New York Times, Wednesday, September 23, 2015

This is my 23^rd NYT puzzle dating back to May of 1992. Eugene Maleska preferred quips and so did I. Will Shortz liked them better in his early years — now not so much. Today he prefers word play. I have tried to adapt.

I call this puzzle "Fantasy Football." I had a lot of fun with the theme. Here are some ideas I didn't use:

• Chaperone? — Pass protection
• Spicy pekoe? — Kicking tea
• Like some crusts? — Offsides
• Play cuer? — Lineman
• Raise, as a skirt? — Hike
• Deodorant product? — Right Guard

When I submitted this puzzle last year I was doubtful of its acceptance. I had tried a similar concept a couple of years ago regarding baseball:

• Kamikaze mission? — Sacrifice fly
• Pre-dinner phenomena — Plate appearance
• Genesis? — Fall classic
• Flashlight bulb? — Battery mate
• Janus — Double header
• Purposeful stroll — Intentional walk

For my trouble I received a polite rejection. Shortz is so nice about that. How can you possibly be upset?

Shortz accepted this puzzle but was not pleased with the construction in the lower left corner because it included: The ____ closed (BAR IS). He improved on that, changed a few clues as he is wont to do and the final result is what you see. The release date was timed for the opening of the 2015 NFL football season; a nice touch. Hope you liked it.

Football terms interpreted in wacky ways, appropriate for the recent KICKOFF of the NFL season. FIRST DOWN as an appetizer and DEFENSIVE LINE as "I am not guilty" made me smile.

FAIR CATCH in the sense of "she's a catch" sort of worked for me too, although the tortured clue — [Beauty queen bride, quaintly?] — betrays that something isn't quite right. A catch is a great person, so how could a great person be just fair? ADDED NOTE: A frequent reader, Laslzo Denes, points out that "fair" here is in the archaic "beautiful" sense of the word, so this does make more sense.

RED ZONE was a little too similar to RED STATE for me, and KICKOFF as [Exile from?] … where's the wackiness in that? I think these types of themes work best when the wack factor is high.

I liked that the grid had some big swaths of white, the upper right and lower left in particular. That lower left is so clean, and even features a couple of nice entries like RENOIR and ADWARE. I wasn't hot on ESPECIAL in the upper right, wondering if the E was supposed to be left blank to make it SPECIAL? But ESPECIAL does seem to be a legitimate word.

What with the lowish word count (74), Michael does pretty well to keep the gluey bits to minor stuff like HRS and SRS. EFS I personally see as less minor, but some solvers seem to dig letters spelled out, i.e. ESSES, PEE, DEE. I don't understand that, but perhaps it's because as something seen much more in crosswords than in real life, it gives regular solvers a leg up?

EMOTER is also a controversial one. I don't care for it at all, but I can see how people in acting might think it's perfectly fine.

It would have been great to get some more snappy long fill like NO MATTER, but I do appreciate how relatively clean Michael kept the puzzle, especially with the unusual and pretty tough layout. 13-letter middle themers are so hard to cleanly build around.