Really nice work today from Joel. With this puzzle, he's hit for the cycle twice now. Impressive feat, showing his well-rounded ...
read moreReally nice work today from Joel. With this puzzle, he's hit for the cycle twice now. Impressive feat, showing his well-rounded skills, strong at everything from early-week puzzles to tricky Thursdays to themelesses to Sundays. It's like seeing Seattle's own Ken Griffey Jr. come up through the ranks.
Onto the puzzle. Joel chooses to go with a grid design heavier on the 7's than usual, but takes great care in selecting some goodies for those slots. Often times 7's can be a bit boring since it's harder to find snazzy multiple-word phrases for that length than for 8's or 9's or 10's. But UV INDEX is really nice, what with the V and the X, and IPHONES has such a fantastic clue to it. I wrestled with [BlackBerry routers] for so long, trying to figure out if the answer was CISCO or NETGEAR or something. Really nice a-ha moment when I finally realized that it was talking about a rout, as in steamrolling one's opponent. The fact that this clue didn't have the giveaway question mark after it made it even that much better.
And what a great selection of longer answers. INFOMANIA is up to date, describing a recent problem with constant Twitter-checking, and JELLO SHOT is so good. The answer, mind you, not the thing itself, which is disgusting. Wow, when did I get old? Don't answer that.
Joel does well to pack so much good stuff in, and he manages to toss in so many Scrabbly letters. The six X's aren't the most in a NYT themeless, but they sure add a lot of spice.
There were a handful of glue-y entries though. I thought it unusual to see XKE, a five letter-partial in AND BE, GENL, ESOS and an IDEM in one of Joel's puzzles, especially for a 70-worder. Totally normal for a themeless puzzle — I've just been wowed by some of his other stuff a little more. The unfair price of being a standout constructor is higher expectations.
Finally, my favorite clue of the day was a real beaut. [Show horse] seems like it should clue ARABIAN or something, right? But no, it's a great misdirection, guiding the unwary solver away from the horse on the TV show, MR ED. Really well done.