New York Times, Monday, September 16, 2013

As originally conceived and submitted this puzzle had all the clues begin with the letter "M". I suspect that either some of the clues were a bit too much of a "stretch" or that doing such created a disconnect between the difficulty level of the puzzle entries and that of the cluing as a whole (e.g. a Monday puzzle with Wednesday clues). I think Will kept about 16-17 of these clues. In filling the grid I always had to keep in mind the cluing restrictions I had set up for myself. It was a fun challenge, but I remember an old comment that a challenge for a constructor doesn't necessarily equal a fun puzzle for the solver, which is what may have done this idea in.

In any case, I do believe that each entry can have a reasonable "M" clue associated with it…mmmm…some solvers might even enjoy the challenge of finding a few for some entries themselves.

The Monday through Thursday puzzles this week were used last Saturday at the 6th annual BAC Fill crossword tournament in Oakland, Calif. Each year all the money raised at the event goes to benefit Families of SMA, which is dedicated to finding a treatment and cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy. More info can be found at www.bayareacrosswords.org.

Nice start to the week; Ed gives us a lively set of theme answers that haven't been seen much before. It took me a while to remember the ad slogan as "M'm M'm Good", not "Mmmm Good". Funny how much difference a single space makes.

I tried to think of potential theme answers that had two sets of double-m's, and only came up with a few. I find JIMMY KIMMEL hilarious, but including him in the same thought as MM MM GOOD...I'm glad Ed didn't go down this route. Mr. Kimmel, if you're reading, I'll take my 15% cut in unmarked bills for the skit idea.

The theme density today is high, with five themers including a 10/15/10 in the middle. Ed does a nice job of spacing them out to give maximum flexibility, but there are so many crossings between MUMMYS TOMB, MILLION MOM MARCH, and MAMMY YOKUM that the center section becomes tough to fill. O??U doesn't have many options (OAHU only), and surprisingly, neither does M??M (MAAM, MAIM, MARM). That duo constrains the fill heavily, causing the ?AA? pattern at 45A (BAAL). So many constraints in that region.

Finally, a discussion about the difficulty of using eight-letter revealers. Because a revealer is often best placed at the bottom of a grid (so it wraps up the theme at the very end), notice how by necessity the SW and NE corners are six white spaces across. Bigger sections are harder to fill, and a 6x5 swath of wide-open space can be especially challenging. Ed does a nice job in the SW with the beautiful LET ME SEE and just one partial (A TIE) as a blemish, but the NE suffers a little with the "roll-your-own" RETAB next to the poetic ENORM.

Constructing for a Monday is very hard. Most of the aforementioned entries would be totally acceptable on a Thursday, especially if necessary to carry off an ambitious theme, but for a Monday, they offer a very tough challenge for beginning solvers.