New York Times, Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Now, this may come as a surprise, but I rather like all the colorful ways in which the English language allows its speakers to express themselves. This puzzle, to me, is a prime example of not only the diverse nature of English, but also the old truism that language is a reflection of culture. Namely, in the case of this puzzle, humanity has seen nonsense in everyday life so often that they have to keep making up words for it to keep from being bored of describing it.

I know it seems that the fill is a little constrained because of the sheer amount of theme content, but I put a lot of constraints on myself from the outset and, I think, minimized the junk given the number of theme squares. I moved the various theme answers around a lot — a LOT — and tried a few other words that just didn't make the cut (TRASH, RUBBISH, GARBAGE, BOSH being some of them) because of the effect they had on the fill. (8 pairs of theme answers mean a lot of permutations!) The only words that I didn't move around much were JIVE and JAZZ, because terminal J's and V's severely limit the options in a grid where my options were already considerably limited. Those two stayed where they were from the start of construction.

On the whole, I was so enamored of all these synonyms for "nonsense" that I felt like I had to wedge as many as I could into this puzzle ... even at the expense of going over the max word count significantly. It was a bit of a gamble to do that, but I'm glad that Will didn't see past all that nonsense.

An 82-word construction is four words over my usual maximum for a daily puzzle, but this is done to accommodate — count 'em — 16 theme answers. They're all nice ones, too. A very elegant construction.

Perhaps the hardest Tuesday NYT I've ever done. It's pretty neat, not at all BUSHWA (my favorite themer by a mile!) to see 16 different synonyms for "Nonsense" — I had no idea there were so many of them, all colorful — but the opaque cluing sure made for a difficult solve. The 16 essentially unclued entries made it almost like solving the puzzle with just down clues, an exercise some of the speedsters sometimes engage in.

It's rare that Will allows a higher word count than the maximum of 78 (for a 15x), but there are definitely examples. Something like today's puzzle definitely pushes the envelope of construction, almost necessitating the push to 82 words.

It's also unusual to have so many unsavory short answers, but today we see ANIGH, DERAT, ROW B, AT YA, STELA, etc. With so much theme density, it's almost impossible to avoid these. I've highlighted all the themers so you can better appreciate how much their placement constrained the construction. Consider the east section, where TRIPE, BUSHWA, and HOGWASH sit, just as one example. There are limited options for where STRUNG sits, and once you place that word, that east region becomes very difficult to cleanly fill. Perhaps one of ANIGH and STELA would be fine for an early-week puzzle, but it's a bit unappetizing to have them in such close proximity.

I personally would have preferred slightly less theme density in order to clean up the fill, but I'm sure there will be solvers arguing that their favorite "Nonsense" phrase was left out. Overall, I always appreciate seeing someone push the boundaries, and perhaps this will stimulate other ideas for future disestablishmentarianism. Plus, BUSHWA!