Don Gagliardo author page

There's a brilliant idea here, SILENT PARTNER referring to two-word phrases where both words contain the same silent letter. Neat finds — my favorite was GENGHIS KHAN, as my old Ultimate Frisbee team (who recently went to the city league summer league finals, woop woop!) is named Genghis Khan Wild (get it?).

There have been a lot of plays on silent letters, a SILENT NIGHT puzzle one of my favorites, but I can't remember this particular implementation. I wished I had thought of it, gosh darn it! ... once I understood it.

I so badly wished it had been SILENT PARTNERS, plural. The clue for SILENT PARTNER was so convoluted that I didn't get it, even after reading it a few times. It would have been so much better if it had read [… and what G, H, W are …] for SILENT PARTNERS. Seemingly small change, but it would have made all the difference in the world for me.

Some nice bonuses, not a surprise in a Gagliardo / Burnikel offering. DR LAURA, SO AND SO, TAKE TEN, PORSCHE, APACHES, IRON AGE — fantastic use of the mid-length slots.

DOG MEAT … I hitched on this one. My western bias is showing for sure, but I'm not sure I'd put this entry into one of my own puzzles. Should it pass the breakfast test? I'm not sure, but if it elicited an icky reaction from this dog-lover, I imagine it could do the same for many others.

A couple of blips in the fill, GORSE, EDS, HOS, ORO, SKEE, SNO. All in all, too much for my taste, but I can see how other constructors would find these as acceptable prices to pay for all the great bonus entries like IRON AGE plus the aforementioned. Given that IDENTIKIT and ON ONE KNEE didn't do that much for me, I would have preferred focusing on all those great seven-letter entries and getting a smoother grid.

Fantastic idea, wish I had thought of it. It would have been a theme of the year if it had used the plural SILENT PARTNERS.

Some fun finds, phrases where one word is contained in the other. I'd seen ALE in PALE ALE and AVERAGE AGE used in a similar way before, but GARBAGE BAG and especially WHOOPIE PIE gave me a smile. I've never had a WHOOPIE PIE before, and I don't even know what it is, but hoo boy do I want one. What a great name.

I liked that Don and C.C. found so many themers, packing the grid with interesting wordplay. I didn't care for some as much as others, though. INSTANT TAN feels a little off to my ear — SPRAY TAN or FAKE TAN sounds better — and MADE MAD doesn't seem quite like a crossworthy entry.

Then there was EARTH ART. The Wikipedia article is titled as "Land art" (not that Wikipedia is a definitive source), and all the pictures of show a type of art I've never seen before. It was fascinating though, to get exposed to something I'd never experienced. Some of the art is amazing!

Pretty darn smooth grid, considering how many long entries Don and C.C. had to use in their fill. Since so many of their themers appear short in the grid (PALE ALE only takes up four spaces, for example), they had to rely on much more long fill than usual to stay under the 78-word maximum.

So many 7-letter entries, all around the corners — and pretty much all of them are solid to excellent! RAW BARS / ORIGAMI / STAN LEE / DNA TEST are all lively. They do rely on a tiny amount of crossword glue — OCS = officer candidate school, TNN = channel of the past, OEO = Office of Economic Opportunity — but it's all pretty minor and inconsequential. Well done.

Neat idea and solid execution. If all the themers had been as strong as WHOOPIE PIE, this would have been the POW! As it was, having so many themers, some which were a bit blah, sort of watered down the impact for me.

C.C. and Don try to see the BIG PICTURE today, interpreting the phrase literally to hint at "movies with a synonym for BIG in their title." SUPER-SIZE ME is perfect (and a great movie!), and although I wasn't familiar with the 1932 GRAND HOTEL, it sure fits. TITANIC and GIANT are two bonuses right in the middle of the grid, neatly crossing each other.

The GREAT ESCAPE is one of my favorite movies — just one of 25 or so on my Top Tier list — but it did give me slight pause as I solved. My first thought was that the word GREAT here means more "excellent" or "skillful" than "immense," whereas the other movie titles meant the latter.

But thankfully I'm a GREAT ESCAPE aficionado and remembered that GREAT does actually refer to the fact that our band of heroes plans an "immense" escape, trying to break out not just a few people from the prison camp ... but every single one of them! So I think the theme is consistent.

C.C. and Don are known for their ability to work in fresh-feeling bonus entries, and ET VOILA! fits. CALL A CAB has a less contemporary feel to it, since Uber seems to be taking over these days. But I did like how the clue, [Eschew Uber, say], recognizes that. Along with some interesting words in MANDATE, LASAGNA, IGNOBLE — with just a few dabs of IRR (is this abbr actually used?), STET (editorial jargon), ATRA (one of dozens of razor names), the fill is pretty good.

