New York Times, Saturday, May 31, 2014

I teach piano and composition for a living. After a lesson, a student mentioned POOL NOODLE in conversation. Because I lead a sheltered life, that was new vocabulary. Because I'm a constructor it was an omen and a seed!

Wow, what a workout today! I'm not skilled enough yet to solve every Saturday puzzle without a peek or two, but much of the time I can finish, given enough time. Today's however tied me up and tossed me down that flight of black squares running down the middle. A fine construction though, one that will help me become a better solver. That's one thing I like best about Saturday puzzles — even if you can't do them, looking at the answers to figure out how you might have been able to solve them is a great way to improve solving skills. I'd go so far as to say it's the best way.

John takes on a huge challenge today. Triple-stacking 10's is a difficult enough task. Often constructors must section of that triple-stack with lots of black squares. It's really tough to come up with a good stack that has clean crossings. Introducing a quad-stack makes things way, way more difficult. And check out what's going on in the SE corner: five long entries atop each other. I've never tried this, and I'm not sure I will. I find it just too difficult to come up with entries that are both snappy as clean.

So I was a bit nervous going in, wondering what types of entries I might see. I expected a lot of Wheel of Fortune free letters (RSTLN E), and there was a good amount of that. ESSENES is indeed a [Sect in ancient Judea], but it's not an entry a lot of constructors would get a kick out of seeing in their own construction. It does make things much easier up there though, what with the terminal E's and S's it allows for. I really, really liked the STREET FAIR / POOL NOODLE / ROUGH RIDER stack, and felt like ESSENES cheapened it a bit.

Where I thought the puzzle shined was in the other corners, the NE and SW. Having a much smaller space to work with, John works in great stuff. SMART ALEC next to TIGER MOTH and JERSEYITE, yes! And ONE LINERS with GO BANANAS and SNOW GLOBE, double yes! It's too bad there are a few NEBO ANON ENO AGR pieces holding them together, but overall those were so lively that I didn't really mind.

Sometimes Saturday puzzles go in the misdirectional wordplay direction (which is my favorite) but other times they go in a Stan Newman Newsday Saturday Stumper direction, and this one was the latter for me. With so many opaque clues like [Intensify] and [Cuckoo] and [Cuckoo] and [Some working parts] I found it very difficult to even get a toehold. At first I got frustrated, but quickly remembered that these types of situations are often the best learning experiences. An hour later, I finished. Okay, sort of finished. Okay, cheated! But the important point is that I went back and studied to admire all the good stuff that went into it. And perhaps the next Stumper-ish puzzle I'll solve with flying colors.

Or cheat. I'm okay with that.