New York Times, Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Last fall while at an art fair, I ran across these Shakespeare, Socrates, Sartre and Sinatra "quotes" twice in one day. By the second time, I realized that the number of letters in the phrases matched — and a possible theme was born. I suspect like most readers of the constructors' comments on XWord Info, we observe things around us through a unique lens of letter counts, interesting words, and other filters of a crossword constructor.

Of course Will and Joel greatly improved my clues, changing about half of them and tweaking the grammar in a handful more. I originally assumed this puzzle would appear on a Monday (perhaps Tuesday) if accepted, so their editorial assistance tightened the consistency of the degree-of-difficulty of the clues. As a still relatively inexperienced constructor, I find setting the right tone for clues as one of the more challenging aspects of construction. I often get enamored with a possible clue, without fully appreciating whether or not it is appropriate for a given puzzle.

In the end, I hope solvers share the same moment of amusement from the theme that I did when I ran across it (twice!) last fall.

Singing, strangers in the night … doo be doo be doo … wait. DOO BY DOO BY DOO? It took me a long time to figure out that it's DOOBY DOOBY DOO. As nonsense words, there's probably no "correct" spelling. Considering the rest of the themers though — TO BE OR NOT TO BE, TO BE IS TO DO, TO DO IS TO BE — man oh man, did I want DOO BE DOO BE DOO.

Ah well.

A puzzle without super high theme density — four medium to long themers — can definitely be executed in just 72 words, while incorporating colorful and clean fill. If done well, it can allow the constructor to toss in a ton of snazzy bonus fill. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it though, since constructors who chose to do this accept all sorts of compromises.

Today, I thought Pavel did a great job of this construction feat, introducing a ton of long fill like DEAR SANTA, CALL SIGNS, CIABATTA, RARE BOOK, etc. while keeping his gluey bits to a minimum. With just a bit of SSTS ABED ENTR, this 72-word puzzle turned out smooth.

I really appreciated that effort today. The theme got to be a bit repetitive, so all the bonus long fill really helped keep my attention.

The theme felt a bit loose for my taste — variations on BE — but there was something fun about the Sartre and Socrates quotes mirroring each other. I don't totally get what TO BE IS TO DO or TO DO IS TO BE means, but they sure sound philosophically deep.