I'm not sure it was worth putting GIANT in the grid, as it's not nearly as a box-office success as TITANIC, and it felt sort of strange to have such a short themer. But it was kind of neat that it intersected TITANIC.

I highlighted the appropriate letters below, to make this puzzle's theme stand out — the consonants in rows three, six, and nine appear in alphabetical order, reading from left to right and top to bottom. Like Don mentioned, I had an inkling something was up when I saw HOJO, and then again when running into the awkward abbreviation ELIZ. Given the very tough theme constraints, having just those two rough spots is pretty darn good.

I got stuck in the bottom, having plunked in ALPHABETIC ORDER. That seemed not as perfect as ALPHABETICAL ORDER, but the former is too long for a 15x15 grid. When I finally ripped out ALPHABETIC ORDER, I sorely wanted ALPHABETIZED. ALPHABETIZATION is a word, to be sure, but it felt awkward as a revealer.

I went back and stared at the 21 critical letters after I finished. There is something interesting about the concept, although it feels somewhat inelegant, given the random vowels strewn about to make it work.

Perhaps it would have seemed nicer if all those consonants were spaced in exactly every other column? As it was, it felt like those consonants were placed wherever they needed to be to make it work. Granted, it's a tough constraint to get those consonants in ALPHABETIZATION order, but I would have liked some extra layer of elegance.

Still, I enjoy seeing concepts I haven't seen before, and I definitely had not seen something quite like this.

Some notable clues:

• PELLA appears to be a big name in windows. Perhaps it'll be a gimme to homeowners who have redone their windows?
• Loved the clue for COOK, [Pan handler] repurposing "panhandler" so innocently.

★ Loved this puzzle. C.C. (Zhouqin) and Don's wide range of plays on double-letters is really cool. I vaguely remembered NN as MINNESOTA TWINS from somewhere, but most of the others felt fresh. OO = the Os in ONION RINGS ("rings" within ONION) is such a clever find. PP = the central letters of SHOPPING CENTER. AA = NCAA FINALS, i.e. the final letters of NCAA. So many different discoveries, all using in-the-language phrases!

LEADOFF DOUBLE did throw me for a second — shouldn't "leadoff" mean that the double letters are at the front of the word? — but after thinking about it, it's just that the FF is a "double" within LEADOFF. It works, but the unintentional mislead made me feel like it was the weakest of the bunch.

But I'll pause here to repeat how much I loved the idea and the nine themers.

The execution was very nice, too. A 140-word puzzle is so tough to cleanly and snazzily fill, especially when you have nine themers. Not much long fill, but what great usage of their 7-letter slots. HALFCAF, AIR FARE, OH GREAT, LUDDITE, NATASHA (with a clue from "Rocky and Bullwinkle"!) = all wonderful entries. I wasn't sure what SANGRITA was (sangria, anyone?) but I don't drink much besides beer and scotch these days.

A great majority of the time, I see too much glue in NYT Sunday crosswords for my taste. It's understandable, as a 140-word puzzle is just really darn hard to put together without some glue. So to keep it to really minor ENS, EST, INTL, SPEE kind of stuff is excellent work. I really dislike DNAS, since it and RNA are rarely pluralized outside crosswords, but that's the only real standout.

Again, incredibly fun idea with a wide range of findings for those double letters. One of my favorite Sunday puzzles of the year.

Nice concept; phrases whose second word can double for a past tense verb. I've seen similar sorts of themes before, but I can't remember MARK FELT as an example. As Don mentioned, there are a lot of examples of this type of word, but he and C.C. did a nice job of picking some strong theme phrases.

I found it confusing as to where the themers were, so I highlighted them below. I wish the themers had stood out by themselves rather than requiring asterisks, but that would have meant getting rid of the shorter ones like MARK FELT, which I quite liked. Always the trade-offs.

With nice pieces of long fill like HOME COURT and GAS GRILL, the themers didn't stand out very well for me, so I solved the puzzle as I would a themeless. That's not a terrible thing, as Don and C.C. put in a lot of good entries, but it further confused me when I went back to study the theme — I wondered if COURT and GRILL were somehow parts of the theme too.

What with the stairstep arrangements of black squares breaking up the middle of the puzzle, Don and C.C. were forced to leave big open corners in the upper left and lower left. This is a tough task, as 9x3 chunks are rarely easy. RAIN DANCE is a nice entry, as is BE A PAL, but I found AFFIANCED an oddball to kick off the puzzle. SERENADER could go either way for me — I struggle to figure out if it's truly legit or it sounds made-up.

Perhaps opening up a pair of those stairstep black squares in the middle of the puzzle would have allowed them to work with not as wide-open corners. I'd much prefer a 9x2 stack with one fantastic entry than a 9x3 stack with two neutral or not great ones.

