Trip Payne author page

Shaded squares usually make a puzzle's theme readily apparent. Filling in even one set often gives away the game. It's rare indeed, that not only did I not guess the theme from one corner, but after four corners, I still didn't comprehend.

Heck, even after I uncovered the revealer, it took me a hot minute to figure out the concept: CORNER THE MARKET = the letters of T H E M A R K E T mixed-up into 3x3 squares. The K makes those letters difficult to arrange into one 3x3, so doing it four different ways carries a high degree of technical difficulty.

CORNER has been played upon many times in crosswords. There's corner KICKS, corner STONE, corner STORE, corner LOT, the HOT corner, KITTY corner, ROUND the corner, and even a CORNER corner. This might sound Bubba Blue-repetitive, but there's a great deal of variety within, from rebuses to bending answers to a rebus that Sam Donaldson meant to be a missing square.

Having done dozens of CORNER puzzles, I appreciate that Trip presented a variation I've never seen before. The finance guy in me loves the revealer, too. Such an evocative figure of speech.

Will Shortz doesn't take many of these types of puzzles anymore, because the shaded letters tend to force serious fill compromises. Trip, who I greatly respect as a meticulous co-editor of Zynga's Crossword with Friends, usually wouldn't let so many ETH ATRA DETRE/ARED gluey bits stand.

I did enjoy some of the bonuses, WESTEROS a fresh entry, and SERAPHIM evocative. The concept is certainly innovative. However, it was so difficult to get past all the grid issues caused by the heavy constraints.

I've attended several ACPTs now but always judging, never competing. Is that because I take a perverse pleasure in watching as the poor suckers — er, contestants — struggle with one of the hardest puzzles of the year in what's come to be spoken in a hushed tone: "THE DREADED PUZZLE #5." Maybe. Okay, yes.

Trip's puzzle was scheduled to be that crazy Puzzle #5 this past year, but due to an unfortunate videotaping, it got pulled at the last moment. And man oh man did it live up to reputation. I ended up finishing most of it after the better part of three sit-down sessions, and boy oh boy was it worth it. Trip gives us a few "arithmetic clues" like 33 — 21, but those numbers refer to the specific entries in the grid. For instance, 33 — 21 = NET SALES — COSTS = GROSS PROFIT. Clever idea! Even better were ones where the symbol was disguised, i.e. 61 + 86 = PERT PLUS RIVAL = NEUTROGENA. I love that sort of cunning trickery.

From a constructor's viewpoint, it's amazing to see how much theme density Trip packed in. Each of the four themers requires a set of three entries. Not only that, Trip laid them out so that none of the secret theme entries starts on a square starting both an across and a down entry. For example, a natural place to sneak a bonus entry is at 1A or 1D, but those are both no-gos since doing so would leave the solver confused as to whether 1A or 1D is the bonus answer — what an elegant touch.

And to do all of this with a relatively smooth fill is pretty incredible. Sure, we see an LA RAM here and an ORA there, but those LURER type entries are minor. There is some freedom in that Trip was able to place his pairs of bonus entries in multiple places, but achieving a smooth fill with this many constraints really shouldn't be possible. I've highlighted the triplets of theme answers for solvers' benefit, so everyone can visualize just how jam-packed this grid is.

And some devious clues. ERASE, how could that be [Cut from a log]? Much more logical when you think about a ship's log. [HE is one] makes sense, but only after thinking of He as the symbol for helium.

Seriously hard solve for me, with a neat a-ha moment.