Milo Beckman author page

Numbers, in a themeless puzzle? A theme in a themeless puzzle? The madness! I enjoyed the change of pace, Milo interestingly incorporating 20/21. It's a tricky layout, much harder than other number year puzzles. Great job incorporating CATCH 22 and FOREVER 21, solid phrases that use the numbers as they're seen in real life.

20 PERCENT is perhaps a 50 percent fine answer. More arbitrary than 1 PERCENTER or even 15 PERCENT [Tipping norm], but maybe that's Milo's call to be generous to those in the service industry who could use a boost right now.

01 ALUMS … calling it 20 percent fine would be overly generous. What else would work there, though? 01 YANKEES, the team that lost to the upstart Diamondbacks, would have appealed to Yankee-haters, and the 01 PATRIOTS (2001 season champs) … don't get me started on Tom Brady! Even these would have felt arbitrary.

Is this entry head-shaking-enough to nix a unique approach to 20/21? Probably not, but I sympathize with the argument.

Going to an oversized 16x16 grid (the central 20/21 necessitated even numbers) gave Milo the freedom to incorporate extra-long slots, and he took great advantage of them. PSYCHOACTIVE, SO LAST YEAR, A-PLUS AVERAGE, APP STORE, QUEER EYE, UNPERSON certainly SPICED things UP. I appreciated including FERGUSON's 2014 civil rights protests in a non-preachy way, too. Hard to believe that was so long ago.

There was some wastage with neutral entries like EDGELESS and OVERRIDE, along with a bit of GROS und ASSN, but not nearly enough to detract from my solving pleasure. If only 01 had had a better entry, this could have been the year's first POW! Creative ideas, anyone?

Remember that Skittles tagline, "Taste the rainbow!" Today, we solve the rainbow. Er, solve the rainbow using a purple for indigo + violet substitution.

So more like, solve the rainbow, but only in a manner of speaking. Esque. Ish.

It's no surprise that I stayed out of marketing.

(start sheepishness) I didn't realize this puzzle was supposed to be the rainbow flag — which has only six colors, not seven! Jim pointed that out to me after I groused about not adhering to ROY G. BIV. I'm especially embarrassed since pride month is huge here in Seattle. There are rainbow flags in every other storefront. (end sheepishness)

I enjoyed the entries that didn't work without the color. BAY PACKER means nothing by itself, but a lot of cheeseheads are going to enjoy seeing (GREEN) BAY PACKER in the grid today. Same goes for LANTERN — what a boring name for a superhero. GREEN LANTERN, now that's much better!

On the flip side, the path to an Oscar could be just a CARPET. And PEPPERS are salad items. Not completely necessary to think of these as (RED) CARPET and (YELLOW) PEPPERS, yeah? So they don't work as well as the other themers.

Interesting choice to work in ADIOS AMIGOS and OFF ONE'S GAME. Both a super solid pieces of fill. But they do masquerade as themers at first glance since they're the longest across answers. I might have preferred to break them up since AP SPANISH and PASTORATE are good enough bonuses for one puzzle.

Some nice finds, and excellent gridwork — so many short theme answers to work around. Check out how many down answers run through three themers, which usually is a huge problem. Amazing that the grid is so smooth.

Colors of the rainbow have been tapped for crosswords a bit too often, so something amazing has to be done to catch my attention. This one wasn't quite there for me. If PRIDE MONTH or RAINBOW FLAG had been in the grid somewhere (catching this unobservant idiot's attention), that could have done it. Heck, use one of those as a title, and it would have gotten some POW! consideration.

Neat concept, but difficult to explain. Four answers have "ghost" implied: (GHOST) TOWNS, (GHOST) WRITTEN, (GHOST) BUSTERS, and (GHOST) STORY. None of the letters in those words show up in the down answers, i.e. COUR(T)IER becomes COURIER. Finally, all the old words such as COURTIER are legitimate words (or word-ish).

Whew! Make sense? If not, I've done some highlighting in the grid below to try to make the principle clear. I've also fixed up the answers below so they match their respective clues.

I liked some of Milo's finds, HOL(Y) LAND to HOLLAND the standout. That's the type of discovery I marvel at, such a dramatic change — a colorful, long answer turning into another solid entry. COURTIER to COURIER is also good, but there's something about a two-word to one-word transmogrification that's so neat.

This type of construction feat is very difficult. I've done it once before, but it took so long to create that I doubt I'll do another like it. Milo has an even more difficult task, given how many ghosted letters he has to work with. It's especially difficult around those seven-letter entries — that's so many connected answers that have to be worked in!

Given the challenge, it's no surprise to see a few clunkers in the affected regions. I thought the NE suffered most, with IS WAR and MIN(T)ER, and the T BAR to BAR change isn't much a change at all. And as much as I loved HOL(Y) LAND to HOLLAND, having the awkward THR (from TH(O)R) took away from that region's appeal. There's also some awkward ASORT, RNDS, PRES spread around, not to mention CDI, ARD, AMU, etc.

Overall though, I liked the novelty of the ghosted words. Fun and tricky concept, appropriate for Halloween.