New York Times, Monday, May 22, 2017

Although I was thrilled to receive Will Shortz's notification that my puzzle would publish today, I was even more thrilled to learn that my daughter in California just gave birth to a baby boy, Orion. We'll be headed out there next week.

I'm a math professor at Ohio State, two years away from retirement. This is my first solo puzzle, but I constructed a couple of Thursdays in 2009 with my son Stephen. The puzzle's theme stems from his great enthusiasm, way back in elementary school days, for Swiss Army Knives. He made a special school project full of arcane information about them, printed on the hinged paper blades of a gigantic knife.

Stephen and I went to ACPT together a few times; while I stayed consistently in the middle of the pack, he kept getting better, totally kicking my ass. We haven't managed to get back since the arrival of his own little boy Charlie, now 2 years old.

A little bit of everything in this puzzle, riffing on the SWISS / ARMY / KNIFE. As an engineer in my first career, I appreciate a multi-purpose tool that covers most of one's mechanical needs. And as a crossword lover, I appreciate a puzzle that covers one's solving needs: some good theme material, some good long fill, and not too much gluey short stuff.

I tried so hard to make that analogy work. Sigh. And I call myself a writer in my current career …

I liked the idea behind this one. It was wonky to get SWISS / ARMY / KNIFE split into pieces, but I'm sure it made the construction easier. It also allowed Gary to work in some great long entries like EXORCISM, RACE CARS, and NOAHS ARK, since he didn't have to work around SWISSARMYKNIFE through the middle of the puzzle. What lovely bonuses for a Monday puzzle!

The top half of the puzzle was pretty smooth. ESSES wasn't great, and that WOTAN / OTERI cross might be a killer for some. (I'd personally try to avoid that for a Monday puzzle, but I think it's fair … ish.)

But the bottom half started trickling in some STE. TRA. ANO. And the dreaded SST (supersonic transport, so outdated, and impossible for newer solvers to infer.) On the whole, not bad, but not the Monday-smoothness I prize.

Gary made a reasonable trade-off, though — a lot of long bonuses for a splattering of crossword glue — one that might have played better for a mid-week puzzle.

A neat idea here, but I would have loved an extra layer. How cool would it have been for SWISSARMYKNIFE to run across the middle, and have the implements running through it vertically! Typically, this sort of interlock is hard (to impossible) due to crossword symmetry requirements, but here's a rare case where asymmetry would have actually been desirable. Would have been such a neat visual — the odd implements sticking off the SWISS ARMY KNIFE. That would easily have won this puzzle my POW!