Simeon Seigel author page

So many casual solvers have no idea that professional crosswords have themes, and that's what makes them stand out from the computer-generated dreck that many small newspapers run. Even my mother-in-law, who's a dedicated daily solver, is content with filling in most of the Bloomington Herald-Times's crappy auto-generated puzzle. She's incredibly proud of me and brags to her friends about my work, but identifying a crossword theme is as much a mystery as why I'm always in the bathroom for such long stretches of time.

(Hiding from my children.)

There's no way she would have picked up on today's concept, and I almost missed it as well. I'm glad I huddled with Jim Horne to figure out if this was a themeless puzzle or what, because Simeon has an interesting take on the parsing genre. TAKE FIVE = entries "take" five letters from the previous one to form a new and valid entry:

IGNOR / AMUSES

TRAPS / HOOTERS

REVER / BERATES

INDIG / NATION

Jim and I should be indignant that we were such ignoramuses to miss this! The aha is so indirect, though, that the concept didn't strongly reverberate even after I figured iit out.

Would circling the sets of five letters have helped make things clear? Most definitely, but that risks insulting solvers' intelligence. I'm sure there are some people that realized [*Complete fools] — starred even, to make it stand out! — couldn't possibly be AMUSES.

Not this complete fool, unfortunately.

TAIL ENDS messed with me, too. Was that meant to be thematic?

I love the novelty, an innovative approach that throws a rock into the sea of parsing themes. A sharper revealer — maybe running the themers vertically and using HIGH FIVE? — could have elevated this one into POW! consideration.

An interesting, multidimensional approach: find two-word phrases such that when two letters are swapped and the space is shifted, they form two valid entries? I would never have thought of that.

The four finds ended up being a mere afterthought, though, one that I wouldn't have bothered to track down if I didn't feel obligated to do so by the inevitable raft of questions from confused readers.

Both sides have valid points. Simeon wanted solvers to achieve a more glorious a-ha. The NYT team wanted something that wouldn't confuse a ton of solvers. What could have broken the impasse? If a mediator had been brought in, would they have been able to negotiate a less one-sided outcome? I spent a lot of time mulling over these questions, and I doubt it could have been resolved as the grid stands.

However, this could have been a fantastic opportunity to brainstorm and expand the concept into a rich 21x21 with yet more dimensions. What if an additional entry held the clue to the final result, for example? AIRPLANE TICKETS, clued as [What row X form], perhaps. That extra element would prompt solvers to go back and puzzle over what in the hell is going on, finally flipping the switch to earn their fist-pumping moment.

It's no secret that I'm a vocal critic of the NYT's lackluster approach to Sunday puzzles. I'd love to see a dedicated team assigned to take creative ideas like this one and shape them into innovative 21x21s that are both accessible and push the boundaries.

The first time I saw this concept, I couldn't help but NO NI WOOZ the concept and say how HSIM I could come up with something as genius. No matter how hard I tried, though, my sounding board (Jim Horne) answered in polite Canadian tones, to the effect of E W I. Cock your head and that becomes M E H, but I had the last laugh, as I interpreted his comments as M E —, as in "me minus you nothing for great effort."

I manage to convince myself of so much.

Simeon's point about writing styles is on point. For so many solvers, it'll be impossible to see an I turned sideways as an H, because they write the letter I with one simple stroke. And even if you write a capital E instead of a lower-case one, it takes some creative thought to imagine it as a M. It was similarly a case of Muddy Waters when Alex and I tried to riff on M W — for many solvers, that was hardly an experience of Es.

I laughed so hard at Jim's "for some reason ..." comment below that anything else I say today would pale in comparison.

I appreciate that Simon did his homework. So many constructors have approached me with the exact same flippin' flipping concept, switching front and back halves of words. It's been done so many times, that you need something different to even get noticed. I like today's constraint. Although the second word doesn't change, the overall effect is punchy. ALE HOUSES to HOUSE SALE works well.

It's not every day that we're treated to kookiness in a grid. We've added thick lines below to mimic what the NYT has done with the print edition. I was positive that the thick lines were hurdles that the themers had to jump over, but this works, too. It's a shame that there aren't any numbers at the H of ALEHOUSES and second H of HOTHEADS — feels like there's some clever approach that could make use of that.

There's often A LOT TO LOSE when you work with adjacent long Downs. Getting all the Across answers to play nicely is a bit of herding cats. Running two themers through that area risks cat scratch fever. Excellent work in the lower left, a SECRET DOOR running through the good ol' US OF A. The opposite corner suffered some AGITA, but that's a reasonable price to pay for ANIMANIACS / WATER SNAKE.

Hardly a MOUE-inducing entry elsewhere! That's solid work, for a six-themer puzzle.

