New York Times, Tuesday, July 14, 2015

KEVIN: I'm happy to be collaborating with Brad Wilber on his first themed puzzle in the NYT. Brad's a very experienced constructor, but he's only had themelesses in the NYT up to now.

I have two kids: Tim (age 13) and Kate (age 11). When they were small I used to read stories to them at night before they went to bed. We had many favorites that we read over and over, many of which were Dr. Seuss books.

My only regret about this puzzle is that I couldn't figure out a way to work in THE CAT IN THE HAT. That's 14 letters, which is sometimes an awkward theme answer length to work with.

I want to give credit where credit is due. Joel Fagliano, Will's editorial assistant, came up with the idea to use quotes from the books as clues, which I think is genius.

BRAD: By the time I came on board, Kevin had already designed the grid and filled it. I was immediately impressed with the presence of five theme entries plus a revealer. Kevin was concerned about some nose-wrinkling incidental fill (I remember RRR crossing RRS, for example), so together we did some "doctoring" of Dr. Seuss. I brainstormed different ideas for some of the seven-letter entries that crossed three Seuss titles. We tinkered with the upper middle and lower middle, especially, and did some sprucing up of corners.

Helping write Tuesday clues is kind of new ground for me, but we seem to have done all right based on what the final draft looks like!

This puzzle tickled me. Perhaps it's the piles of drivel that I read to my daughter that make Dr. SEUSS stand out? Not all his work is amazing, but so much of it makes reading board books (over and over and over) at least palatable. Love the "Because after all, / A person's a person, no matter how small" quote from "Horton Hears a Who," for example. It's easy to make rhymes, not so easy to make ones with a neat story and a flowing meter.

Kevin and Brad did a nice job of getting in a good amount of longer fill without introducing too much glue. I love MALE EGO, the easily bruised thing, and it's nice to see the full EMO BANDS instead of the usual EMO. I also liked getting Brad's erudite vibe in the mid-length stuff: PRECIS, NEWELS, MENSA, and ABSCAM, thankfully updated with an "American Hustle" clue.

I did notice a ton of 3-letter entries, which made me feel like I was switching from one answer to the next awfully fast. There are a whopping 28 of them, which explains it. Thankfully, most of them were innocuous, with just a bit of TES and UNA, and ABA and ANA kind of things.

I would have also liked to have the DR in Dr. SEUSS as part of the revealer, or at least SEUSS positioned in a central or final across slot. Tough to do with five themers, though.

Most of the time, I'm not wild about puzzles that have most of their oomph in the clues, but seeing snippets of Dr. SEUSS did it for me — beautiful idea. I'm big fans of both Brad (who publishes my stuff in the Chronicle of higher Education) and Kevin (who I roomed with at the ACPT two years ago), so I was glad to see a solid and entertaining Tuesday puzzle of out their collaboration.