New York Times, Wednesday, September 20, 2017

The pangram (a puzzle containing every letter of the alphabet) is nothing new, and indeed, when constructors put a Q or Z where it doesn't really belong — "doing it for the ‘Gram," in the parlance of our times — they may find themselves accused of lewd acts against a certain board game!

But I thought the restriction of having each letter appear adjacent to the one before/after it in the alphabet would make for a fun construction challenge that wouldn't require too many compromises in the fill.

I started off by placing the Q — I knew both PQ and QR had very few options, and figured it would be most efficient to use a single Q to cross the two answers near a corner. WX and JK were the other most challenging pairings, so I found a way to include them in longer answers with otherwise friendly letters, and then to cross those answers near a corner as well. I would have loved to include the RIJKSMUSEUM in Amsterdam, but couldn't manage it, and also that's probably a late-week answer.

It was Will and Joel's idea to include the note and bracketed numbers indicating alphabetic position, and I thank them for their editorial efforts. They also made one change to the grid, at NATHANIEL/INIS. My original submission had NATHANAEL/INAS, figuring that IN AS was a slightly more palatable partial. I had also considered ETAL/IT IS/JAE in that section. I watch a lot of basketball, so Jae Crowder is well-known to me, but is he crossworthy? I wonder which option solvers prefer.

The LYS/SSRS crossing is a bit ugly as well, but other than that, I don't think the grid shows too much sign of strain. I hope solvers feel the same, and that they appreciate the rationale behind this construction.

Even after finishing my solve, it took me a while to figure out the notepad's meaning. 25 consecutive things? At first, I thought it was alphabetical order, with BCE as #2 and CDS as #3? But #1 was … SCAB? Huh. I'm not sure I would have given it more thought if I was a typical solver, which would have been a shame because it's an interesting concept: each of the numbered entries contains two consecutive letters of the alphabet, covering all 25 pairs. SCAB, BCE, CDS, etc.

I probably should have figured it out from BMW X SERIES. What a cool entry, with its five consonants in a row! There aren't many *WX* entries to choose from, and even though I'm no car aficionado, I thought this was fun. JK ROWLING is a great way to get the *JK* sequence, too.

Given that there needed to be 25 theme answers, it's no surprise that there was quite a bit of crossword glue holding the grid together. Sure, there's a lot of flexibility given that AB has tons of choices, as does DE, GH, etc., but anytime you need to shove in 25 themers, it ain't going to be easy. That constructor's viewpoint made it a little easier to stomach AFORE, ENOL, INIS, KMS, LYS, SSRS, ROI, OF GOD, etc.

But just a little.

Many nice thematic entries in this grid, like POP QUIZ, BBQ RIBS, SWAYZE. But as a solver, it didn't have much impact for me — not enough to make up for the necessary compromises.

Perhaps if there had been a better visual element? Even highlighting the letter doublets? It would have been cool if all the doublets connected, snaking their way through the puzzle. Likely impossible to do, but fun to think about.