Robert Fisher author page

What a fun concept! The broad theme type of "kooky interpretations" — taking a regular phrase and defining it humorously — has been tapped for crosswords so many times that it's important to do something extra. Robert did exactly that, giving his themers entertaining definitions related to people in charge of drinks. Although I've heard PORT AUTHORITY defined relative to a wine connoisseur before, I loved the collection of four apt ones for four different beverage types.

At first, I wondered if GROUNDSKEEPER didn't belong since PORT and DRAFTS hit directly on the drinks in question. Given that I live in coffee-central Seattle, though, it's not uncommon to see coffee snobs tasting grounds, swishing them, rubbing them into their gums, etc.

You think I'm joking.

There are grounds for GROUNDS to be considered even more important than the coffee they brew, so I gave this a pass.

It's a fantastic Tuesday theme. If the gridwork had lived up, this would have been in POW! territory. I do love the bonuses — INDULGE ME and WHAT OF IT are fantastic, and POLYESTER is strong — but SERE is old-timey, desperate crosswordese. Toss in some partials (AT NO, ONE OF), a weird suffix (IOR), tough abbr. (SYL), an initialism that's hard to figure out (SSA), difficult foreign word (AZUL), and you've hit most every no-no called out on editors' specs sheets.

There's almost always a balance, trying for snazz while maximizing smoothness, but with just four themers, it's usually possible to achieve both. I'd have taken another look at the FOUNTAINHEAD / GROUNDSKEEPER overlap, which forced so much unsightliness. Moving FOUNTAINHEAD up one row would likely have helped, creating better spacing overall.

Still, amusing early-week themes don't come around that often, so this one is commendable.

Not sure the best way of expressing this concept — mincing one's words? I've heard "it's not a problem, it's an opportunity" countless times in the business arena, so it was fun to get a [Layoff] termed as a CAREER SHIFT OPPORTUNITY. (Note to self: think about adding "crisitunity" to my word list.)

I think these are meant to be not as much humorous as wry, so not many of them entertained me. Guess I'm looking for something more upbeat in my crossword than an alternative way to say [Dead]. I ended up with an error in PAST RETIREMENT instead of POST-RETIREMENT, but both of them made me feel uncomfortable.

Unusual these days to get a wide puzzle — 22x21, to accommodate ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH and CAREER SHIFT OPPORTUNITY. (Most editors are fairly well constrained to work with 21x21.) It could be argued that the max word count should be allowed to float higher than the usual 140, perhaps proportionally to 146 or 147. But Sundays are so big to begin with that I'd rather see it kept at 140, to make sure solvers don't lose interest, what with so many clues to wade through.

Robert went up to 148, which did allow him to get the fill perhaps a touch smoother than average Sundays. Yes, there are SEHR API EFS SIE STET EDT HADA PLUMR LIMN, but that's not too bad for a Sunday grid.

What it didn't allow for though, is much bonus fill, which is so important in keeping my attention if the theme isn't achieving that purpose. There's not a single 8+ letter piece of fill, and those long slots are so important, much easier to make into colorful entries than 7-letter or shorter slots. I did like AL DENTE, RAT RACE, MACHETE, CHEAPOS, but that wasn't nearly enough for me.

Overall, a good seed of an idea, but none of the themers tickled me.