New York Times, Monday, March 10, 2014

I love crossword puzzles! Unfortunately, I'm a lousy solver. (Case in point: when Jeff sent me this puzzle — and keep in mind that I Made It Myself! — I thought I'd give myself an ego boost and solve it ... managing to screw up at 25 Across. I wrote in TOP THAT, sheesh.) Ironically, my first puzzles were later-in-the-week jobs and I really wanted to make a puzzle for people like me. The inspiration? My husband's TOOL BOX. My favorite clue is [Skill needed when being asked "Does this dress make me look fat?] for TACT.

I hope people enjoy this puzzle. 'Course, as good ol' Qoheleth says? "Nothing new under the sun!"

Will wrote me on August 2, 2012, accepting this puzzle. I was thrilled! A cool Monday puzzle! Several months later (January 28, as a matter o' fact) I was pleased with myself for breezing through Jaime Hutchison and Vic Fleming's puzzle ... until I realized (gulp) it was the same theme! Or, at least, pretty darn close!

So for those o' you who think this theme is familiar? It is! :-)

Thanks for solving it ... and I hope those who attended had a great time at the ACPT! It was an honor for me to have made the tournament opener.

There are two camps when it comes to revealers (an entry which overtly explains the theme): some love them because they make everything crystal clear, some hate them because they leave nothing to the solver to figure out. I think a case can be made either way, but today I really like the fact that Kelly leaves out a revealer. The theme is simple enough to figure out (HAMMER, LEVEL, FILE, NAIL are all items in a TOOLBOX) that is was nice to sit back after I finished and have a little a-ha moment. Nicely done.

Consistency breeds elegance in crosswords, i.e. four themers which work exactly the same is awfully nice. I did appreciate that all four themers today hide their respective item, making it somewhat opaque as to what was going on (DOORNAIL wouldn't hide the meaning of NAIL at all, for example). Well done there. I did find it a little bothersome that FINGERNAIL was the only single word out of the four, and that ON THE LEVEL (such a nice phrase!) was the only themer with three words. It would have been nice to have more consistency there.

The pinwheel arrangement of themers doesn't often allow for much long fill, and today is no exception. It's difficult to work in eights or nines due to grid layout, especially when there's a central theme answer. Still, Kelly manages to work in TOP THIS! and ALL DONE! and STIFFS and OLD AGE, all really nice entries.

The fill is an interesting mix, from the 21st century GOOGLE to the oldies ELENI and ILIE Nastase and XENA the Warrior Princess. It skews a bit toward an older solving crowd, but that will make much of the NYT's solving audience happy. It's a tough job to satisfy every segment of the NYT solving population, so this one does a nice job for the old guard who take pride in knowing automatically what AMICI and AMAT and OBIS are. I personally tend to prefer puzzles that feel a little more modern, but a case could easily be made that puzzle ought to feel "classic," and that "modern" puzzles contain too much stuff that has no staying power. Two sides to every coin.

TEN KS is an interesting little entry. I only ever see them as 10-Ks (both as a race and as a SEC annual filing) so I'm not a fan of seeing it written out. But I know some constructors who like the craziness of how TENKS looks in a grid. I winced a little to see TEN KS and TEN in the same grid, but sometimes these things happen.

All in all, a fun Monday. I like that it made me work a little to figure out the theme.