New York Times, Thursday, September 4, 2014

When I saw FLIP ONE'S LID in the terrific February 8, 2014, freestyle puzzle from my friends Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber, the idea for this puzzle's theme came right away. I was pretty surprised to see from my online research that the theme hadn't been done before. Yes, there have been puzzles where the letters to theme answers are reversed in the grid — heck, there have been puzzles where whole lines and chunks of the grid are to be entered backwards. But none that I found played off of FLIP ONE'S LID and the obvious connection to hats. So I felt the idea was original enough to pursue.

In my first draft, I had "hat" in all of the theme clues, thinking that might be a helpful tip. But all those "hat"s made for awfully boring clues, so that's when I got the idea to be a little more deceptive with the theme clues. I'm glad I tumbled to this, as it's now my favorite aspect of the puzzle.

Looks like my clue writing is getting a little better — this time 42 of my 78 clues (54%) survived unscathed, and another 12 clues (15%) got minor plastic surgery. That means 24 clues (31%) are the original work of Will and his team. I still aspire for better, but I'm pleased with the overall percentage. I'm hopeful that some of the rejected clues were due to space constraints, but I should have been conscious of that myself when writing them. With 78 clues, one can't afford to be loquacious as in constructor notes.

Embarrassing confession: it wasn't until I had printed the puzzle for submission to Will that I realized I had FEZ (not backwards) in the upper-right corner. I even had a clue along the lines of [Shriner hat]! That kind of inconsistency is a rookie mistake, so I'm glad I caught it. The lesson, as always: Zs are sexy sirens, but they'll mess with you more often than not.

Sam flips his lid today, or more accurately flips his lids. Fun to uncover the crazy REKL??????? pattern and wonder what the heck was going on. Nice selection of a wide range of headgear, ranging from HELMET to SOMBRERO to ARODEF. Er, FEDORA.

Using short theme entries can be tricky. FEDORA and HELMET are such shorties that they risk getting lost among the fill. That wasn't an issue today since it became clear that there were reversed entries, but it did confuse me that the center across entry, DAYBOOK, wasn't part of the theme. I kept on wondering what type a KOOBYAD was, or what I had entered incorrectly. It would have been nice to have EIPKROP (PORKPIE) in that slot, with a current clue to Heisenberg's headgear in "Breaking Bad," for example. Incorporating one more themer would have been more work and potentially necessitated a little crossword glue, but I think it would have been worth it.

I always like seeing a constructor's personality come through, and maybe Sam's work shines to me in this way because he's one of the first constructors I met in person? The puzzle channeled Sam with OH BOY!, and LLB (Sam's a lawyer specializing in tax law) and even [Atlanta-to-Charleston dir.] was a nice nod to his recent move to GA. But the best is the clue for IRS — "Many Unhappy Returns" indeed! I really enjoy these inside looks.

Pretty nice grid, with just one spot that felt a bit wonky to me. As much as I love MIXOLOGIST, it constrains the west section quite a bit. Along with HELMET and YARMULKE, it forces three glue bits into place: TASSE, A RIDE, ERICK (who?). Perhaps there could be a better combination there with MIXOLOGIST in place, but perhaps a less snazzy entry there could have smoothed things out to better overall effect.

Very fun solve. I tip my tah to you, sir!