New York Times, Monday, December 5, 2022

This puzzle came together fairly quickly for me — maybe because I had so few theme entries to choose from. With a theme set of 15, 11, 11, 7, and 5, I was eager to take a shot at constructing my first-ever grid featuring left/right mirror symmetry. This allowed for placement of the revealer at the bottom of the puzzle rather than in the middle of row 8 — the former being preferable to me as I feel it somewhat delays the a-ha moment for the solver. I also discovered that I love this type of symmetry since it is very aesthetically pleasing to my eye, even with the clunky Utah squares I ended up using on rows 10 and 11.

For other examples of symmetry (and asymmetry), be sure to check out the most recent blog posting Fearful Symmetry on XWord Info.

Happy solving!

DEPOSIT SLIP, SAN ANDREAS FAULT, HONEY BOO-BOO … easy day in "Name That Theme." No slip-ups for me!

Wait. MY BAD refers to four theme entries?

Swing and an OLE MISS.

Take a moment to admire the beautiful left-right (mirror) symmetry. This often allows for a happy face made of black squares, and I found myself smiling along. Great way to add a dash of solving pleasure.

Mirror sym isn't simply pretty, though — Tracy didn't have any flexibility in SAN ANDREAS FAULT 15 (few other fault lines are as well-known) and HONEY BOO-BOO 11, so regular symmetry would demand that __ SLIP and ___ MISS match lengths at 15 and 11. GIVE THE PINK SLIP 15 and JACKSON MISS 11 would work, but the former is a downer, and the latter's abbreviation makes it inelegant.

One way to make OLE MISS stand out is to place it in the center of the puzzle, ensuring that there isn't any Across fill that's 7 letters or longer. SHOT PAR and CABOOSE are outstanding bonuses, but they obfuscated OLE MISS.

Hardly a miss with the gridwork, which isn't always easy with left-right symmetry. The only entry that made me SALTY was LAIRD, which is potentially tough for newer solvers — at least, non-Scottish ones. Crossing it with YA-YAS is borderline unfair, as LOIRD and YO-YAS is a defensible guess.

Moving HONEY BOO-BOO down one row would help the south region since filling a constrained 4x5 chunk is much easier than a 5x5. Note that this would create four more three-letter words, though, and Tracy is already at 20 (editors tend to balk at 22ish). Always the trade-offs.

Entertaining Monday, and I appreciated that there was only one region of possible user ERROR.