New York Times, Monday, June 3, 2019

Too bad this one wasn't run during the (GOOD) DOG days of summer. (That may be for the best since there are no such things as good dogs days of summer, says this self-professed West coast weather wimp.)

I was curious if this set of commands — STAY, HEEL, COME, SIT, SHAKE, DOWN — was a tight, complete set. FETCH and BEG were the one other one-worders that felt like they belonged. Hard to find phrases that can hide them, though, so I like the set Lynn chose.

The themers are a mix of one-worders, hyphenations, and two-worders. I would have preferred more consistency, which should have been possible, given how common all six words are. But at least Lynn didn't have five of one and a single outlier. A diverse mix is the next best thing to 100% consistency.

Not as smooth and newb-friendly as a usual Lempel grid. Hmm. Why is that?

One of the curiosities of grid design is that it's often difficult to start with an 8-letter themer. 9-10 letters is ideal.

But Jeff, doesn't a longer themer introduce more constraints? Surely, the shorter the better?

(You were expecting me to drop a "length matters" joke, weren't you? I admit, I thought about it.)

Check out the NE and SW corners. See how chunky they are? That's primarily dictated by the eight-letter MAINSTAY forcing a six-square width in the NE. It's possible to break up that space more than Lynn did, but that's not a trivial task. With that much space, it's tough to avoid a couple of clunkers like METRES and the less common EGO(t)ISM, or toughish entries that might trip up newer solvers, like MEDINA / CLOVIS / ANISE.

I did enjoy some of the longer fill — OUTCAST and SEMIPRO were fun bonuses. Note Lynn's pro use of cheater squares at the end of OUTCAST and beginning of SEMIPRO. These made her filling job easier at the expense of shortening those long slots, but she was still able to make good use of them.

As a dog-lover, I enjoyed the overall IDEE. A couple of longer themers like SPIKED HEEL or DOUBLE DOWN could have both brightened and eased the solving experience, though.