Kate Schutzengel author page
1 puzzle by Kate Schutzengel
with Jeff Chen comments
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Such a fun revealer, THE DOCTOR IS OUT helping to elevate a simple DR removal theme. I was such an avid "Peanuts" fan that I introduced them to my kids. However, the old-timey characters baffled them. How does Snoopy sleep balanced on his doghouse? What's with the dust cloud following PigPen? Lucy generated the most questions — a bullying "fussbudget" is funny … why?
Letter-removal crosswords are so common that you have to generate serious laughs to stand out. UM MACHINE did that perfectly, making me imagine a crazy 5-year old named Jake who invented a device to deliberately annoy his dad. It didn't change the meaning of MACHINE, but DRUM to UM is night and day.
It took me a long time to grasp one of Will Shortz's criteria for letter removals: the end result's clue shouldn't need to refer to both words. For example, ILL PRACTICE fits that bill perfectly, since everyone in the workforce knows all about weaselly practices around calling in sick. Easy and natural to link the words together.
UM MACHINE doesn't address Will's issue since you have to write something in the clue regarding UM and then something else for MACHINE. However, the humor made up for that deficiency.
(Jim Horne didn't find this entry as funny, which goes to show you that I'm the Stan to his Ollie. Or whoever was the funny one.)
A ton of black squares, an extra six in the SW and NE corners alone. This is why 14-letter themers usually can't go into rows 3 and 13. Will is more lenient about this than most other editors, although Erik Agard at USA Today allows it, too.
Great revealer and some fun theme results. This newly-minted-50-year old had some head-scratching moments at KUSH and SO EXTRA (especially crossing SXSW and ADEN), but overall, still an entertaining debut.