Norm Guggenbiller author page

Nice example of the "change a sound to produce wacky results" type theme. These types of puzzles ought to have strong consistency (each base phrase transformed in the exact same manner) and this one does just that. The AR sound gets modified to a Bostonian AH, and overall, the results are quite good. The base phrases are snappy (CARD COUNTERS and GARBLED MESSAGE are excellent), and the resulting answers are generally amusing. There's something about SPOCKS WILL FLY that tickles the nerd in me, although I would have loved to see a reference to (warning, dork alert) Spock and Evil Spock (I'm obviously the evil one).

Notable that there are only 136 words into today's puzzle. 140 is Will's maximum, and even that is difficult to adhere to. There have been surprisingly few Sunday puzzles with less than 140 words in the Shortz era, and there's a good reason for that: it's incredibly difficult to do without resorting to chucking in cruddy fill. But Norm does a very nice job today, the only real trouble spot being the ECKO/HOCH/DESC area.

Last year, Will commented that he was interested in looking at Sunday-size puzzles with less theme density and a lower word count (a Sunday/themeless mixture), the idea being that it'd be nice to have some variety. After a while, Sunday puzzles can feel like a bit of a slog to some solvers, a giant puzzle that gets tedious, so I really like the idea of tossing in a curve ball once in a while, giving solvers less of a thematic experience but amping up the difficulty level in the surrounding fill.

Norm goes down this route today, incorporating only six theme answers (usually Sundays have at least seven themers) and using fewer black squares for a 136 worder. He gives us goodness such as BUG ZAPPER, RUNS A TAB, MAN EATERS, and OFF CENTER; very welcome entries which help lend the puzzle more of a snappy themeless feel. And there is quite a lot of longer fill — note how many six letter (28) and seven letter words (18) there are (you can figure this out by pressing "Analyze this puzzle" way down at the bottom of the page) — although not much else of the fill is memorable. It is possible to make six and seven letter fill memorable, but that's generally a tough task. I would have loved to see more long fill like BUG ZAPPER. I don't know if it's possible, but it is something I'll be attempting in the future. Anything to give the solver a heightened degree of fun.

All in all, Will is running a useful experiment I hope to see more of. It's intriguing to think about Sunday puzzles with fewer themers but a lot more zippy long fill.