New York Times, Monday, November 7, 2016

Considering my day job (ophthalmology) and the fact that "I SEE" is the tenth most common four letter entry in crosswords, it's a wonder it took me so long to come up with this theme idea. Four of these theme entries had never appeared in a NYT crossword and two had never appeared in ANY big name crossword, but fortunately the XWord Info Word List had all of them. Internet cafes are on the wane, but ten years ago when Wi-Fi was less available they were big.

I submitted this puzzle by snail mail on 7/7/16, four months before publication. It was accepted on July 22, mostly because David Steinberg was doing an internship with Will and Joel and blasted thru boatloads of mail. Favorite clues that ended up on the editing room floor: "Spaceship-shaped thing from Mars" for M AND M, and "You can bet that they're wrong" for ODDSMAKERS. I suggested maybe cluing I SEE as [When doubled: "Aha! The puzzle theme!"], but I was outvoted.

Initialisms today, I SEE cluing us in to "two-word phrases that start with I and C." I thought Bruce did a nice job picking his five themers, ISLAMIC CALENDAR and INNER CHILD my favorites (not a surprise given that I still lick my plate when my wife isn't watching). INK CARTRIDGE gets a Jeff-shakes-fist-at-gol-durn-money-grubbing-printer-manufacturers BOOOO! Surprisingly expensive to replace, indeed.

I wasn't as big a fan of INTERNET CAFÉ as a themer-- although it has some retro appeal as an entry, initialism puzzle are old-school enough that I was hoping for something more snazzy, more now-in-the-moment, more juicy. Maybe an IRON CROSS (a friend of mine, Vic Chao, is a gymnast/former American Gladiator and I bow my head to him), a science-y IMPACT CRATER, a delicious IRISH COFFEE, etc.

I think some of Bruce's older puzzles have had too much crossword glue in them, so it was great to get this smooth product. UNAS is slightly wonky, as is ACS and REAIR, but they're minor. With five longish themers, that's a very good result — especially when you consider ODDSMAKERS, ART FAIR, AVIARY as extras. Good stuff, THANKS A LOT!

FESTAL is an interesting word. I didn't know it off the top, but I enjoyed learning it. Adding a pretty word to my arsenal made me feel ... well, festal.

My wife hates the word BONER. Not a surprise that I giggle at it and give it a two-thumbs up behind her back.

Bruce mentioned to me that he really benefitted from the XWord Info Word List in making this puzzle, which was great to hear — he told me that this was his first puzzle using the XWI list even before I solved it. Could that have affected my impression of it? Possibly. Should I have ignored that fact while doing the puzzle? Perhaps. Am I shamelessly plugging our word list? Absolutely!

With so much flexibility in theme choices, I really wanted five whiz-bang, super-duper entries. But a clean Monday puzzle with a couple of nice bonuses — hey, I'll take it.