Katherine Baicker author page
3 puzzles by Katherine Baicker
with Jeff Chen comments
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★ Hopefully finding "39-Across" left you COMBOBULATED. Secret additional Across entries like "60-Across" are not easily BEKNOWNST to newbs!
I've seen many plays on "not-a-word words," but employing this secret Across trick makes this theme shine. For the second day in a row, Tom McCoy shows us the ropes. It might seem like child's play to get the five special black squares placed, but when working with a theme set like Katherine and Adam's, you have to be DOLENT to ensure everything behaves. Constant vigilance is required since every time you shift your grid skeleton around for better fill potential, you have to keep close watch over those five black squares.
The special constraints make things difficult from the get-go. Usually, you wouldn't want to create so many three-letter entries in the upper left corner since editors grimace when you hit about 22 of them. Not only that, but look what it does to the north region, with stacked 7s. That often forces trade-offs, especially when working with an early-week theme and grid. SOCIALS and CELLI are slightly odd plurals, and LECTOR / TETONS might be tricky for some newbs.
I've known a few Ignacios over the years and never connected the name to NACHOS. Fun clue.
Although some of the fill borders on mid- or even late-week difficulty — THANOS crossing SHUE, POSNER crossing ERNESTO, etc. — I loved all the ICEMAKER / SONICARE and especially BE HONEST / I CANT LIE bonuses. Solid theme, with that secret additional Across trick putting this one over the top.
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| O | M | I | T | U | P | S | I | D | E | S | ||||
| E | M | O | J | I | K | E | Y | B | O | A | R | D | ||
| D | E | N | O | T | E | E | E | L | Y | A | T | O | ||
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| M | E | H | G | O | O | S | I | M | H | E | R | E | ||
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| T | H | E | R | E | A | R | E | N | O | W | O | R | D | S |
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| A | N | T | L | A | Y | S | S | T | O | A | T |
★ THERE ARE NO WORDS is such a colorful phrase to play upon. The connections to SILENT TREATMENT, EMOJI KEYBOARD, and ELEVATOR MUSIC are so fun!
Neat to see an early-week, debut offering feature so many delightful bonuses. With four themers, it's almost always possible to incorporate four long Downs — one in each corner. Tough letter combinations can make this more challenging, but check out how ODE TO JOY so joyfully uses that J.
Many would stop there, placing a black square at the second C of ICE CUBES and/or the first S of LETS SAY, and that would be acceptable. Working in eight long Down bonuses? Most of the time, I'd tell constructors to GET REAL because it's too easy to GO ASTRAY. Even if you can get the extra long Downs to work in the middle of the grid, that often causes the usual four to take hits in color.
There were compromises, like requiring ROTC to make ICE CUBES work, and STET is niche vocabulary that might turn off newer solvers. All the crosses are unambiguous, so it all works, but it left me wishing there were a touch fewer dabs of GOOS.
That said, it was such a pleasure to be confounded until the very end, and the freshness of EMOJI KEYBOARD was so welcome. Such entertaining, well-constructed work from a newer pair of constructors is an ode to joy, indeed.