Emma Craven-Matthews author page
1 puzzle by Emma Craven-Matthews
with Jeff Chen comments
| H | A | T | H | B | A | H | O | T | T | A | W | A | ||
| E | R | O | O | A | R | T | S | A | U | N | A | S | ||
| M | A | R | C | T | I | M | H | O | R | T | O | N | S | |
| B | A | K | E | S | A | L | E | D | D | E | ||||
| S | H | E | L | B | O | X | S | E | A | T | ||||
| Y | E | A | T | S | C | I | A | |||||||
| S | C | E | N | A | R | I | O | A | N | Y | O | N | E | |
| H | O | P | I | C | O | L | A | S | I | V | A | N | ||
| E | N | I | G | M | A | A | L | I | E | N | A | T | E | |
| H | E | N | R | E | O | R | G | |||||||
| S | T | U | T | T | E | R | I | S | S | A | ||||
| U | R | N | A | P | R | I | C | O | T | S | ||||
| M | A | P | L | E | S | Y | R | U | P | R | E | P | O | |
| A | L | I | G | N | S | E | T | A | R | A | I | N | ||
| C | A | N | A | D | A | P | H | D | Y | M | C | A |
Jim Horne, XWI's resident Canadian, and I have weekly conversations about puzzles. They're always fun, but this week's chat put a huge smile on my face. It's not often that you hear someone talk so reverently about so many things!
There's some great material in today's grid, woven all throughout: BAKE SALE to BOX SEAT to ALIENATE to APRICOTS to STUTTER (cool that Joe Biden can talk about this openly, helping other stutterers!) to ENGIMA to SCENARIO. That's way more than I remember in any recent Monday.
It led to an unfortunate amount of crossword glue, though. I don't mind a bit of EROO here, DDE there, since those are easy(ish) for newb solvers to piece together. OSO, not so. ELEA = "el-e ... whaaa?" HEB might make solvers ebb.
I understand the allure. So much meaty fill! Any time you start with a themer like TIM HORTONS and then flank it with BAKE SALE and BOX SEAT, along with ALIENATE down below … it's hard to resist.
Fun concept for a debut. It's a rare puzzle indeed that inspires Jim to write, and I love that.