New York Times, Wednesday, May 27, 2015

This theme came about while I was on lunch duty (one of the less glamorous aspects of teaching in a middle school). While daydreaming, I decided I wanted to give crossword construction a shot and was determined to create a theme before the lunch period was over. Immediately thereafter, a student playfully accused another of stealing her friend's bag of chips: "Katie did it!" she said. Katie defended herself in the third person: "No! Katie didn't!" Beginner's luck for me. It's proven much more difficult since to devise solid themes.

Nancy Salomon was gracious enough to mentor me through the process of construction. I am so grateful for her sharing her expertise and for the incredible amount of time she has spent communicating with me.

Is today's theme consistent? It depends on how you interpret it. By spelling, no ... but phonetically, yes, it works.

KATYDIDN'T, MATHISN'T and BUSHWASN'T are pretty tight. These all add -N'T to familiar words/names to turn a verb at the end into a negative contraction. So far so good.

CATSCAN'T is slightly different, but not in a bad way. Because CAN already ends in an N, you only need to add -'T to complete the contraction. Probably not many solvers will be bothered by that.

The sticky example is ANIMUSTN'T, which adds -TN'T. That would be a deal-breaker — reason for instant rejection — if the theme's consistency were judged solely by spelling. But since the first T of ANIMUSTN'T is silent, this theme example works likes the others when said out loud. So the whole theme is consistent in that way.

Some solvers may object to the puzzle's loose phonetics. Technically, MATHIS ends in an "s" sound, which turns into a "z" sound in ISN'T. Also, the "a" sounds in BUSHWAS ("ah") and WASN'T ("uh") aren't quite the same. You have to say these two examples quickly for them to work.

I'm willing to do that for such a fresh, amusing, and otherwise super-specific theme.

Debut! Jim was nice enough to give me a ride back to the airport after the ACPT, and it's great to see his name on the byline today. He mentioned to me that it was tricky to think up enough themers for this one — once you use DID / DIDN'T, you can't really use it again.

Several of the themers amused me: MATHIS to MATH ISNT / BUSHWAS (synonym of "hooeys") to BUSH WASN'T / KATYDID to KATY DIDN'T all felt consistent. And while CAT SCAN to CATS CANT was different in it parsing, it had a fun transformation.

I spent a while trying to figure out ANIMUSTNT, though — it was a relief to read Will's note after I pondered this question. I get the wacky result of ANI MUSTNT, but its base phrase eluded me. For consistency sake, it had to be ANIMUST, right? But while ANIMIST and ANIMUS are regular words, ANIMUST was some bushwa. So, I think it must be an inconsistent themer, derived from ANIMUST. Er, ANIMUS.

After considering it further, it does fit if it's a looser sound transmogrification, as Will mentioned. It still feels awfully loose, though.

Tricky grid for one's debut. BUSHWASNT is one of those awkward lengths for a middle answer — 9, 11, or 13 are all difficult because they split the sides of the grid into upper and lower halves — but Jim does well to incorporate quite a bit of nice fill into those seven-letter slots. TINY TIM and SASHIMI are an especially nice pair. VAN GOGH is a strong one too, although it curiously missed the perfect opportunity to cross-reference to an crossing answer: his famous painting, The STARRY Night.

As much as I liked all those seven-letter entries, perhaps adding a pair of black squares somewhere to increase the word count to 78 and smooth things out would have been better. With so many three-letter words (23), it's important to choose mostly innocuous ones, more on the end of BET and OAR vs. CDL and OLA.

So, aside from the inconsistent themer (I'd love to hear from someone if an ANIMUST is a real thing!), a fun solving experience with the mid-length fill helping to balance out some of the compromises in the short fill.