New York Times, Tuesday, June 23, 2015

I actually watched "Road to Bali", for the first time this weekend on YouTube. For its time, it was a pretty hip movie, what with inside-Hollywood and political humor, a few cameos, and breaking the fourth wall to wisecrack to the audience. My favorite line was when our heroes were captured by a tribe of cannibals. As they were being marched to their certain demise, a little boy runs out of the crowd of people and starts tapping and poking at them, the boy's mother hurriedly pulls him away and says: "Now junior, I told you not to play with your food" — that was a laugh-out-loud moment.

This was the second puzzle of mine to be accepted for publication, so you can see that Will does really try to space out word ladder puzzles. I was looking for something that was a bit off the beaten track when researching "xxxx to xxxx" phrases, and came upon the film title "Road to Bali", which I had not seen until the weekend prior to publication. I did see "Road to Utopia" on TV as a child, but that wouldn't work unless it was an add-two-letters word ladder (hmm...).

My original grid lacked the two cheaters which turned two of the "L"s into "T"s (on the sides of the grid). I really liked that the original made the middle of the grid look like a letter box movie screen, but there were too many "uglies" without those cheaters. Will and crew provided the fix, and cleaned it up a bit. In the SW I was wedded to having COSTAR at 38-Down crossing DOROTHYLAMOUR and providing her clue, however that also resulted in a few less than desirable entries. The Roman numeral unfortunately was inoperable.

I did have my qualms about the theme being dated and possibly turning off younger solvers, who would think it, and by extension me, less than hip. My advice to them would be to make a visit to their local Blockbuster and rent a VHS tape of the movie, they might like it =).

Hope you enjoyed the solve.

Word ladder integrated with ROAD TO BALI, a film apparently in a line of "Road to …" movies. I had heard of BROMANCE before but not BROMANTIC COMEDY. Apparently it's a thing! I did find it odd that the term was used today to describe a movie made a long time before the term even originated, but perhaps that was the point. HOPE AND CROSBY were apparently way ahead of their time!

I like consistency in a crossword, so I found it bothersome to have HOPE AND CROSBY (last names only) along with DOROTHY LAMOUR (full name). It might have been one thing if DOROTHY LAMOUR had gotten top billing in the movie — it seems even weirder to have the third star get her full name while the first two get crammed into one entry.

I think I would have preferred to have just HOPE AND CROSBY across the middle of the puzzle, especially since this puzzle was about BROMANTIC COMEDIES, yeah? Only having three long themers might have felt a little thin, but with the word ladder I think it would have been fine.

Four themers in a 15/13/13/15 arrangement also makes for a tough job in filling. And when you add in those four-letter words in rows one and 15, it's even more difficult. As an example, note how tough it is to fill the bottom right corner, constrained by -EMEN and BALI fixed into place. I tried to refill it out of curiosity, and couldn't come up with anything cleaner. No fun to be trapped with a configuration that necessitates gluey bits from the start.

A 15/13/15 arrangement isn't easy either, but in this case it would have given so much more flexibility in filling around those pesky word ladder rungs.

I like word ladders every once in a while, and I much appreciate an additional element so it's not just a boring old word ladder. So using ROAD to BALI is a nice touch. Having the ROAD to BALI go down a diagonal would have been even better — forming a sort of connected road!