New York Times, Thursday, June 12, 2014

I've often used the phrase "the whole nine yards" in conversation, although I don't remember how or why it came into my lexicon. An internet search revealed that its origins are unclear, although it was probably derived from "the whole six yards", whatever that means. "The whole nine yards" first appeared in 1907 in a small-town Indiana newspaper, disappeared from usage for a while, and then reemerged during the 1960s. Other words have been substituted for "nine yards", most of which have no related meaning other than to fortify the concept that "the whole" is all inclusive. The oldest of these is probably "ball of wax", the origins of which are also obscure. Why some of these phrases have survived the test of time and others haven't is a complete mystery to me, and sparked my interest in the puzzle theme. Interestingly, I didn't use "nine yards" in the puzzle, because it would be a bear to clue.

Neat idea today, words/phrases which can follow THE WHOLE but can also stand on their own. Ultimately it falls into the "words that can follow" type theme, but it goes a little bit further to distinguish itself. I had no idea there were so many. BALL OF WAX wasn't familiar to me as a term on its own, but it sort of seems to Google okay (mostly it comes up with WHOLE preceding it). MEGILLAH was a neat one, a term I wasn't aware of. I'm going to start using it (randomly). It sounds so awesomely illicit.

A 72-word themed construction is a difficult task. A 72-word themed construction with five themers and a central 13 is just plan nuts! But Mark pulls it off pretty well. He quasi-separates the grid into four quadrants which makes constructing easier, as that allows him to work on one part at a time, without affecting the other three areas. It does hurt the puzzle flow a bit though, as I found myself working on one quadrant at a time. It's much nicer to flow through a puzzle without feeling dammed up, IMO.

One way to eyeball how hard a subsection will be to solve is to gauge how big the biggest white space chunks are. What would you guess, just by looking at the NW vs. the NE? To me, the NE would be much tougher, as the big 5x5 swath looks daunting. And indeed, the NW corner is pretty darn good, just a short ENOL and EDO as a price to pay. The NE is a little shakier, the awkward ALL IS holding the section together, right next to PLATER. Perhaps the latter would have been a little better as [Part of an Iron Chef's team] or something? Having been around a lot of metal workers in my first career, PLATER sounds a bit off. "The #$@$! moop who plates %#$%#!," more accurately.

Similarly in the symmetrical corner, A TOWN and RESHIP hold things together in the 5x5 chunk. A very tough spot to fill cleanly.

Each of those subsections would be a bear to fill. I'm pretty impressed with Mark has achieved in the SE, a smooth ride for me except for SERACS, which seems to be a real thing. I didn't know it, but after looking it up, it appears to be more a deficiency in my knowledge base than anything. There isn't any single outstanding entry in the SE (except for I got HUMIDITY instantly, thanks years of engineering classes!) but sometimes it's what's NOT in a puzzle (gluey stuff) that's most notable.

A couple of beautiful clues today. [Email attachment attachment?] is clever, alluding to the Trojan Horses that come with much spam. And [In groups] made me think about SORTED, ALIGNED, ORDERED, etc. so I loved seeing ELITES pop up. Now that's some good stuff. Non-question-marked-clever-clues, how I love thee!

Finally, it's a mystery why we see ERGS and DYNES all the time, but SNELL is hardly ever clued with respect to Snell's Law of Refraction. We get the uncommon ERG but a basic optics law doesn't get its due? How about a little love for the physics junkies out there? I'm not asking for double integrals or flux density calculations or anything, just slip one in under the radar for poor Willebrarod Snellius. Tee hee. What a tremendous megillah that would be.