New York Times, Monday, September 9, 2013

Will ran a similar puzzle of mine earlier this year with a baseball theme, so I took a stab at a sister puzzle with a football angle, and he went for it. I also guessed he would run it in the first week of the NFL season. Glad to see it's a Monday.

Favorite clue: "Ones who've got something to lose?"

A note about ROULADE (43D) and AGORA (51D): I've heard some people say a Monday puzzle shouldn't have difficult words like these, but I strongly disagree. Of course a Monday puzzle is supposed to be easy, but it can have a hard word or two, if all the crossings are clear. This is especially so for a New York Times audience, which tends to be educated and intelligent. A couple of hard words, if they're interesting and useful, are not a detriment at all.

We have some very good puzzles coming up this week but I give the POW! to Gary for his strong early-week work. There's at least one other puzzle which I thought deserved a POW!, but to make a Monday puzzle stand out deserves recognition.

Monday puzzles are often derided by expert solvers as boring or tedious, so having a theme which is different (or does something to entertain) is important in order to satisfy a large range of solvers. In today's puzzle, I had to look back at the theme answers when I was done to figure out how they all tied together, and the fact that Gary hid the theme words in plain view (see highlighted words, which describe a touchdown play) brought a smile to my face.

Additionally, Monday puzzles are perhaps the most difficult to make, because the constructor cannot rely on using ORTs or spreading OLEO in order to complete a tough section. A perfect Monday puzzle should be super smooth, enough for the novice solver to not get too discouraged (by thinking they must learn a foreign language including ORTS and OLEO) and also have a reasonable chance of finishing. Will and I may disagree on the last point, but I maintain that creating early-week puzzles which new solvers can achieve the "I finished the NYT crossword!" high is important for the future of crosswords.

So let's look at Gary's fill. Not only does he keep the crosswordese to a minimum (AMAH being the misdemeanor), but he gives us a ton of 7-letter fill including RAKES IN, DIETERS, and HELLUVA. I'm with Will on ROULADE, it's something interesting to learn (and tasty!). AGORA I'm less positive on, but since it's an important feature of Greek history and we still see its influence in the word AGORAPHOBIA, it's legit.

Gary obviously put a lot of time and care into this puzzle. A great start to the week.