New York Times, Monday, January 11, 2016

This puzzle's "rocky" theme and its long answers occurred to me after seeing a highway sign warning of falling rocks. The goal here was to merely make an accessible, early-week puzzle. As far as fill, ROCK LOBSTER is a musical guilty pleasure; it still brings a smile when I hear it and I was glad to fit it in the grid.

Insider note: the inclusion of ERODED was not in my initial fill (I tried EVADES/EVADED at first). The obvious connection with the theme didn't occur to me until halfway through a later fill attempt. Although I didn't feel a "reveal" was necessary, it's a nice little bonus.

In general, it's tougher than it looks to make a puzzle with clean fill that also avoids semi-obscurity. I'm not as pleased with ELY, ESTER or SADE, but they were fair costs for smoother areas. (LESSOR could have been LESSER for example, but REE just didn't work for me as anything common).

Neat progression: a BOULDER, ERODED into a ROCK, to a PEBBLE, finally into DUST. I like this theme type, especially when the concept isn't readily apparent until you hit the revealer. I appreciated how Howard disguised some of the progression, as BOULDER DAM (the original name for the Hoover Dam) doesn't automatically make you think of a giant boulder, and ROCK LOBSTER (awesome song!) also camouflages what's going on.

It would have been great to do the same with PEBBLE BEACH and DUST JACKET, but there's not really other usages of PEBBLE or DUST. And before I got to those, I had already hit ERODED, so the jig was up anyway.

It's a shame that ERODED wasn't the final across answer. I really liked this concept, but I might have loved it if it had kept the theme opaque all the way until the end. It isn't easy to work with a six-letter revealer in the last across spot, but, I think it would have been possible. Also, it feels inelegant to have ERODED in a random-feeling spot. I suppose a case could be made that it's kind of cool that ERODED intersects two themers, but to me, its placement feels a bit haphazard.

Nice job working in PAPER TRAIL and KNOW BY NAME, two snappy phrases, in the normal long down configuration. It's unusual to have long fill in the across direction, and I like that Howard worked in WINGSPAN and SMACKERS. (FOR A TIME feels more neutral to me, and I could go either way on LONESOME.) Long fill in the across direction can muddy up what's theme and what's not, but here, I like that it helps disguise things!

No surprise that there's some ESE/ETTE, ESTA, ESTER sort of stuff given how much long fill Howard worked in, but it would have been nice to get more variety in types of gluey bits. So many E, S, T letters in there, and two suffixes tend to make them stick out. Given the flexibility in the SE corner, maybe something like ETTA could have been better.

All in all though, a really nice idea that gave me a smile.