New York Times, Thursday, June 14, 2018

Anyone who solved my NYT puzzle from Sunday 1/18/2015 knows that I like to add new features to traditional constructs like word ladders. Curiously, though, the current puzzle idea came about when I wasn't actively seeking candidates for a word ladder; the concept 1-A + 44-A + 78-A was mentioned on the news one day, and the daydreaming half of my brain immediately noticed how easily 1-A could transform to 44-A. Suddenly, the analytical half of my brain engaged itself with the challenge of getting from 44-A to 78-A. No real difficulties there except for avoiding repeat words and proper nouns. (Meanwhile … I sometimes wonder what vital information I might be missing all the time when daydreaming along with the news).

The puzzle construction challenge was to lay out eleven four-letter words on successively lower rows of a 15x15 grid. I added the constraint of forbidding any non-thematic Across entries from being four letters long. The thematic content was spread out left-center-right to minimize the impact on the Down entries. So, the grid layout alone offered good chances of acquiring lively surrounding fill. In the end, I was especially happy that the longest entries were lively … and mostly unused before.

A few months after this puzzle was accepted, David Kahn had an NYT puzzle published (on 8/30/2017) involving a similar theme: a word ladder consisting of nine five-letter words with a thematic element at the halfway point. I was happy for David's success, but I thought it meant that my own puzzle would probably stay on hold for about a decade. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. I'm guessing that stylistic differences — including the absence of clues for the ladder words — provided enough freshness to receive a normal publication date.

Word ladder, from ROLL to CALL to VOTE. That's a fun concept, linking these words in an interesting way.

This might have been better as a straight-up word ladder (like in a Penny Press word games magazine), not as a crossword puzzle. Word ladders have been done to death in crosswords, so you have to do something amazing to make them stand out.

I get that Will simply wants to make Thursday puzzles harder than Wednesday puzzles. But it was SO much work to uncover the unclued steps of the word ladder, and for such little payoff.

I would have given up halfway through if I didn't feel obsessed with completing the puzzle every day.

I did appreciate Joe's efforts to try to snazz up the solving experience, working in great bonuses like ROYAL BLOOD, AERIAL PHOTO, CHOKE COLLAR, LOVERS LEAP — that's great stuff! But it wasn't enough to get past 1.) all the crossword glue necessary to hold all those short themers together, or 2.) the mismatch between how hard it was to fill in the rungs of the ladder and how little of an a-ha moment there was.