New York Times, Wednesday, June 14, 2017

I hope only that the quaint, slightly out-of-the-ark feel of the revealer elicits a chuckle. With the theme juxtaposed against some rather fresh fill, like NSFW, CHABAD, FRITOPIE, BOOYA, GOOGLEIT, the puzzle seems to me to approach a nice balance between classic and trendy. Yes, there are some choices in short fill I wouldn't normally make, but the slew of newish-feeling entries, given the straightforwardness of the theme, seemed worth it.

The original theme clues only stated the date and type of work (1977 film, 1871 novel, etc.); the edited version here is much easier. Hopefully, the different categories of work allow for at least one of the answers not to be in the wheelhouse of the solver, so that some challenge remains.

Lastly, I am glad a female George (a nom de plume, of course) made the cut. Ms. Eliot is not unique here. I'm looking at you, George Sand.

BY GEORGE, it's theme entries that are "things written by a person named George." Fun idea. I liked the consistent cluing style of "year of work" + "last name" + "type of work." STAR WARS was an obvious one for this sci-fi ubergeek, and I even recognized MIDDLEMARCH — nice touch to feature a woman in what would otherwise have been a male-dominated puzzle.

(George Eliot was Mary Anne Evans' pen name.)

DECISION POINTS didn't come easy, nor did MY SWEET LORD, but they do seem crossworthy. (The latter more so, after the melody came back to me.)

Working with an eight-letter revealer can be surprisingly tricky. That's because revealers usually are best placed at the end of a puzzle, in row 13, forcing a big white space on the opposite side. Check out the roughly 6x5 chunk of space in the lower left — not easy to fill such a big swath well.

Andrew wisely added a cheater square in the very lower left (note: some editors hate this aesthetic), but these two corners still are the toughest part of the puzzle to fill. The lower left is pretty good, with just the tough IONESCO (not to be confused with ENESCO) and the odd UPCAST.

The opposite corner … SHA is a minor ding. ESL is okay. ACHESON crossing CHABAD crossing DOHA, though. Oof. I think all world capitals are fair game. But I don't know if it's fair to expect solvers to remember the spelling of Dean ACHESON's name, or to know the CHABAD organization. That crossing could be a killer for some poor solvers.

There's also more crossword glue than I expect from Andrew's work, ARIDE, YOO, ETTE / ATTA. That's because of the high theme density though — ETTE and ATTA are directly attributable to having to work with the ends of RHAPSODY IN BLUE and DECISION POINTS, for example. Perhaps one fewer themer would have been a better trade-off, although RHAPSODY IN BLUE is peskily an even number of letters, so it can't go in the middle of a 15x15 grid.

Overall, a neat concept. I might have given it the POW! if all the themers felt more like master opuses in the vein of STAR WARS. (Thank goodness THE PHANTOM MENACE is too long for a normal crossword grid!)