Overall, I liked the idea, but it might have packed more punch as a weekday puzzle. I feel like the best Sunday puzzles are the ones that absolutely cannot be done in the smaller 15x15 format, and this one felt like it could have been a strong Tuesday or even Wednesday puzzle.

C.C. and Don's Sunday debut! And what a devious idea, a rebus variant that I haven't quite seen before. There have been ones which require you to read the rebus answers twice (in different ways), some where the double letter rebuses were used to double both across and down answers, and many that require reading rebus squares differently across vs. down, but I can't remember anything quite like this.

How to even describe it? Six-letter answers where letters #1 and #2 are identical to letters #4 and #5, i.e. PAYPAL, shown in the grid as PAYL. Perfect title, DOUBLE DOWN, describing the method in which those theme answers must be interpreted. It's tough enough to find a symmetrical set of themers answers that work, so it's impressive that Don and C.C. found such colorful ones as LAUNCH PARTY and PAPER TRAIL and EVENING STAR. HEART WARMING indeed.

As I've mentioned many times, puzzles using crossing themers are tough to fill. This one is even more difficult, because there's very little flexibility in choosing the three-letter answers. With less ambitious ideas, the constructor can often change what the crossing answer is, thus easing the way for smoother fill when necessary. Not so much here, as the entire grid is built around specific placements, i.e. the pair of DIRTY LINEN and PA(YL) are fixed into place like concrete. Alternates for DIRTY LINEN do exist (isn't DIRTY LAUNDRY much more common?), but there aren't many.

So, not a surprise to see that the gluiest bits came around those intersections. Wasn't sure what an AGON was for example, but I as I was solving, I was prepared to encounter that sort of oddball thing around the thematic crossings. ARB will get similar grumbling from some, but I actually love this particular answer. It makes me think about big-headed finance guys brag about driving their ARBs and QUANTs in order to pull off some crazy LBO. (And I smile when the deal fails miserably.)

I would have liked TACO SALAD and FREE RANGE to not be as long as DIRT(YL)INEN and PAPE(RT)RAIL, especially given the difficulty of sussing out the theme. Took me well over twice as long as usual to solve.

Very neat idea, excellent a-ha moment when I (finally) caught on. Definitely some compromises in filling, but some of it's to be expected given the construction's difficulty level.

Great concept today, a neat a-ha moment upon reaching POLLINATION. After seeing IRIS and ASTER, I had a ho-hum feeling, expecting some sort of "hidden flowers" revealer. But to go back and see BEEs atop the flowers was really cool. I love being surprised by a crossword, and that was a delightful discovery.

It's tricky to execute this type of "X atop Y" type of theme, as your difficulty factor goes up by a factor of maybe 1.5. Check out where EYEBALL is — see how constrained that entry is? Fixing two letters within one entry makes things tough, fixing three letters takes away a lot of flexibility. Luckily, E, B, and A are fairly common letters, and that ??EBA?? does allow some options like ICEBATH, IKEBANA, CUE BALL, etc. Nice way to work through a tough section chock full of constraints.

The constraints do cause some difficulty in the north and south regions, though. A 6x3 region is already difficult — there's a reason why most constructors stay away from wide north and south regions like this — and when you constrain things yet more, you end up with combinations like REDOSE and SSE. Either in isolation can be overlooked; crossing each other is not great. I can more easily overlook a lone SNEE in the south, for example.

Finally, I appreciate C.C. and Don's efforts in giving us good long fill. With a highly-constrained theme like this, I wouldn't expect more than two pieces of long fill. But check out the parallel long downs in the NE and SW. I love SWEET TALK as an entry, and getting TENNESSEE isn't too shabby. Usually these parallel long downs make the surrounding fill tough to get clean. But I like everything around that region. People might complain about ENTs, but when you help the Fellowship of the Ring conquer the very embodiment of evil, I think you're entitled to a little crossword love.

WOODROW parsed into WOOD ROW today, i.e. rows of short answers, each of which can follow the word WOOD. Who knew there were so many words that go with WOOD?

This may seem like an easy construction, given the short theme answers, but it is no mean feat. In some ways, it's actually harder to use short theme answers than long ones. Counterintuitive perhaps, but this sort of arrangement can be very difficult due to crossword norms, both related to integration of long fill.

First, the 78 word maximum. Today's grid would have been a piece of cake if C.C. and Don could have used 82 words. That would have let them break up entries like GOING OVER, PREDATORY, etc. But there's a reason for that 78 word maximum — those types of long entries are a big part of what makes a crossword spicy and interesting. Of all the entries today, my favorites were I DON'T BUY IT, POP DIVA, and RUBINSTEIN (I'm a fan too, Don!). Breaking up those entries would have been a real shame.

