New York Times, Monday, May 25, 2015

I am excited about my third NY Times crossword. This puzzle was inspired by a rather fabulous nail buffer that my friend Doris showed me. It has four sides, including "file nail edge," "smooth nail," and "shine nail." I added clip and polish, changed smooth to buff, and tried to think up some good theme entries. I especially like "train buff."

The grid was not easy to construct because the theme entries needed to follow in nail grooming order: clip, file, buff, shine, polish.

Coincidentally (?), this puzzle follows the Times' recent exposé on nail salons. However, Doris's inspirational nail buffer is meant for home use.

I submitted this puzzle in early July 2014, and it was accepted in late August.

I NAILED IT is a great phrase, lively and colorful. Here, it's loosely interpreted to describe the process of manicuring one's nails: CLIP, FILE, BUFF, SHINE, POLISH. At first I thought it was a "words that can follow X" type theme, since my manicure process involves just CLIP (wouldn't that be quite the boring two-entry theme!). Took me a second glance to see that a full process was happening here. Much more interesting!

Impressive to pack six themers into a Monday puzzle. It's usually difficult to place two themers over each other, as with VIDEO CLIP and CIRCULAR FILE, instead of staggering them left to right. So many down answers run down through both VIDEO CLIP and CIRCULAR FILE! There is some flexibility, as VIDEO CLIP could just have easily been AUDIO CLIP, MONEY CLIP, MOVIE CLIP, etc. — I wonder if one of those could have made for a smoother start than OBI ALAR PRIER SEP in that corner.

Still, given that the BUFF and SHINE and POLISH steps are necessary in the manicuring process (there's really a difference? he asked semi-facetiously), the fact that there are six themers will nearly always force some of those gluey bits. I was bracing myself for more to rear their heads after that start, but the rest of the puzzle is quite well executed. Very smooth; much appreciated.

I wasn't convinced that SOCIAL POLISH and TRAIN BUFF are in the language (less than 50K Google hits each), but they are self-explanatory. Easy enough to grok, even for Monday solvers (and I'm sure there will be some people wearing engineer hats blowing their train whistles in celebration).

Overall, the revealer didn't quite work for me, as it's a bit too oblique a connection between NAILS and NAILED IT, but it is a fun repurposing of language. And working in BABYLON and its Hanging Gardens is a nice addition to an already theme-packed puzzle.