Matt Skoczen author page

Oktoberfest! Hard to argue with drinking ale while getting dressed up in neon-green lederhosen and frolicking like a Vegas leprechaun protecting his/her gold. What, you don't do that? Um. Me neither.

Seven festive themers today packing the grid chock full. How jovial is it to TOAST six themes in a single puzzle? Some beautiful entries, DOWN THE HATCH and BOTTOMS UP so bubbly. To me, TO YOUR HEALTH doesn't feel quite as juicy, but that might be a generational or a cultural thing? I've actually used all of the TOASTs except this one. To my ear it sounds stilted; a rare case for me where a foreign translation — A VOTRE SANTE! sounds so much better.

I did wonder why people were using these non-German toasting phrases (especially L'CHAIM!) during Oktoberfest, but sometimes I find it's best to drink, be merry, and put on glow-in-the-dark lederhosen.

People have to scratch their heads when constructors talk about the difficulty of certain arrangements. "OMG, they attempted a 5/12/6/9/6/12/5?" probably sounds not only like gibberish but also probably elicits a "why make such a big deal about entry lengths?" Today, two factors around this are huge. First of all, the central 9 splits the puzzle in half. Ratchet up difficulty level once. Then, the 12's are in rows 4 and 12, where they create not just six, but 12 little three-letter words (in the NE and SW).

"And this matters… why?" you ask. Generally, it's best to keep the three-letter word count to around 20, because they can chop up a solver's flow and feel inelegant. I had a bit of a hitch in my solve, and seeing that there were 28 three-letter words made me understand why. Plus, if you have so many of them, the ones which usually get glossed over become noticeable. AAR, AGT, DER, ESA, INA, NCO, REO, STA, TEL, UNE are all fine on their own, but when lumped together create an inelegance.

All in all, a fun theme with some cheery entries, with some compromises due to a very tricky theme arrangement.