Charles M. Deber author page

THINK TWICE played upon, giving a circle of objects linked together by commonalities. I couldn't keep up with all the cross-referencing, so here's a listing:

BASEBALL TERMS: HOMER and DIAMOND

CARD SUITS: DIAMOND and SPADE

HAND TOOLS: SPADE and PLANE

MEANS OF TRAVEL: PLANE and TRAIN

BRIDAL THINGS: TRAIN and SHOWER

WEATHER WORDS: SHOWER and FROST

FAMOUS POETS: FROST and HOMER

There did feel like a lot of (minor) dabs of crossword glue — AGEES BOS ERE DES LIC ELL ALIE/AURI HEB HESA, etc. — the sheer quantity of which usually would make me wince. But this is a notoriously difficult construction, given how many "themers" there are. I've highlighted them below so you get a better picture of just how much real estate was inflexible. It's a constructor's nightmare!

Given that constraint, I think Charles did pretty well with his execution. Not sure that so many theme answers could have been filled around much more smoothly.

The question in my mind was, would this concept have been better in a non-crossword format? It's an interesting word circle (chain?), with some creative links. But I think an NPR on-air puzzle, $20,000 Pyramid format, or some other medium (NYT variety puzzle, perhaps?) would have served the idea much more strongly than a crossword.

Granted, I'm heavily biased against cross-referencing clues in general — x-refs break up my solving flow, forcing me to jump around all over the puzzle — but wow, this required SO much cross-referencing. I honestly tried to follow along for the first couple of theme clues, but I soon gave up.

I'm not sure I would have bothered to go back and look at the full word circle if I hadn't wanted to analyze it here, and that would have been a shame. The basic idea was an interesting twist on a standard word chain/circle.

Ah, the Beatles. There have been several puzzles incorporating JOHN, PAUL, RINGO, and GEORGE, including a stealth one by Peter Collins, but none incorporating their full names quite like this.

I found the most interesting question to ponder today: how the heck do we fix the answers up so the database is clean and accurate? Jim and I take great care to reverse entries, unbend them, do whatever it takes to make the entry make sense to the clue. This often requires judgment calls, and we try to just be as consistent as possible. We ended up splitting the theme answers into two, so that if solvers later want to find this puzzle, a search for *JOHN LENNON* (the asterisks being wild card operators) will turn up PAUL MCCARTNEY JOHN LENNON. Perhaps there are better ways to do it? (shaking fist at constructors who defiantly break the molds)

Neat change of pace; it's rare to see a long entry sweep around like this to form a single gigantic theme entry. The shape isn't bad, although it struck me as more of a banjo than a guitar. A few slight indentations in the body of the guitar might have helped, but could also have made the construction even harder than it already is.

This mirror-symmetry grid may not come across as tricky, but as soon as I saw it I knew there would have to be some compromises here and there. Just look at 9D and 11D separated by only one column, and they stretch almost the full length of the puzzle. And to top it off, they spread out, forcing a very tough section within the "body" of the guitar. Stuff like AAU and NEUER in the center is bound to happen with this many constraints. Not only that, but you have to spend so many of your black squares in the middle of the puzzle, that the outer regions are forced to be big white swaths, hard to fill. A real challenge.

Some compromises in execution today, but I find that it's always fun to remember the greatness that was the Beatles.