Michael J. Doran author page

OPEN HOUSE used as a revealer today, indicating that both words in the theme entries can follow HOUSE: STATE BIRD = STATE HOUSE / BIRD HOUSE, TOLL ROAD = TOLLHOUSE / ROADHOUSE, etc. Interesting that Mike stacked pairs of themers like STATE BIRD over TOLL ROAD — rarely an easy task. And working in eight (!) themers is never easy.

I met Mike a few years back at the ACPT, and a conversation we had made me rethink some things. I had commented on ROTA in one of his puzzles, and he said that it actually was a really common term in golf. Sure enough, he was right.

That made me realize I was seeing "crossword glue" in very black-and-white terms, when gray was more appropriate. I still don't think ROTA is great in a mass-market puzzle, but ever since then, I've internally debated these questions much harder.

Some crossword glue is clear-cut, i.e. listings on editors' spec sheets: abbreviations (ATT, SESS, ONT, NSEC), esoteric-ish foreign words (SETTE, LITRE), old-school crosswordese (OLIO), etc. But something like ROILY? Hmm ...

A while back, SKYEY made a rare appearance, and I was on the fence about that one too. Brad Wilber, who edits the Chronicle of Higher Education, made a case that 1.) it's listed in all his dictionaries, not even as a variant and 2.) it gives variety that's potentially nice for solvers used to seeing the same short words all the time. After much thought, I still wouldn't use it or ROILY in one of my puzzles, but I like Brad's perspective.

Nice bonuses in PT BOAT, POTLUCK, NAME ONE, BIG CATS. Very hard to work in extras with so many themers, so that was appreciated.

Overall, I've seen this theme type enough that I think there has to be something extra for a puzzle of this genre to stand out. HOUSE is a little too easy to work with for my taste, and some of the themers (TOLL ROAD and ART STORE especially) were a little dry for my taste. But given that very few 15x crosswords ever go to eight themers, I like seeing an outlier every once in a while.

A straightforward theme today, phrases starting with D and D. The dork in me so badly wanted DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to appear somewhere as bonus entries, but I suppose I'll have to settle for entertaining myself with my +1 laptop of doom.

Really nice theme answers, well-chosen from the universe of D and D type phrases. It is a shame that DAILY DOUBLE didn't make it in, but I was glad to hear Mike say that he gave it up in order to make a better puzzle. It's extremely difficult as a constructor to let go of a great entry, and too many of us hang on for dear life, even though it means there are heavy OLEO (or is that OLIO?) and ORT prices to pay.

This is a good example of why most of the time, constructors break up the three first across answers 4/5/4 or 3/5/5 (or some permutation thereof) instead of a 3/6/4 arrangement. There's a lot of fun fill in the very NW corner, with JEDI and JETS and EARP, but the center has the unfortunate APORT. Trying to fill a six-letter stack is (perhaps surprisingly) much harder than filling a five-letter stack. This arrangement also has the drawback of the NW and SE corners feeling a bit separated from the rest of the grid. I certainly appreciate APOGEE and RATED G, very fun answers, but the price of including APORT and ROTA seems a bit high to me.

Finally, neat inclusion of a number in the revealer. It happens so infrequently that it had me stumped for long seconds, and I appreciated it when I finally figured it out. I wish IN2D had more of an "in-the-language" feel, as IN3D seems much more common to me, but still, it was a fresh way to tie together the phrases, turning a common type of theme into something a little new.