New York Times, Thursday, July 4, 2019

Happy 4th of July to everyone. Perhaps you'll find a few sparklers in my Jimmy the 14th puzzle? (Jeff: it's Jim Hilger's 14th NYT puzzle — happy Bastille Day coming up in 10 days!)

This crossword's theme required a little bit of elbow grease for me to come up with a symmetric set of answers. I originally included a theme revealer, which I think was FORWARDED LETTER. It was suggested that we go without the 15-long central revealer, on the second try.

The second submitted puzzle version dropped the revealer, but had wordier theme clues, using a "...with a little recycling?" ending, instead of the "...concisely?" one chosen by the editors. Since this ended up being a Thursday puzzle, I can appreciate the use of a slightly more cryptic and "concise" wording for the theme clues. I suspect it may require a little bit more elbow grease, to solve.

My favorite surviving original clue: "No longer either hot or cool?", for PASSE.

Hopeveryonenjoys!

I didn't appreciate this theme until long after I'd solved the puzzle. My first impression: letters that repeat = not so interesting. It wasn't until Jim Horne asked if we ought to highlight the doubled letters for better effect (see grid below) that I realized the elegance of the finds. Let me write them out with spaces:

AIR RAID DRILL

SHORT TERM MEMORY

PAY YOUR RESPECTS

BEST TIME EVER

As a word nerd, I like the finds. As a computing nerd, I like the question it poses: how many phrases are like this? I won't bore you with the details of how I wrote the code to answer this question, but there aren't that many other phrases that fit this pattern. I hadn't appreciated that element of tightness in the theme. Now I do.

I wish the puzzle had shaded the four pairs of squares like we did. It would have given a better hint for solvers to dig deeper into what was going on.

Some problems with the gridwork. With four themers, I expect both a colorful and perfectly clean grid. It's true that SHORTERMEMORY is 13 letters, not easy to work with. But it's not that hard, either.

Assets: HOROSCOPE, LIFESAVER. DUST MOP, TAOISTS. ON A WHIM! ALL PRO. AGUILERA. SPECTRAL! Great stuff.

Liabilities: ENERO is a tough foreign word. ITER is great for smug longtime solvers who want to keep the club closed. SEATO is outdated. No one calls Poe EAP. EENS, SETA, SRAS.

I do appreciate the great bonuses. Way too many liabilities make it a bad trade-off, though. One simple patch would have been adding a couple of cheater black squares. Imagine PRICERS → PRICED, ITER → IDED, ITO → IDO. That would have been a huge start to cleaning things up.

A shame that the essence of the theme wasn't more readily apparent. It's a solid, tight concept seeking a better presentation.