joon pahk author page

Blood donation is near and dear to my heart (ha). On those days where I feel like I can't do anything right (there are many), at the very least, I'm a red cell-producing vessel (see what I did there?) good for six units per year. Blood types as crossword fill make me smile more than they should, and blood themes often pump (sorry, not sorry) me up.

Matt Gaffney did a blood type puzzle a few years ago that was brilliant. I had been on the fence about his meta-contest series until then, and it hooked me. If you're not a subscriber, you're losing out on incredible fun (and mostly delightful head-desking).

Initialism puzzles aren't my thing, given how overdone they've become in crosswords. Using rare letters (JQXZ) can redeem them somewhat, or a fantastic revealer, or some other layer of creativity. A + B gives a ton of options, though.

So many danger spots — TREO / COLOMBO, AMBIEN / RIAL, STYNE / OTT, OCASIO / CTU. That last one is particularly problematic, exemplifying why Will Shortz is so against not-that-well-known initialisms. If you watch "24," Counter Terrorist Unit might be obvious. If not, better call Jack Bauer. Perhaps that's meant to be meta!

joon sent me a note about this puzzle a few days ago (before Amanda did), and I pretended to sagely understand it, like I had instantly figured out what he meant. Roughly eighty-eleven hours later, I recalled that puzzle Amanda mentioned. Ah! Amanda and Brendan, it all made sense.

Sort of.

Okay, I had to ask joon. There are some neat elements:

1. A+B initialisms make a ton more sense now!
2. Impressive that Amanda managed to work in such a touching message through the first letters of these clues, without making any sound forced. I usually have great spidey-sense for this sort of thing, so it's a mark of success that she didn't trigger it.
3. AMAN + DAB + REN + DAN = a unique way of including the happy couple. I'm not sure why the clues for those four entries weren't starred today. That would have been much better.

Overall, reading joon's note (and his explicit explanation after I failed to figure things out!) made me appreciate the puzzle more than before.

joon and Erik, two of my favorite people in the crossworld! A reader accused me the other day of favoritism; that I gave better treatment to puzzles written by people I like.

Well, duh. You don't like it, get your own blog.

joon and I first met at an ACPT when people kept calling me joon or Kevin. The three of us bonded over that — there's a silver lining to racism!

And Erik. I've had the privilege of trading tons of thoughts with him about everything from construction techniques to clever cluing to diversity within our sphere. We even have a co-written Thursday puzzle that's been waiting for over a year to be published.

(Hint hint, nudge nudge, Will.)

IMPRESSIVE work in today's puzzle. (Note to constructors: putting not-so-subliminal messages into your grids works.) The 66-word grid features some juicy entries — TEA KETTLE, REPAIR SHOP, KUNTA KINTE, THE MASSES, CAMERA CREW, to name a few — which doesn't happen all the time for low-word-count grids.

It does have some drawbacks, notably the walls of black squares that cut the grid into five parts. Bring down those walls, sirs!

4x7 corners rarely come out both clean and colorful, but check out the SW. MALWARE, LEBRON over WNBA, the SOPRANOS, all JABBING at the supposed limitations of 4x7 corners!

ALAS (see, not-so-subliminal messages work), the NE doesn't compare, what with DISTRICT, EAT OVER, AGEMATE more neutral than positive. It's a clean corner, but hardly colorful. I'd like to see what joon and Erik could do if they moved the black square after OPAL one column to the right. That would not only make it easier to squeeze more juice out of the remaining three long downs in the NE, but would open up grid flow.

I often dislike being forced to learn things from my crossword, but AGENDER didn't feel teachy, since it's easily inferable from the A prefix modifying GENDER. There's so much I don't know about so much, so this is a welcome way of introducing me to the concept. (Read: don't mess with my victorious finish.)

Might have been a POW! contender, what with all the juicy clues — LEBRON more than a little forward, and the Sun a bloc member of the WNBA, just to start — if they'd only been a little less audacious, shifting to a 68-word grid.

I like joon's layout. Most themelesses using sets of long entries interlocking in the middle have problems, either

1. Not having much oomph in the corners, or
2. Restricting the solving flow around said corners to work in extra pizzazz.

Note how joon kept the four corners wide open, answers flowing around, and still managed to work great stuff like ADULTING, ZOOTOPIA, YOSEMITE. Takes a lot of skill (and time) to make this happen.

I also appreciated the trio of SPLASHY TRASHY MEATY. Felt like a spoof ad for Arby's. We have the meats!

With the very difficult-to-fill grid, some trade-offs are expected. I'm glad that joon avoided almost all crossword glue (EOE, GRO, YSER pretty minor). But with a tough name in each corner — NADINE / EVONNE / ARNESS / PEIRCE — it felt like a lot of what some people will call "trivia."

Along with some tough vocab — INCEPT SUBORNS ESPIAL — I think this one is well placed on the hardest day of the NYT crossweek. It's all fair, but it's certainly not easy.

Not a ton of SPLASHY entries in the middle, BEER GOOGLES and GOING STEADY the exceptions. But I like how the clues elevated the otherwise boring NEGOTIATION and CORRECTIONS. The former is perfect, no telltale question mark to give away the game. Who doesn't know some dullard who talks about their job on and on? In this case, "talks" is the noun form. Perfect!

