation of the famous quote!