I love it when the NYT messes with the boring ol' square grids that are just so square. Cool idea to draw in those thick lines — especially intriguing that the one in the middle of PRINTOUTS seems to close off that passageway between black squares, like a door that could swing open. Crossword theme radar pinging …

Constructors always come up with similar core ideas, and their executions can be so different. Although we both featured ALTERNATION(S), Simeon's layout features "every other letter" discoveries much better than mine. One criticism I received was that my puzzle made it too hard to figure out what the two component words were — it's not easy to mentally skip letters. Simeon's pairings present them so well!

MERGE LEFT is a fantastic way to explain what's going on; an orderly zippering of two lanes into one. It's a perfect CLUE for how to shuffle CLUE / OLDS into COLLUDES.

Fun to include PARES DOWN, too. I thought it odd at first — why homophones instead of something more straightforward like MATCHING PAIRS? — but PARES DOWN is playful. It also gives a fun rationale for orienting the pairs vertically.

A drawback to this approach is that the two composite words never get clued, making for an extremely tough solve. I used to take pride in giving solvers three-sigma challenges, but I've realized that making people feel smart is my higher priority.

I might have eased things up by cluing 11-D as [Hint], 12-D as [Former GM brand], and added a head-scratching 11-A clue for COLLUDES. As a solver, I love double-take a-ha moments like "WTF, there is no 11-A … OR IS THERE?!"

Great gridwork, not at all an easy task given the pairings Simeon had to fill around. I appreciated all the long Acrosses he threaded throughout. Without so many solid long entries like ACIDIFIES, HAWTHORNE, and TRADITION, the solve would have been a start-and-stop traffic jam of short entries.

ALTERNATIONS makes for a perfect center revealer for this concept. Neat presentation.

Apt to have SSN, PIN, and DOB "blacked out." We've added in the nine letters below for the sake of clarity. Don't hate us for dacting the redactions, we're only trying to make sure solvers understand what's going on.

I enjoyed a solid a-ha moment when figuring out SLEEPLE(SS N)IGHTS. It's unfortunately spot-on for these pandemic days.

GOING U(P IN) FLAMES, too? You wonder what inspired Simeon ...

I hitched on ___ SERVERS. On one hand, I love that SERVERS is a real word, obfuscating the trick, unlike IGHTS. I didn't get a strong click upon completing GROUND OBSERVERS, though. It's a fine phrase, albeit from a long time ago. I had to work extremely hard to uncover it, and the payoff didn't feel commensurate.

I was curious, what might have been fresher? The search string *???DOB???* (the question marks insure that there are at least three letters before and after DOB) turned up some neat entries, including ORLAN(DO B)LOOM and FRO(DO B)AGGINS — cool connection, though irrelevant). I also enjoyed SACRE(D OB)JECT(S), which has a feeling of secrecy to match the theme.

Interesting choice to go to such a low word count — 73 is close to themeless level. I loved getting so many bonuses in the NW and SE; HULA DANCE, YELLOW LAB, POT LEAVES are great.

Not wild about the middle. ESTERS to STYES to the slightly wonky AEROBATS to BANC … I'd have looked at adding a pair of black squares around the B of AEROBATS. Probably rejiggering the layout, too, to avoid bottlenecking into the NE corner.

Not the first time I've seen this concept, with Joanne Sullivan getting her second she-did-it-first moment in a week, and Joel Fagliano executing a similar concept back in 2017.

I like puzzles that break the rules, though, so I welcome a "letters in black squares" puzzles occasionally. Some solvers complain about having no way to write in those redacted letters, so I'm curious to see how the NYT app handles things. It would be so mind-blowing if for one day only, solvers could navigate onto black squares, so they could type right onto them.

Ah, me and my long crossword memory. If it hadn't been for a brilliant "black square plus signs" one from a few years back, I would have loved today's. Even so, I enjoyed seeing a different take on the concept, the black plus signs standing in for AND within phrases. It's amazing that all four phrases ranged from solid to great, given that all four had to interlock.

If you're not familiar with the DAGWOOD SANDWICH, it's that crazy, head-height monstrosity that Dagwood Bumstead makes for himself, unlatching his jaw so he can bite into it. GOLDEN HANDCUFFS might be foreign, too — it's the colorful business term for a set of incentive-laden contract terms that makes it tough for an exec to leave his/her position.

I appreciate that Simeon worked hard to give bonuses throughout the grid. He could have easily gone to 78 words, focusing on a clean grid, and I wouldn't have faulted him for that. But when you can keep the grid clean and go down to 74 words, allowing for great bonuses such as ALISTERS, APOLLO XI, MOONSET, SPAMBOT?

To see such smooth and snazzy work from a new constructor is such a pleasure. Biggish corners like the southwest are no joke, and it's clear that Simeon spent time refining each subsection of the grid.

That clue for APOLLO XI, too. I kept wondering why so many people would be interested in a TV series pilot — M*A*S*H, maybe? What a clever misdirect to a NASA pilot, seen on TV.

Overall, a solid concept that might strike non-OCD crossworders more strongly. It's fun to see black squares pull extra duty in a crossword.