New York Times, Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Not surprisingly, the seed entry was the revealer at 56-Across. CHUCK BERRY just struck me as a directive — the other theme entries came quickly after that.

Will liked the puzzle but wanted a few changes in the grid. I think we went through two more iterations before he was happy with the grid you see today. The clues for the theme entries at 17-, 33- and 56-Across are Will's; my original clues were perhaps a little too easy. To my delight, Will left almost all of my remaining clues alone — this very seldom happens!

I hope people enjoy solving this one!

I don't usually run puzzles in which the mutilated theme answers don't themselves make sense. But the reveal to this one was so charming, and the mutilations so clear, I made an exception.

CHUCK BERRY stars in today's grid, both as an entry and an instruction, to chuck BERRY out of four theme answers. These types of puzzles can be a little hit or miss since the results neither makes sense nor get kooky interpretations. It's a nice change of pace though, especially when something like HUCKLEFINN can't get much of a wacky clue.

A 72-word themed puzzle is tricky to pull off. Doing that with a central 11-letter entry is even more audacious. Giant white spaces loom in each of the four corners, each one a difficult task to fill colorfully and smoothly. I really like what David's accomplished with the left side of the grid. Neither the NW nor the SW corners have ultra-snazzy entries, but they also don't have much glue required. And entries like TOUCH UP, BIKINI, TYPESETS are pretty darn good. Not themeless-quality material in my book, but sometimes smoothness beats snazziness.

And the right side of the grid turned out pretty well, too. The old ELOI are lurking up in the NE, and after I looked a few things up, I thought the SE turned out well too. I didn't realize that ANODYNE was now a general term for pain-reliever, and my total lack of fashion sense made BOLEROS a head-scratcher, but they were both interesting to learn.

Where I might have made different decisions: in the north and south. I never heard SONE at all in my time as a mechanical engineer (although I didn't get too deep into acoustics), and this region has many different options. The south is harder since the beautiful RED HOT make the area less flexible, so that's a more subjective area in my book. Does HONEY / OTOES produce a better result, for example? That does include OTOES and CEE — is that pair better or worse than OTROS and UKR? I think so, but my Ukranian friends would likely disagree. Subjective decision there.

Wide-open puzzle with a themeless count, making for a tough but interesting solve. I was so happy to realize I actually knew a theme answer, Prince's "Raspberry Parade." D'oh!