New York Times, Tuesday, June 21, 2016

I have always liked words games. As an adolescent, I played Scrabble with, and made crosswords for, my uncle — I am Quebecoise, so this was in French. Newly married, I moved to the States, and my husband introduced me to the Sunday NYT puzzles — he doesn't regret this, but he now calls the pastime torture. Of course, we also came up with theme ideas and, eventually, I decided to try composing one… And I was hooked!

I've submitted a number of Sunday ones now, but nothing ever "tickled." Despair! One day, I was lighting a fire with old NYT pages, and came across a weekday puzzle with a hidden "fee fi fo fum" theme. Just nonsense syllables… I could do that, and it was accepted to boot! And the review and improvement process was surprisingly enjoyable.

Fun idea, SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS split into pairs of syllables, then worked into regular words and phrases. A couple of neat findings, LISTIC hidden in HOLISTIC and CALI inside SCALIA.

With mainly short(ish) themers, Julie had a chance to incorporate some nice long fill. This is usually tough for a debut constructor to do, so I much appreciated entries like MAINSAIL, GUITARIST, ARTEMIS, even some NEXT DAY MANCINI. Spices up the grid.

I would have loved some crossword symmetry. It felt inelegant to have the syllables strewn about the grid, i.e. SCALIA and VALID not in symmetrical places. Holding to symmetry would mean LISTIC, the middle set of letters, would have to be in the middle row, in something like HOLISTICS or LISTICLES or WENT BALLISTIC. A long(ish) middle entry does make the grid design much harder, but I think it would have been worth it.

I also hitched at the division of AL-I-DO-CIOUS into AL-ID-O-CIOUS. There's no way to hide DOCIOUS into another word, which is unfortunate. I suppose you can make the argument that since it's a made-up word, you can divide the syllables however you want. But it is listed in some dictionaries now — with the AL-I-DO-CIOUS syallables. So it does seem wrong as implemented.

With seven "themers," there was bound to be a bit of crossword glue. I was pretty impressed at the start of the puzzle. It felt like a smooth solve up top, just RENTA seeming inelegant since it's always preceded by DE LA.

Unfortunately, I hit more of the SAULT, ABAB, HOS, SLO, ALIS, TSE (Tokyo Stock Exchange), PSS offenders as I went. None is that bad by itself, but in aggregate it felt like a lot. It is a tough grid design — so many areas are affected by two or more "themers," which create constraints pretty much everywhere.

Still, an interesting idea with some fun ways of hiding those special syllables.