New York Times, Tuesday, March 21, 2017

GEORGE: John started working on this puzzle in April 2015 but got sidetracked by the earthquake in Nepal later that month. In early summer, he sent me a prototype to ask for help. I was sure that all five tastes could be incorporated into 15-letter theme answers and made a new grid. We worked through eight or nine versions of that and sent the puzzle to a few people to test solve in late summer 2015. With their feedback we reworked the grid again and iterated fill changes through another half-dozen versions to what you see today. Submitted September 2015 and accepted in December of that year.

We were pleased to find a sweet spot for the revealer, TASTE, crossing two theme answers. It's nice to see that our clues for SCENE and OUTIE are in the final version, and we especially enjoyed Will and Joel's clue for PURE MATHEMATICS. Ours was {Goldbach's conjecture, e.g.}.

JOHN: In October of 2014 I made a puzzle and asked on a crossword discussion blog for testers. I got a gratifying number of very helpful comments, including a long email from George packed with suggestions and information and including a link to xwordinfo.com. (Jeff: my subscription is George's fault: when I saw my own puzzle in the "Analyze view" I was hooked.) George has been my mentor since then, and I owe the opportunity to appear in the Times today to him and his group of crossword friends.

The five taste sensations get spread through themers: SALTY, SOUR, BITTER, SWEET, and UMAMI. I've found that UMAMI isn't as well-known as I would have thought, but way back in school I did only learn about the four basic tastes. (UMAMI is Japanese, meaning roughly "savory.")

I learned the four tastes in a particular order, which I would have liked to see reflected in the themers: SWEET always came first, followed by SOUR, BITTER, SALTY. But that's not a strict ordering, so I don't mind the mixed-up order of the themers too much.

Impressive gridwork, considering that there are five 15-letter answers — rarely an easy task. In virtually every area of the grid, the down answers have to work through two themers, sometimes even three (UPTURNS, CHIMNEY, RIVIERA). So much inflexibility; so difficult to not have at least one section that's problematic.

I wonder if George and John started with the order of themers I mentioned, but realized that switching some of them around would produce better fill? If that's the case, I think that's a great decision, because the fill is so remarkably smooth for such rough constraints. Sure, there's the minor REL, ORA, ALTE, and the head-scratching IM MEAN (has anyone ever heard this uttered in real life?). But that's much, much less than I would have expected from a puzzle featuring five grid-spanning themers. Well done.

Overall, I wish there were something more playful to the theme. I'm not sure how else you could incorporate the five tastes into phrases, besides spreading them through themers like this. The first four tastes are easy — SWEET JESUS! for example — but UMAMI muddies the picture.

"There's no accounting for taste" feels just so, so ripe for wordplay! Accounting puns, anyone? Perhaps SWEET JESUS! or SOUR GRAPES or BITTER END or SALTY LANGUAGE could somehow be tied to accountants and audits? Maybe?

Maybe not, but this finance geek sure enjoys thinking about the possibilities.