Ricky Cruz author page

I'd never heard of WHITE CLAW until last year. Not surprising, given that these days half a beer and I'll fall asleep. On a related note, Ricky and I have been working on a 21x21 crossword together, and he proposed FOUR LOKO in one spot. I was too embarrassed to admit I had no idea what that was — I said something to the effect of "what an awesome band, right?"

MARIO KART is much more my speed. Slow, that is, given that even my 8-year-old nephew can lap me. Even when I'm cheating. Apparently, I need new WHIPS. (I didn't know that one, either. Man. Talk about getting lapped.)

I love COINKYDINK, such a fun word to say, but I've heard others groan at how cloyingly cutesy entries like this are. Heck, I'm still not a fan of people saying "totes" for totally and "besties" and such. I never said I was consistent!

The most colorful answer in the grid for me was GLITTER. Surprised? Not if you saw the state of my living room, what with a self-professed crafts-lover who hasn't figured how to control her liberal GLITTER-sowing mania.

Great clue for TATTOO INK. It's already a fun entry, and wow, did it sizzle by playing on something "hard to get off your chest." Brilliant!

Similar for NBA PLAYER. I've seen Steph Curry's last name played upon several times, but I still got tricked. Did it mean the sauce? Curry favor? Ann Curry? For such a specific-seeming word, it sure has many directions it could go in.

Finally, I appreciated the fresh angle for TESSERACT. Some constructors consider it a bit of a cheat word, since it features so many common letters, but referencing the recent "Avengers" movies elevated it.

★ Many moons ago, a "broken words" puzzle broke my mind. Such a clever idea to split words … that can follow SPLIT! Although this theme type is fairly common these days, I still enjoy seeing sharp examples of it. Today's is exactly that.

What makes for an excellent "broken words" theme? First, there has to be a solid revealer, something along the lines of SPLIT ___, BROKEN ___, (something) DIVIDED, etc. Second, the words getting split ought to be long or complicated enough that they make solvers sit back and admire.

Ricky did exceptionally well with the second criterion. AMPERS/AND at nine letters and ASTE/RISK at eight is fantastic. HY/PHEN is shorter, but there's only one place to feasibly break the word.

TIL/DE isn't as exciting — until you consider how he could have split the word. There's no other option, since there's nothing that ends in TILD or starts with ILDE. Also, how many words end in TIL? All I could find besides UNTIL were LENTIL and PISTIL. There's something elegant about a problem that has so few possible solutions.

On that note, what other keyboard characters could Ricky have used? CARET is too easy, and most others require SIGN, like POUND SIGN or PERCENT SIGN. I was surprised at the theme's tightness, since my first impression was that there would be at least a half a dozen more to choose from.

BREAKS CHARACTER isn't an A+ revealer because 1.) grammatically, "breaks a character" or "breaks characters" would better fit the idea, and 2.) there's nothing to specify why keyboard characters, not movie characters, "characters" as in comedians, one's moral fiber, etc. Still, it works well enough.

I also appreciated Ricky's gentle nudges away from crossworld cultural norms, with AZUL and AMOR. Normally, I'd ding these, but I like how they reflect some of what makes Ricky Ricky, while still being accessible to a broad range of solvers (these answers are etymologically related to AZURE and AMOUR or AMORE, which might be more widely familiar).

I don't mind few bonuses in an early-week grid when a theme is meaty and the fill is smooth and accessible. Great work; a puzzle I'd happily give to newbs.

Day 4 of the CUJO (Cracking Up Jim Horne with Overthinking) show!

Jim: The theme works.

Jeff: Yes, fun concept, all those vehicles piled up in a row. But ...

Jim: (unable to decide between eye-rolling and laughter)

Jeff: Hey, VAN. Why don't you do the run for the ROSES, skipping the line completely? Maybe it's too much of a LOTTO to weave in and out of the single letters? There's lots of space in the adjacent "lanes."

Jim: (turning red, either from the strain of holding back cackles, or infuriation)

Jeff: I enjoyed the BOTTLENECK themer, and if the grid had more resembled that — a BOTTLENECK of black squares forcing vehicles into a single lane with no other way out — that would have been fantastic. Squeeze both of those T-shaped black square chunks toward the middle and it's much harder to escape.

Jim: Hold on, let me write this down for posterity. You want rebus letters to weave in and out of single letters ...

Even though Ricky didn't quite convert(ible) the concept into a spot-on visual, I appreciated the excellent gridwork in the middle. It's a tough task to integrate five adjacent multi-letter blocks, and the result is so smooth. So apt to end the string with a meta reBUS, too!

I'm curious how many solvers are going to balk at KUBO. Based on his previous puzzles, I get a sense that KUBO is an expression of Ricky's personal interests. I don't know how many solvers will be equally interested and might have a tough time with the name, so I'd leave those types of flourishes out.

Although the visual didn't work as strongly as it could have, and the themers on the sides felt superfluous, the execution around the middle impressed me enough that I still enjoyed the solve.

I love the idea behind this one because my kids do a ton of SPOT THE DIFFERENCES puzzles. Both of them are eagle-eyed detectives, not stopping until they catch every single difference.

