New York Times, Thursday, April 21, 2016

This puzzle was the product of a moment of clarity while watching a football game: "Wow, saying FALSE START is hard!" You should try it--try to say "false start" at normal speaking pace while ensuring that the S sound in "false" is really distinct from the ST sound in "start." It's hard to do without making the ST sound into more of a D sound, at least for me. A linguist might be able to explain why, but since I'm not one, I won't try :).

I decided I'd try to find some other examples of two-word phrases that had that same kind of sound combination. Turns out, they're pretty rare--the six I include here are very nearly the only ones I was able to come up with (although STANDS DILL/STAND STILL and LAS VEGAS DRIP/LAS VEGAS STRIP were other ones I liked a lot). It's as if phrases that are hard to enunciate are uncommon or something! I guess I got lucky that these six are not only pretty amusing, but that they also are of symmetrical lengths. Good fortune for me!

One other thing of note here: the astute among us might notice that PLEASE and NOSE have Z sounds instead of S sounds, strictly speaking. I fretted something fierce about this--are S and Z sounds "close enough?" However, I happened to read a note by Will on XWord Info for another puzzle that also did some wordplay on S sounds, and, to heavily paraphrase, Will essentially said that the difference between S and Z didn't bother him in that case because they largely worked equally well to accomplish the wordplay. So, I decided it was worth the risk, and I guess he thought so too. So not every "inconsistency" in a theme is one that dooms it, which is a point well-remembered for us constructors!

Sound change / letter substitution, ST going to D. Some funny results in FALSE DART and my favorite, BLUEGRASS DATE. There are a ton of words that start with ST, so it was nice to see Alex incorporate six themers.

Aha, you might have missed themers five and six! They're tucked in the upper left and lower right--NOSE DUD and ICE DORM. Unusual locations. At first I wondered if a NOSE DUD was something the kids these days were piercing / inserting / snorting. And ICE DORM … maybe that's some sort of Icelandic thing? Even though it's kind of neat that pairs of themers intersect, I would have liked those short 7s to stand out better--perhaps at 1-Across and the last across position.

Alex uses a lot of long slots, although some of those felt like they left untapped potential, ANNOTATE, MASSAGER, IN STORES, ETHERNET all feeling more neutral than assets. But I really liked POWERED ON, looking curiously like POWER DON (Mafia bigwig). I also liked PROTÉGÉ, I AGREE, GUNSHY, and OIL TYCOON was my favorite. It was neat to get T BOONE crossing it — I like fortuitous crosses like that.

I wasn't sure about T BOONE as an entry itself though. Is that what people call him? I'm so used to the full T. Boone Pickens that just T BOONE by itself feels like a six-letter partial. Any friends of T BOONE want to weigh in?

Also a bit odd was SKYEY. To my surprise, it actually is in the dictionary, as "adjective form of sky." And Updike writes "a sheet of skyey water." I may have to try it out and see if people around me flinch.

As with most straightforward Thursday themes, I was left wanting more trickery, more of an a-ha moment. It is asking for a lot to want a fresh, tricky idea every single week (and Will has gone on record saying that all he wants out of a Thursday is for it to be harder than a Wednesday), but a guy can wish.