New York Times, Monday, October 28, 2013

I've done more than my share of puzzles (not all published) that reference nursery rhymes and songs but I guess that comes from working with kids for many years. I realize that dog-themed puzzles like this have probably been done quite a lot before, but when a child's song broke perfectly into two 15s, I saw the chance to use those two lines to border (as a kennel) four little dogs, each at the end of a "leash."

I've been lucky enough to have this gig for ten weeks now, and what a ride it's been. Having the opportunity to write about the NYT crossword every day, incorporating feedback from both the constructors and Will Shortz himself, has been a dream come true. I'm almost always able to find something I like and admire about a puzzle, and locating that nugget(s) of goodness brings a smile to my face.

So when there are weeks like this one, with all seven puzzles being solid to incredibly awesome, I can't believe my luck. It's like I'm a kid in a crossword blog. This here, folks, is a great week to be doing the NYT crossword.

On to today's puzzle. It's not often that a Monday puzzle surprises me, since Monday themes usually must be easy-breezy, appropriate for beginner level solvers. But I didn't cotton to today's theme until the very end and got a great a-ha moment when I realized four common dog names were hidden in plain sight at the end of four snappy phrases. Fantastic. The fact that my muddled brain led me to believe it was WHERE OH WHERE HAS MY LITTLE LAMB FLOWN elevated the a-ha moment when DOG appeared.

Not totally sure why I thought lambs could fly. I blame my shaky grasp of reality.

Beautiful layout today, which I appreciated even more after my e-mail exchange with Ed. I hadn't seen the grid-spanning theme answers as fences of a kennel, but now it's plain as day. And to have each of the four dogs at the end of a "leash" (tagged onto another word), that's pretty darn cool.

It might seem like the theme answers are basically equivalent to four grid-spanners, but the fact that the four middle themers are offset by one row makes it more that much more difficult to fill the grid (in general, the more spacing between theme answers the better). The trickiest places of a grid arrangement like this are usually the west and east sections because of the pile-up of parallel down constraints, and there are some compromises today: PLENA is a very tough word for a Monday, and the ETE/OREM/REATA pileup isn't ideal.

Additionally, EL AL and ALERO aren't very well known in the general American public (EL AL is an Israeli airline and the ALERO was discontinued in 2004). I'd love to see less use of these in Monday grids.

Overall, a really nice piece of work from Ed to start the week. Strong construction work and a great theme, opaque to me until the last lamb had flown.