New York Times, Tuesday, September 9, 2014

I think one would have had to be a teenager or adult during the '60s to really appreciate how much a game-changer "The Twist" was to American song/dance culture. The puzzle happened only because Chubby Checker had a serendipitous letter-match in "nineteen sixty." I wish I had been able to lift a circled phrase from the original song but had to settle for words from Checker's song a year later. Just a straightforward puzzle with a little twist.

Anytime a puzzle contains triply-checked letters, like the circled ones here, there are likely to be compromises in the fill. The middle section of this grid has more unappealing entries than I like — especially CES, SDS, NLERS, ALAI, ASTA, SNO, and DAL. So the question becomes ... is the "aha" strong enough to outweigh the puzzle's weaknesses? In this case, obviously, I thought the answer was yes.

What a nice visual, a twist-related lyric "twisting" down the center of the puzzle. Makes for a pretty picture and also gives a lift to hear that catchy line running through my head.

What does Will mean by "triply-checked"? Ah, the dreaded diagonal. Constructors typically avoid working with diagonal entries, because they quickly constrain all the regions they run through. A short diagonal entry isn't that tough to work with, but start increasing the length and the difficulty level quickly escalates. Ed does a nice job of isolating his twisting entry through the use of 1.) black squares, 2.) spreading his themers as far away as possible, and 3.) using a 78-word puzzle.

The black squares are such a helpful factor. Check out the blocks separating the E O N of COME ON. If those hadn't been there, Ed would have had to find words that are "triply-checked" i.e. they have to work with the diagonal, the horizontal, and the vertical words. No fun. The fact that the themers are pushed to the sides and thus only minimally interact with the "twist" is also helpful. Finally, going up to the max of 78 words allows Ed to deploy a whole lot of black squares throughout the middle of the puzzle, reducing the "triply-checked" areas.

Anytime there are few long theme entries — this one only has two which take up long slots — you'll need to incorporate long fill. I like the ones Ed selects; sparkly indeed. It was sort of neat that WALL SOCKET and POWER STRIP were related, although it made me wonder if I was missing something, i.e. was CHUBBY CHECKER's original job an electrician? (Perhaps it's that he electrified the world?) POWER STRIP does unfortunately constrain that west section, making for the awkward CLEW and A REED. I tried modeling that to see if it was easy to clean up, and it was not. Perhaps an alternate piece of fill to POWER STRIP could have made it smoother?

But all in all, a fantastic visual impact which I'm sure will have high resonance to those who witnessed the CHUBBY CHECKER craze firsthand. Even for those of us who didn't, I found it a fun way to learn a bit more about that period in American music.