Then there's the presentation of said longest answers. Typically, solvers tend to think that the theme of a puzzle is contained within the longest across answers. And for good reason — that is the case 90% of the time! So when there's an anomalous grid like today's, the constructor(s) have to be careful not to mislead the solver. No doubt that the shaded (or circled) entries help distinguish the themers from the non-themers, but I couldn't help wondering what PREDATORY and ORIGINALS had to do with WOOD at first.

Finally, in this type of arrangement, the puzzle's zing is highly dependent on the long down fill, since the theme is basically a "words that can follow X" type of theme. In addition to I DON'T BUY IT and POP DIVA and RUBENSTEIN, CLAY COURT is particularly nice. But GOING OVER seems to me like a missed opportunity. Nine-letter spaces are meant for snazz. I realize that it might not have been possible due to the high constraints today, but that still doesn't keep me from wishing that entry had been something more splashy.

Tough construction challenge today with relatively smooth fill. Good workout.

Another strong puzzle from an emerging powerhouse duo, Don and C.C. Very fun theme, something I was vaguely aware of while solving (I had some intellectual property responsibilities at my old company, Acucela Inc.). A nice a-ha moment when I hit the TRADEMARKS revealer.

What I like best about this puzzle is that Don and C.C. could have easily listed the themers as individual words: ESCALATOR, YOYO, GRANOLA, thereby making room for others that fit (ZIPPER, LINOLEUM, ASPIRIN, etc.), but incorporating them into snappy phrases served two purposes: 1.) making the puzzle livelier with the inclusion of more in-the-language phrases and 2.) camouflaging the terms.

An unusual choice in grid layout today, to overlap pairs of themers. It's usually much easier to have some space between themers, but nothing suffers here. It's impressive that with seven down answers needing to cross both GRANOLA BAR and TABLOID BUZZ, the crosses are super clean. Well done; a bit of construction flair.

As is becoming Don and C.C.'s trademark, lots of long fill. With five themers, long down fill can be difficult to achieve. But entries like SCOOBY DOO and ITS A GO really spice up the solving experience. I wasn't as hot on TOO TOO as Will was, but perhaps I'm a bit lowbrow (no "perhaps" about it). LANDSAT and ECOTONE are not as nice as the other long fill IMO, but they certainly provide additional color.

The short fill is generally pretty good, although I winced a tad at the NE, with ABAB, I ATE, and OSIER all in the same location. There's nothing wrong with any of them, and some people might even really like OSIER (shout out to my basketweaving peeps!). But for me, these types of crossword-glue entries are easier to swallow when spread out (same issue for ATA and ASSNS in the SE). This can't always be achieved, especially with audacious grids.

Fun, well-done puzzle with an interesting theme. Curious quandary that companies with popular trademarks find themselves in. They obviously want people to recognize and use their brand name, but if the public starts doing so in a generic way, the company runs the risk of losing their trademark rights. If you're curious, go google it; google google google it hard*.

*This message brought to you by Bing.

A goal of the early-week puzzles is to make crosswords widely accessible, thus drawing newer solvers into the fold. So I think a Monday or Tuesday puzzle should have little to no "crosswordese" entries (words that are rarely seen/used outside of crosswords), and if it contains esoteric answers, the crossings ought to all be fair. An amazingly difficult task considering there are usually 74-78 answers to squeeze in.

Making an early-week, beginner-level puzzle is one of the toughest challenges in crossword construction, and CC and Don have largely succeeded here. The "word that can follow both halves of the theme phrases" theme type has been done many times before, but the addition of the clever revealer really adds to the puzzle. DOUBLEDAY is a perfect last theme entry to the puzzle.

Plus, I absolutely love their long fill: MR HYDE, LAB COATS, SNIPED AT, ABS SYSTEM, PATTY DUKE. These sparkly answers spice up the puzzle, increasing the chance that a solver will smile or be wowed during his/her experience.

But there's a price to pay for all the great long fill: the PBA/ASSAM/KUNTA crossings. While none of these entries are "crosswordese", if the solver isn't a bowler and isn't up on their Indian geography, will they fill that square in with an "I"? If a beginning solver ends up with KUNTE and ASSEM or (KUNTO and ASSOM), they may learn something useful and/or interesting from their mistake, but will it sour their feelings about crosswords?

So even though PATTY DUKE and ABS SYSTEM are fantastic answers, I might have broken them up, putting black squares at the "D" of THE ROD and at the "S" of SONNET. This would result in 78 words instead of 76, with less sparkly long downs, but would also allow for a cleaner southwest area, thus increasing a novice solver's chance to finish accurately and with satisfaction.

Just this constructor's opinion; there is no right or wrong answer. Difficult trade-offs! ADDED NOTE: thanks to Will for his thoughtful response (below)!