Lonnie Burton author page
1 puzzle by Lonnie Burton
with Jeff Chen comments
| R | A | I | S | E | A | B | O | D | E | C | O | B | ||
| O | R | C | A | S | C | O | R | E | D | A | C | E | ||
| S | E | A | N | C | O | N | N | E | R | Y | L | E | I | |
| H | A | N | G | M | E | D | I | A | P | L | A | N | ||
| T | S | A | D | I | S | H | I | N | G | |||||
| T | I | M | O | T | H | Y | D | A | L | T | O | N | ||
| A | T | E | E | A | S | E | S | I | T | |||||
| R | O | G | E | R | L | U | G | M | O | O | R | E | ||
| R | N | A | C | A | D | S | W | I | I | |||||
| P | I | E | R | C | E | B | R | O | S | N | A | N | ||
| L | I | B | E | R | A | L | I | N | K | |||||
| I | R | A | S | M | E | D | A | L | I | N | T | O | ||
| F | I | N | D | A | N | I | E | L | C | R | A | I | G | |
| E | N | D | D | I | C | E | R | C | U | T | E | R | ||
| R | A | J | S | C | H | M | O | S | N | O | R | E |
My dad and I are both huge BOND fans, so it was fun to see the major actors who played the role. It was odd that GEORGE LAZENBY was excluded from the set, but realistically, he was a goofy BOND, best forgotten.
I don't often like revealers coming at the top of the puzzle — pretty obvious what was going on when I uncovered BOND and SEAN CONNERY right off the bat — but what a great idea to position BOND at 7-Down … or is that 007-Down! Very cool touch.
I think Mondays ought to be uber-friendly for novices, and generally, this grid does that. Lonnie does well, considering the theme density. He deploys black squares well to separate SEAN CONNERY and TIMOTHY DALTON, never leaving big white spaces that have to flow through those two themers.
In this type of layout, the west and east sections are typically the roughest: the TIM of TIMOTHY and ROG of ROGER must work together, and that usually causes problems. But a beautiful result in the west — I don't mind ITO at all since there are at least two famous ITOs. There is a bit of RIA / EIN in the east; more typical of these side regions.
There's also a tough little IRINA / RAJ crossing in the lower left, but IRINA / RAJ does look a lot more plausible than IRINE / REJ or IRINI / RIJ.
And even a couple of bonuses in the fill. I like PB AND Js, and ARAMAIC is interesting too. I would have liked a pair of long downs somewhere in the puzzle — perhaps removing the black square between I CAN and MEG? — but that would likely have sacrificed smoothness.
It would have been great to get a little extra punch to the theme, like in an earlier Gorski. And how awesome would it be to have the full BOND, JAMES BOND at 007-Down, with actors crossing that central entry! That's probably impossible, but a guy can wish.