New York Times, Monday, May 19, 2014

On a good day my commute to and from work is two hours, and if the traffic gods are conspiring against me I can be stuck in the car even longer. To maintain my sanity I listen to a lot of podcasts. During one of these long car rides, the fresh fill alarm went off in my head after one of the guests on "Doug Loves Movies" used the phrase "phone it in". I made a mental note to check it against the databases when I got the chance. Then, realizing that my mental note would likely fail by the time I got to work, I told Siri to make a note.

Over my lunch break, I found no previous uses of the phrase. It dawned on me that it would be a perfect revealer for a puzzle of "phone" phrases. After working my way through duller theme answer possibilities like ROTARYCLUB, I landed on the livelier ones you see in the final version. My favorite is the exasperated WHATISTHEHANGUP.

Not wanting to phone it in myself, I worked six 9-letter long non-thematic entries into the puzzle. I am proudest of the debut words CHINASHOP (and its clue) and ICEBRIDGE.

Fun theme, five colloquial phrases loosely related to phones. DIAL IT DOWN, OFF THE HOOK, and PHONE IT IN, those are some snappy entries. Excellent material.

Michael gives us quite an ambitious grid, especially for a Monday puzzle. Not only does he give us five themers, all relatively long, but integrates SIX long downs, two pairs which are both adjacent to each other. I was really impressed by each of the six, ICE BRIDGE and SYMBIOSIS being really nice, and TATER TOTS easily my favorite. I don't see them around nearly as much these days, but TATER TOTS were a staple of my school lunches way back when. Nice to have good feelings evoked by a crossword.

This type of parallel down structure has its drawbacks, though. Let's take a look at ICE BRIDGE and COLOSSEUM. As with any sort of stack (as typical in themelesses), the crossings inevitably become difficult because of all the constraints. Here, RING A BELL and WHAT IS THE HANG UP already constrain this pair of long downs, so choice is restricted. And once you settle into a pair you like, there are often trouble spots with the crossing answers. Specifically, the ?RS? pattern has very few "good" entries to fit, OR SO or URSA being the only ones I'd personally be happy with. It's tough to avoid these types of issues with any stack of longer answers.

I would say that ORSK and KYL are a bit iffy in themselves. And when taken together, and in a Monday puzzle, are not my ideal. Nice to learn a thing or two from a crossword, but this little area felt a bit too much like work, for my taste. I'll note that my philosophy is shifting, in that I don't think Mon NYT puzzles should be accessible to ALL people. I do think that there's a balance though, and having ORSK and KYL in one little section could be a real turn-off for someone considering tackling the NYT crossword.

I did appreciate that Michael took care throughout the rest of the puzzle though. The opposite corner for example, is amazingly smooth for all the constraints. It's a small miracle anytime you can pull off a double-stack as good as CHINA SHOP and TATER TOTS with only a very minor price of UNES.

I liked the innovation in the theme. It's not often that we see a crossword that can't easily be classified into a theme type. I like the ones that stretch our ability to categorize. I think I would have loved it if the five themers cohered a little bit better, i.e. they all ended with parts of a phone or something, and if WHAT IS THE HANG UP had felt not as wonky. I wanted WHATS THE HOLD UP, especially given the clue, and I'm mixed on whether WHAT IS THE HANG UP is "in the language."

Overall, nice to see the boundaries for a Monday puzzle pushed. A little strained at points, but worth it to me.