"Why don't we do something else?" Dad said while stifling a yawn. "Anything else. Cleaning out the drains, perhaps? Poking my knees with needles?"

"I thought you said persistence was of the utmost importance, Daddy," Tess said, with an innocently cocked head.

"Grit," Jake said, nodding. "Daddy always says that the one quality that best correlates with success is tenacity."

Having children is the best.

You could argue that technically, SPOT THE DIFFERENCE is correct, since the singular difference could apply to the image as a whole.

NO, DADDY, YOU CAN'T GET AWAY ON A SEMANTIC LOOPHOLE!

I also wondered whether TELL LEFT FROM RIGHT was a valid, in-the-language phrase. I found a couple of Bible references about left hand vs. right hand, some sites on dyslexia, blah blah blah that's good enough--

YOU ALWAYS SAY, DO THE JOB COMPLETELY AND THE RIGHT WAY, DADDY!

Can you tell that sheltering in place up here in Seattle is getting to me?

The intention behind this puzzle was spot on, riffing on a well-known children's puzzle type. The execution left me with way too many questions: why repeat BLACK and WHITE in isolated regions when they're already circled? (I disagree with the editorial choice to add circles; it kills any possibility of an a-ha moment.) Why those particular letters in the 5x5 squares? Why BLACK and WHITE, when spot the differences puzzles focus on hard-to-see, subtle changes?

You might wonder why I keep encouraging my kids to ask why. I ask myself that every day.

A great seed of an idea today, one that would have been tons of fun to brainstorm.

Adding-letters themes live and die by the humor they generate. PLAYFUL DEAD, now that's both living and dying! Such a funny phrase, bringing up visuals of zombies playing soccer with one another's heads.

I enjoyed Ricky's themer choices. There are a lot of -FUL words out there, but not many of them change meaning when you remove those three letters. HATE to HATEFUL or JOY to JOYFUL isn't going to wow anyone, for example.

There was one themer that didn't work as well for me, though: AWFUL SHUCKS. It brings up funny images of a farmer ripping off husks willy-nilly, but the phrases didn't hit my ear right.

Get it? Ear?

As in EAR of corn?

No?

Aw, shucks.

Why did it bug me? The grammar is so much more tortured than with the others. DEAD, BEAR, TEST are all clearly nouns. SHUCKS isn't. The dictionary does say that "shuck" is a noun synonym for "husk," but if you have to look it up in the dictionary ...

Is anyone still using AW, SNAP! besides us wanna-be-cool-youngsters? That could have led to a football clue involving punting problems.

Decent gridwork, ending up with a reasonable balance of color (NEWSFLASH, MEET CUTE, FRUIT FLY, PAN SEARED) and glue (AERO ATAT INDO ONA OOFS RAH). However, with just four themers of 11 12 12 11 letters, sparkling color + cleanliness should be possible. It's a matter of taking more care(ful) care in choosing long downs that better facilitate squeaky-clean short fill.

I didn't know FONSI, but one of my favorite YouTubers constantly says, "Alexa, play Despacito." I still don't know what that means, but somehow it still makes me smile every time he says it. I did wonder if it could be Luis FENSI, not knowing if the outer edge of a golf clue was a TOE or a TEE. A more straightforward clue would have been better there.

Overall, a strong example of an adding-letters theme. I wouldn't have thought that such dramatic changes were possible with +FUL additions.

Mirror, mirror, in the grid, is there another smarter than I, god forbid?

(My mirror took the fifth.)

Four ___ MIRROR phrases, given a literal interpretation. The concept reminded me of that VAMPIRE puzzle by David Kwong that was sheer genius, as well as another by Tom McCoy playing on the mirror symmetry certain letters exhibit.

Ricky managed to find four ___ MIRROR phrases that were both recognizable, and that paired up in lengths for crossword symmetry — well done! I did hesitate at the first one, as the DAILY MIRROR is buried somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, but I ended up liking that. If VANITY MIRROR had been the first themer, it might have given away the game too quickly.

ONE-WAY MIRROR did seem a bit off. You don't see a reflection in a ONE-WAY MIRROR, right? I'd have loved if solvers had been lulled into this theme pattern, and then given the jolt of ONE-WAY (without a reflection) ending the puzzle.

Interesting choice of fill in ABIERTO. Given that my daughter goes to a Spanish immersion school and that I've traveled throughout Central and South America, I should have plunked it in without a single cross. At least I didn't need all seven crossing answers to get it!

(Fine, it was six.)

I ended up liking Ricky's decision to use it — DULCE de leche, too. I enjoy when a constructor lends some of their background to a puzzle, as Mangesh did yesterday. Although bonuses like BIRDS NEST and RANSACK are more accessible (and potentially juicier) to a wider crowd, there are pluses to including constructor-specific terminology, too.

Plaudits for the gridwork. With four themers, Ricky could have gone platanos and worked in a couple more long bonuses, but for a debut, I like the decision to err on the side of keeping the final product clean. Just a bit of AIRE and ETDS made for a smooth solve.

Overall, a well-crafted debut, if not as audacious as I like my Thursday puzzles to be.