New York Times, Thursday, August 21, 2014

This puzzle was originally submitted in February of this year, and it received a rejection with a proviso. Will liked the theme but not POLAR OPPOSITES because the PO didn't occur at the start of the second word as it did in all the others . Having a foot in the door, so to speak, I focused more intently on improving the puzzle. I replaced the offending entry with POLE POSITIONS but the resulting grid had all plural theme entries, which Will would not go for. To make the revised puzzle work I was forced to remove my favorite entry, POTENT POTABLE(S).

The original grid had all the themers running horizontally, I then realized that if I switched two of the them to the vertical they each serendipitously crossed the reveal symmetrically. The one remaining issue was a SW theme entry to balance POLE POSITION in the NE. After a few tries and some back and forth emails, Will accepted POISON POWDER in July, resulting in a surprisingly quick turn around for a rebus puzzle.

My favorite clues are 25-Across which is a newbie for a well-worn 3-letter word (LEI), and 44-Across. My favorite clue which didn't make the cut and admittedly was a bit of a stretch of the old "?", was 21-across clued as "Feathered friend?" as in "tarred and feathered". Will greatly improved on my cluing, especially for the theme entries, as usual.

A word on the "sausage making". I do not use any crossword compiler software to create my grids (I can hear the snark already: "Yeah we can tell"). I'm not of the graph paper and stacks of reference books school though, I do use an Excel spreadsheet for my grids and clues, and I use XWord Info and OneLook as helpers in weaving the words together.

I hope you like this puzzle, my seventh with a few more in the pipeline.

Rebuses have come a long way. Browse the huge list to get a sense for this genre's evolution (mouse over the dates to get a thumbnail view!). At first it was simply any set of letters without any reason. People then made shapes out of rebus squares, and even tied them to revealers. These days, rebi with rationale for why there are rebus squares are de rigueur — today, the rebus squares are literally PO "boxes." Neat idea, similar to CRUSHED ICE, etc.

I hadn't even noticed that the four rebus containers all 1.) use two words and 2.) start each word with a PO box. Now that's nice consistency and elegance. Sometimes I prefer less order in my rebuses, so I have to work at sussing out where they are, but in this case, I liked seeing the order afterward.

I did find POISON POWDER less compelling than the other themers, which all pop (warning, bad joke ahead), especially POPCORN POPPER. Do schemers put POISON POWDER in wine, or just poison? Methinks the latter, but I could easily be wrong. Now if it had been IOCAINE POWDER...

And as much as I liked the consistency factor, I could do without some of the glue that this constraint necessitated. MESNE and ITER are just two entries in a 76 word grid, but they're pretty old school. One is pretty easy to overlook, two feels crunchy. And having A MERE and A LAW near two of those PO boxes makes me wonder if removing the consistency to produce a smoother fill would have been better. Tough call.

Where will rebuses go next? Tough to say, but I'm looking forward to the next evolutionary step in their development. Evolve or bust!