Stephen McCarthy author page

Schrödinger puzzles work best when either answer is equally valid; a true 50/50. Four excellent finds today, with WRIST / WAIST a standout. The clue's specificity is what makes it shine — WRIST band and WAIST band both fit perfectly. Note that a more general clue like [Body part] would have felt like the constructor was reaching to make a single clue work.

Also note that I said four excellent finds. Trying to pass off STAR WARS as the better of the franchises will get you a bat'leth in the butt. "Phantom Menace," anyone? Jar Jar Binks or the stereotypical Asian aliens?

Huh? What about the crapfest known as Voyager, you ask?

Logically, I must now Vulcan nerve pinch you.

Overall, this might have made for a better Thursday than Sunday, since the gimmick is a one-trick pony. The quotes and characters also felt random — more specificity would have been better than "any seven-letter character" or "any 21-letter quote."

Amusing premise for this wannabe Starfleet Academy cadet, though.

(Yes, more like space cadet.)

I can hear so many solvers grumbling about yet another anagrams theme, which would be a shame. Even after reading Stephen's comments, it might not be apparent that:

1. each theme word has exactly two vowels: one A and one O, and
2. when you switch the two, it forms another valid word.

I've even used TONGA TANGO in an anagram crossword for an upcoming book, and I didn't notice the pure vowel swap!

The concept piqued my curiosity enough to write a quick script to see what else was out there. My favorites that Stephen didn't include: CASTOR/CO-STAR — COSTAR OIL for a bodybuilding movie? GRAB ON, Josh GROBAN! RAMON/ROMAN, SONYA/SANYO. And if you relax the "only two vowels" constraint, OCTANE/ACT ONE. Something neat about the addition/deletion of a space.

Stephen and I discussed if a revealer would have been helpful. I'm 100% on board, although his thought of VOWEL MOVEMENT didn't work for me. It'd be fun to brainstorm what sort of "swap" or "switch" phrases might have worked.

None of the themers made me burst into laughter, but I appreciated that Stephen chose all five-letter keywords. That consistency kicked things up a notch.

Fully agreed with Stephen's self-critique, the grid flow is not great. It'd be interesting to explore connecting up ZERO-G and ITCH in a full revision attempting to improve feng shui and also include an extra-long Down bonus entry.

I favor trickier Thursdays, so even realizing that this was more than simply anagrams wasn't enough to scratch my itch. I flew through today's, which is a testament to Stephen's care in gridding, but it also points to it being more Tuesday-Wednesday.

My wife used to be a competitive Scrabble player so was constantly anagramming letters in her head. Over our first holiday season together, I slipped some bars of her favorite chocolate into her luggage and gave her a hint: mixed-up TACKIEST COUPES. I figured she'd go to an anagramming site and voila! Delicious surprise.

After a dozen increasingly infuriated messages, I hurriedly told her to look in her SUITCASE POCKET. Such is our love-hate relationship with anagrams.

These days, we don't have as much time, but we do the Spelling Bee every day. Mostly love, but ooh, the hate is strong when we can't figure out the pangram.

Jim Horne asked me a thoughtful question about today's puzzle: would I rather see fresh pangram pairs that might not have perfectly apt connections, like MAGLEV TRAINS and MARVELS AT, or time-worn ones that are spot-on, like MOON STARER for ASTRONOMER? I'm still not sure. While I do like the novelty of DATING SITE and INSTIGATED, the clue has to work so hard to connect the two.

It's a shame that more pairs don't feel both fresh and perfectly apt, like GREASE PAINT and PAGEANTRIES.

I enjoyed some of the bonuses, not easy to work in when you're dealing with ten (!) themers. ZOOM BOMB is current. RIGHT ON CUE is fun, too. It is what it is that TRUISMS amuse me. I could have used a couple more of those, though, to help keep me going. Leaving off two of the less interesting themers could have helped (along with making some IATE SHA STDS TNN be GON).

I appreciated the clue on SETI, the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence evoking U2's "still haven't found what I'm looking for." Crossword theme radar pinging …

Super fun to discuss search and computer query strategies with Stephen! I love nerding out with a seemingly intractable problem.

I poke so much Canadian fun at Jim Horne, XWord Info's resident Canuck, smirking at how the most American of Americana doesn't resonate at all with him. Like ... our vitriolic political battles. Millions without health care. A country divided. Hot dogs. U-S ... eh?

There was another Canadia-themed puzzle that tickled Jim last year, and it was so fun to hear him speak so fondly of it. During today's solve, I delighted in imagining the smile on Jim's face.

As a grid art fanboy, I also smiled for myself. It's not a perfect Maple Leaf (compare and contrast to the image here), but it's recognizable(ish) even without the puzzle title. Let's go with … impressionistic? Pointillist? I'm no artist, but I know art when I see it. And I say let's go with it.

It was a little too easy at points — able to fill EH into every pair of bubbles once I got the first two — and way too hard at others. That southeast corner nearly did me in, not knowing LESLIE HOPE (and thinking of my beloved Leslie Knope), along with the incredibly tough clue for EARSHOT. I get what it's going for — not a mountain range, but within hearing range. With the maple leaf sectioning off the corner, I'd have appreciated (much) easier cluing.

However, there was a lot of spot-on wordplay, like E-READER being a [Novel convenience?] and "pidgin English" repurposed for COO. Along with some great entries like TAUTOLOGY and FREE HEALTH CARE (although, is that really a thing, asked this American), I give it an EH! for effort.

(The two themers Stephen left out: RAISE A LITTLE HELL and THE HANDMAID'S TALE.)