New York Times, Thursday, March 6, 2014

This is my first Thursday puzzle so I'm very excited for everyone to see it. It's especially exciting to have my very own creation join the group of NYT rebus puzzles. On that note, there have been other rebus puzzles using "box" phrases as revealers, just like this one. One thing that makes mine a little different, I think, is that each rebus box is a different word. I also like how I was able to split up both ZEST and TONE in two different ways; not so for LAVA and DIAL, but at least there's some symmetry there — two split up differently, two not.

I also like the long answers for the most part, though PASADENA, BRUSSELS, and BRATIS[LAVA] might be a bit too much geography for one puzzle. Also RA[DIAL] TIRE and PIS[TON E]NGINE are a bit bland, especially for theme answers. Oh well. Overall I'm very happy with the puzzle, and I hope you enjoy it too!

Rebus with a revealer; SOAPBOX describing the four different brands of SOAP crammed into individual BOXes. In today's age of ever evolving crosswords, straight rebuses without a revealer have sort of run their course. I like that Dani has given us a reason why he's made these four rebus squares; it adds a nice touch to the puzzle.

I found it a lot of fun sussing out where the rebus squares were. Once I uncovered the central answer, it was a bit of a puzzle hunt to go seek them out (and boy, do I like puzzle hunts!). For me, the hardest one by far was TONE, because I had never heard of that brand. The others gave me a nice a-ha moment, but TONE was a bit of a head-scratcher. (And no, I wasn't scratching my head because I don't use enough soap, thank you.) It was too bad, because being a mechanical engineer at heart, I loved the PISTON ENGINE entry. I was amused to hear that it was one of Dani's least favorite themers. Funny how widely tastes differ, eh?

In general, if there are only a few rebus squares, I really appreciate when they get placed into the longest answers of the puzzle, in snazzier entries. ZEST inside SEIZES THE DAY and BRONZE STAR, that's great. Really nice moment of discovery. DIAL in DIALECT... not as much. Although I did admire the craziness of LAVA in BRATISLAVA and BAKLAVA. That was pretty cool.

With essentially nine theme answers, the fill is bound to suffer a little, and we see signs of it in the awkward I HAD A (for whatever reason, several close constructor friends and I detest the five-letter partial — go figure), A NUT, WNW, WPA, ROKS sort of stuff. It certainly wasn't that bad, and definitely worth the trade-off for me.

Some solvers will not even notice though. A very nice reader, Lois Padawer, wrote in a few weeks ago with a comment after I pooh-poohed A MOLE in a grid: "I just learned about 'Whac-a-mole' a couple of weeks ago, as it was the name of an episode of The Good Wife (the name of the episode appears when you click "Info" on Tivo). TV is not usually one of my favorite categories, but you never know where pleasure will come from in a puzzle."

So yes, partials are generally inelegant, but they can serve their purposes. And it's always good to get a dose of humility, perhaps a good reminder that I don't know everything; that I always have more to learn today than I did yesterday. And that's okay.

Ahem. Note the word "perhaps."