John Ewbank author page

Appropriate for John Ewbank to create a "letter bank" puzzle!

Alas, no U?

Ew.

"Letter banks" are difficult for some newer solvers to grasp. Note that CATTLE CARS, SALT CELLAR, STEER CLEAR, and ART CLASSES are all formed from the set [A C E L R S T].

Thankfully, John developed more interest (get it? bank? interest? okay, fine, it wasn't funny) through another constraint that I didn't notice until much later. Not only do these four phrases draw from the [A C E L R S T] bank, but they all use every one of the letters at least once.

I was all set to muse over why John didn't use more colorful entries like ALL STAR CAST, STATE SECRET, TASTE TESTER, and TEASER RATES (appropriate for a bank puzzle!), when I noticed that each of them lacked at least one of the seven letters. This one goes out to all the Spelling Bee pangram fanatics!

I wonder how many solvers will notice the extra layer. I wouldn't have if I hadn't shifted into analysis mode.

(Emphasis on anal.)

Fantastic gridwork; so many bonuses with zero gluey bits. John had to deploy so many of his black squares around the middle that he was forced to leave big, open corners in the SW and NE. Thankfully, the [A C E L R S T] are easy letters to grid around, and John did his DARNEDEST to juice up the joint with not only doubles like GOOD LOSER and NEWS ALERT, but additional touches like TIP JARS and IM ALL IN. Yes, he is!

It's tough for me to get excited about letter bank concepts these days, but I appreciated John's effort to make his stand out.

EVEREST BASE CAMP is such an evocative phrase, bringing up images of people who have nearly died while attempting to battle one of Mother Nature's greatest challenges. Running it vertically is even better, mimicking the fearsome climb into the heavens. Toss in the awesome clue, [It's an uphill climb from here], and it's a winner. Crazy that an elevation of about 17,000 feet could be the starting point of a climb, but of course, that's where the real action begins for serious mountaineers.

Featuring such a grid-spanning marquee in a 72-worder often makes it difficult to provide as many long slots as themeless solvers are used to. It's not a problem in the lower left and upper right, since EVEREST BASE CAMP barely affects those corners, but the fixed-in-place EVE- start and -AMP end sure cause trouble.

John was wise to cut down from the usual three long entries in the NW / SE to only two apiece. Doggedly sticking to triple-stacks in the upper left and lower right is possible, but it's likely to require trade-offs in zing and/or cleanliness. It certainly wouldn't have been possible to get such a spotless opening corner, along with the killer one-two combo of TIME TRAVEL / SPACE OPERA.

PIANO TUNER doesn't have as much to do with an ARMORED CAR, but throw in NYPD, and you have the makings of a fantastic creative writing prompt.

The 72-word themeless space is incredibly competitive, but this is an excellent example of how you can still ascend to the top, against all odds. I'll ask my CUP BEARERS to bring us some cool AGUA FRESCA (jamaica for me, please!) to celebrate John using all his long slots to great use.

Several years back, I spent many hours mulling over phrases like A BIRD IN THE HAND, WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, IF THE SHOE FITS … How to score them for our word list? Weighing their partialish feel vs. their evocative implications gave me fits. Ultimately, I decided that IF YOU HAVE TO ASK …

(Yeah, I still don't have a great answer.)

Thankfully, I didn't have to ask about John's gridwork. Having had the pleasure of working with him, I knew the strength of his technical skills. It surprised me that he had qualms about working on a Sunday, though most all constructors are hesitant to tackle the 140-word 21x21 challenge.

What gave me no surprise at all was that John produced an almost perfectly-smooth grid with a couple of great bonuses. To be sure, ENERGY CZAR, SECRET MENU, DALAI LAMA, LASER TAG, TO BE SURE are excellent. With hardly a short entry to speed bump my solve, it's exactly the kind of grid I desire.

Birds of a feather …

A friend and I used to make up these kinds of semi-complete phrases to annoy an overly-inquisitive Ultimate Frisbee teammate. "The person who blinks first …" followed by a suggestive eyebrow raise did wonders.

For our entertainment, that is. Not for his sanity.

I'm not a fan of listicle-like puzzles, so a random assortment of these phrase types didn't hit me strongly. But you know what they say: Every day you highlight a Greek word …

*insert suggestive eyebrow raise here*

"Hidden words" puzzles are a tough sell these days, Will Shortz is getting a ton of these types of submissions. When John approached me about doing one using reversed words, I didn't have much hope it would go anywhere. But why not take a look?

As a solver, I'm most impressed by long hidden words, so I took the brute force approach of sifting through all possible medium-length words (5+ letters) to see if they were hidden inside any long (8+ letters) entries from the XWord Info Word List. After my computer nearly passed out from heatstroke, we had a long list to sift through.

There was a lot of dull stuff, but one line item caught my eye: ADELE, hidden backward in CHISELED ABS. Even this pop culture idiot knows ADELE! Once John suggested BACKUP SINGERS, it felt like we were onto something.

Thank goodness John is more well-versed in pop music since I wouldn't have recognized LORDE and DRAKE if they knighted or quacked at me.

Curious that XXX can stand for so many things: ADULT movies, Roman numeral THIRTY, KISSES at the end of a letter, and markings on a jug of BOOZE. It made me wonder, what other possibilities are there?

I also thought of the TURKEY in bowling, but that might be a deep cut. TALKS TURKEY could be a fun entry — I wonder what percentage of solvers would make the connection.

A shame that there are no good XANDER CAGE phrases. You know, Triple X? No? Okay, me neither.

My kids X over eyes for drawings of dead people. Therefore, XXX could represent a slain triclops. (Reading "The Odyssey" to a five-year old has no connection to his shrieking nightmares.)

Long story short, John did a great job pulling together four different uses of XXX, and more importantly, not stretching to do more.

John did stretch to work in a ton of great bonus fill. Smart placement of black squares to isolate XXX in the center didn't leave many black squares to deploy around the perimeter, but that's okay — the shortish themers allowed John plenty of gridding freedom. THE RAVEN / HATERADE is fantastic (for those of us — okay fine, those of you — cool enough to know what HATERADE is), and PEEPHOLE / STAY WOKE make for a curious juxtaposition.

BOOZEHOUND and similar terms make me uncomfortable these days (I downgraded its score), given what a serious problem alcoholism is. STAYing WOKE is tricky ... it's a shame that it's being used to turn the tide. A noble ideology is achieving the exact opposite of what its supporters want. Man, I hate politics.

Neat that XXX can stand for so many things, and each one of them can be worked into a solid phrase.