New York Times, Wednesday, July 5, 2017

FLIGHT RISK was the seed for this here theme of travel,
From which the other entries did finally unravel.
Among the better candidates that never saw the light of day
Are MARINE LIFE, LIFE COACHING, and LIFE FINDS A WAY.
Finding phrases with names of board games is anything but easy;
How many can you think of that use the word Parcheesi?

Thanks to Will and Joel for looking at a couple of revisions. Special thanks to Tom Yuval for the feedback and support.

I appreciate seeing ideas I doubt I'd ever think of. How fun, to take normal phrases and interpret them as travel editions of classic board games! LIFE ON THE RUN stood out for me, as 1.) I loved the game as a kid, and 2.) I could imagine LIFE ON THE RUN as a clever marketer's title for an actual travel edition of Life. FLIGHT RISK was fun, too, for similar reasons.

GO ON VACATION didn't hit me as strongly because the base phrase isn't as snazzy as the others. It's a fine thing to say, but I don't know that I'd seed a themeless with it like I would with FLIGHT RISK.

And CAR TROUBLE … Trouble is a game? I played a lot of games as a kid, but not this one. Even after reading the Wikipedia entry on it, I don't recognize it. (Apparently, it's similar to Sorry!, with which I had a love/hate relationship.)

What an ambitious grid for one's debut. Very few constructors would stretch to work in six bonus entries, and even fewer would succeed in converting so many of them into such juicy juice: SOUND EFFECT, FOOD GROUP with a brilliant wordplay clue in [Cooking class?], TACO STAND, LINGERIE.

ANIMATED GIF didn't do it for me as much since most GIFs I see these days are animated ... so I just call them GIFs. And ANTISLIP felt a bit workmanlike. Still, four great bonuses is admirable. Jake used solid technique in working the bonuses in, spreading them out and alternating up / down positioning to achieve good spacing.

ADDED NOTE: turns out that most gifs aren't animated. Maybe I'm a little vined out ...

The grid did skew to the side of snazziness at the cost of smoothness, though. I first noticed it at ASCAP, then ELOI (the "Time Machine" race this sci-fi buff was so turned off by when first getting into crosswords). Then ENS, OEUF, ORAMA, FRIO, VAR. It wasn't so bad as to make my nose wrinkle, but it did leave me with an impression of inelegance. Perhaps just four long bonuses instead of six would have made for more grid flexibility and smoothness.

Still, an interesting, novel theme is hard to come by these days. Looking forward to more from Jake.