New York Times, Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Does CHOPPED LIVER go bad after two years? I hope not. That's how long this puzzle has been waiting for publication. In the acceptance email, Will's assistant (at the time) said the fill was good and Will was happy to give it a thumbs up, but this kind of theme was getting overdone. So either I just slipped in under the wire or I'm the guy who killed the genre.

My clue for NOBEL was [___ Prize (Tutu won one)]. I realized at the time it was an unnecessarily fussy clue, but I loved the sound of "Tutu won one." Maybe I should play 2211 in the daily lottery today.

My Aunt Annie, who thinks I use too many sports and popular music names in my puzzles, will be happy that I classed things up a bit with ROSSINI and HENRI Matisse.

ZIG and ZAG landed in opposite corners — for no particular reason. And I assure you that INHUMAN leading directly into REX is not a reference to anyone in particular. Honest.

I'm terrible at cryptic crosswords. Even looking at the answer grid, I usually can't figure out WHY most of the answers make sense. Part of it is that there's a huge variety of clue words that indicate "anagram," and I miss 95% of them. CHOPPED LIVER = mix up the letters in LIVER, really? Cryptic crosswords are aptly named!

I've highlighted the mixed-up LIVERs below. I had no idea they were there during my solve, so it was kind of fun to go back and locate them. It does seem like it'd be fairly easy to put one of these anagrams inside a themer though, so I would have liked something a little tighter — perhaps having all the anagrams at the front of the entry, or at the rear, or consistently smack dab in the middle?

I did like the snappiness of the themers — well chosen. Each one of them sings. Just the other day I was sure SAVILE ROW was SAVILLE ROW … reminds me of the time I was so sure GUTTERAL was spelled GUTTERAL.

Dang it, GUTTURAL!

For those of you wondering what ONED (sounds like OWNED) is, it's ONE-D. Some people love these sort of as-seen-only-in-crosswords things (R AND B, TEN-K, etc.), some people hate them. I never even see 1-D in real life, much less ONE D, so this one feels particularly odd to me.

Normally I'm not a fan of cross-referenced clues, but I liked today's ZIG / ZAG. Not only does it incorporate two Zs, but they're in symmetrical positions. With the price of just a TRA, that seems well worth it.

Super difficult construction, with the "awkward length" of CHOPPED LIVER = 12 forcing the five themers to be smooshed together. Any time you have five themers placed in every other row, you're bound to have some compromises. Pete did pretty well, escaping the treacherous middle with just ADM, EXO, HIE, IDENT.

Fun clue for REX. Never having been to Mardi Gras, I assumed the king would be the French ROI. Reading up on all the different Mardi Gras Krewes was really fun. Why am I finding out about the Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus only now?!