The question mark in [Slip covers?] did alert me right away that something was up. But the fantastic repurposing of "slip covers" was well worth it.

SILENT FINALES … or SILENT FINAL ES? A-ha! I loved UNCALLED FORE (from "uncalled for") as what a golfer might forget to say. And SEMI PROSE (from "semi-pros") made me chuckle.

At first, I was a bit shruggy on this idea, seeming like it was a simple E addition puzzle. But the more I thought about it, the more impressed I was with joon's finds. The difference between RUNNING LAPS and RUNNING LAPSE is huge! The tremendous transformations were impressive.

I could have used a little more snazz in the bonus fill. UMPTEEN and MAIN DRAG are solid gold. I understand that there's not much real estate left after the nine (!) themers are in place. But given that the shorties, EITHER ORE and CASTE LOTS, didn't do a lot for me, swapping them out for a pair of great bonuses of the UMPTEEN-level would have been nice.

I was surprised to see a good amount of crossword glue in this one, especially knowing how meticulous joon is (definitely check out his "Outside the Box" subscription service!). It's about average in terms of Sunday puzzles, with things like LOGY, ARAL, RASA, EFTS, ERLE, ESSES, and the tough ISSEI. But I have such high expectations when I see joon's byline.

It's tough to impress me with a standard(ish) theme type, but I enjoyed this one. Not quite homophones, not quite letter additions, and certainly not sound additions. A sweet spot somewhere in the middle, with some humorous theme finds.

A-HA! So much for those previous comments about day-of-the-week issues, eh, Jim?

Eh?!

EH?!?!!?

(Jim is Canadian. And thus wouldn't gloat like the petty American I am.)

As much as I hate to completely agree with Jim, he said just about everything I was going to.

Drat.

I've had several discussions with Will about this issue, even sending him data about the dearth of tricksy Thursdays recently. The NYT used to fool me all the time on Thursdays, to my utter delight. Not so much in the past two years.

Will's perspective is that all he wants is for Thursday to be harder than Wednesday. I respect that he's sticking to his guns.

However, over a long period of time, he's set expectations about Thursday tricksiness. And although he is right that some solvers HATE being tricked, I think Thursday tricksiness is part of what distinguishes the NYT. Not only can it present 1.) easy, smooth, elegant Mondays, but 2.) audacious Sundays with creative themes, 3.) brilliantly executed themelesses, 4.) solid mid-week puzzles, AND 5.) out of the box wonders?

Historically, the NYT has been a "5-tool player". What other publication can say that? I worry that Will is letting this last tool slowly fall by the wayside.

So, what could have been done to Thursday-ify this puzzle? Some would argue that making the grid more challenging — going down to 72 words, perhaps — would help. I say no, as that just makes the solver's hard work feel even less worth the payoff.

Jim's "meta" comment made me think — what if this had been a meta-puzzle (with SODA MIXER dropped from the grid)? "The answer is a nine-letter drink — send in your entry for a chance to win a million dollars!" You bet that would have caught my attention!

Probably the best answer would been to just run this on a Tuesday, though.

Since Jim doesn't get a chance to rebut my rebuttal, I'll finish today out for him: "Jeff has been proven extremely and utterly correct, and Canadia is not."

Pretty sure that's what he would have said, anyway.

I know I'll get alternate names today, so let me see if I can head you off at the pass:

• K.J. McDaniels of the NBA's Rockets, although he's not a star.
• K.J. Choi, who won the 2011 Players Championship.
• M.L. Carr of the Boston Celtics, who won two titles with them.
• K.J. Wright, outside linebacker on the SUPER BOWL XLVIII CHAMPION SEATTLE SEAHAWKS' "LEGION OF BOOM"!

I can just see all the non-sports fans rolling their eyes. Okay, K.J. McDaniels isn't gridworthy, but a MEMBER OF THE CHAMPION SEAHAWKS' LEGION OF BOOM FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

(Please, no wisecracks about last year's Super Bowl. Still too soon.)

Although there's no "trick" per se, I enjoyed this change of pace Thursday puzzle. Joon gives us a nice "what do these things have in common" theme, one I haven't seen before. I've highlighted the themers below; all phrases that start with two consecutive letters of the alphabet, reversed. Very cool that Joon was able to find a symmetrical set!

With a fairly wide-open grid, it put up a Thursday fight for me. I felt victorious when I finally figured out that a [Bug detector?] had nothing to do with computer bugs. Nice misdirect, masking the fact that bugs have ANTENNAe. Generally nice usage of those seven-letter slots, with NEW DEAL, BAWL OUT, and RAIMENT standing out. I could have done without the oddball INKLESS and THEREAT, but they do help make for a smooth grid.

And BA BARACUS FINALLY MADE THE BIG TIME! I've been waiting for a long time for my childhood hero to get his crossword props. I pity the fools that kept him out so long.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too demanding out of what I want in a Thursday puzzle. It's unrealistic to expect a weekly new trick or gimmick that's never been imagined before. So I like this compromise, a puzzle with an interesting set of themers along with some meat to its fill. Good stuff.

Off to go clean out my inbox. So many spam messages advertising E.D. PILLS …