New York Times, Tuesday, July 1, 2014

You don't usually see a repeated word in theme answers. Lucky for me, Will accepted this one. I hope solvers sing along. 25-Across is one of my all-time favorites.

I'm happy that Will kept my clue for MACYS, which I submitted in the past but was changed to "Parade organizer." (Made sense; it was for the Sunday puzzle before Thanksgiving.) I have a distinct memory of my sister turning to me in the back seat of my parents' car as soon as we spotted a billboard you could see from the Long Island Expressway. "There it is," Jeanne would say. "If you haven't seen Macy's, you haven't seen New York." As I remember, it was just one line of block type, all capital letters, across the top of a building in Queens. It left an impression.

My crossword app is still in development and hopefully will be out by August 1st.

I have to admit, I was a bit worried, knowing about Gary's musical bent. Today he gives us five songs that start with DON'T, all clued as a plea, encouragement, etc. And I knew four of the five songs! I consider that a tremendous victory, given my kindergarten-level knowledge of pop music. More to the point, thank you Gary, for choosing songs that if I know them, most people probably will too. Big sigh of relief!

It still was difficult for me, in that while I know most of the songs, I couldn't tell you who sang them unless I had a million monkeys playing a million guitars. Even then I wouldn't be able to put Journey together with DONT STOP BELIEVIN. (But on the plus side, I would have a monkey army to do my bidding.) Anyhoo, perhaps cluing with a famous lyric would have been more memorable? I really enjoyed one of Gary's older puzzles for this reason. I dare you not to have fun when completing: "We gonna rock down to..."

The theme did feel a bit repetitive for me, given that after two themers I could automatically fill in the first word of the rest. Generally Will doesn't allow repeated words within a single crossword, so there usually needs to be a strong reason to do so. I like the change of pace. Perhaps only four themers would have felt less repetitive?

(That last sentence sounded less idiotic in my head.)

Man oh man was I stymied by RINGALEVIO. Even after reading the wikipedia entry, I still wouldn't know how to play. Perhaps this is something like Canadians not knowing DUCK DUCK GOOSE? Might it be a regional NYC thing I really should master? I'll get my monkey army working on that.

Assuming people do actually play RINGALEVIO, I liked Gary's execution. It's a rough job to fill a 11/12/15/12/11 grid. It actually helps to have a grid-spanning middle themer, as this gives you more flexibility in placing your black squares, so bravo to Gary for choosing this central entry. I would have expected many more gluey bits, but there's nothing that jumped out at me as I solved. Impressive given the degree of difficulty; a testament to Gary's skill.

Where I expected to see some roughness was between DONT BE CRUEL and DONT WORRY BABY, as there are so many down answers which must cross both themers. And I did have all sorts of trouble with PLUTON. I sort of enjoyed learning the word, but I would have really enjoyed it if it hadn't crossed TRAM, or TRAM had an easier clue. (I personally get TRAM / DRAM / DRAY all mixed up when it comes to mine vehicles.) In the opposite spot, I had a similar difficulty with DUMONT, but here I was really glad to have easy crossings. If it were a Monday, I might balk at the ETATS crossing, but NYT-readers probably ought to know Les Etats-Unis.

Now someone go write a song called DONT IGNORE ME OR FACE THE WRATH OF MY MONKEY ARMY. Hmm, that splits nicely into 14/14/14...