New York Times, Tuesday, September 17, 2013

I remember the genesis for this puzzle came to me on a rainy night a couple of years ago as I was driving back to Ann Arbor from Detroit. For some reason, the Muse seems to speak to me while I'm driving my car or walking my dog. I was thinking about "Dances with Wolves", and noticed that the letters DATE were hiding inside. As I quickly tapped out the length with my fingers on the steering wheel, I was a bit dismayed to find that it was "plus-sized" at 16 letters. Before I had pulled into my driveway, I'd found "Dead Poets Society" — also 16 letters — and I was off and running.

I'm sure there are many "date" movies I could've chosen from, but these all seem to be fairly classic (although I must admit I've never seen "WIld at Heart" — is it a classic?).

Here's a little personal fact about Elmore LEONARD (40-Down). He and my father-in-law went to the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, with Elmore being a couple of years older. About a dozen years ago, at the U of D High School auction, Elmore put up, to the highest bidder, the right to have the bidder's name as a character in Leonard's upcoming novel. My father-in-law was the high bidder, so now he and my mother-in-law's names are immortalized in "Tishomingo Blues". My father-in-law is a gangster and my mother-in-law is a high-end hooker. Nice.

As you probably noticed, the grid is an atypical 16x15 squares, in order to accommodate the theme. I'm happy to run any sort of unusual grid size like this as long as there's a good enough reason and readers get their usual amount of crossword solving.

Pete is one of the most published constructors in the Shortz era, and has the distinction of being one of fewer than 20 people who have doubly "hit for the cycle" (having published a puzzle for every day of the week not just once, but twice). It takes a wide range of constructing skills to achieve this feat — he's in rarefied air.

Straightforward theme, the letters DATE being in found in sequence within the four movies. Consistency is good, with each of the movies being well-known and all of them having the D-A-T-E in sequential order. It would have been really neat if the word DATE (without breaks) had been hidden in the theme movies, but that's likely too much to ask for. After 30 minutes all I could come up with was THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, which is way too long. Even more awesome would be some visual of a nervous young TEEN trying to YAWN his ARM around his DATE. Definitely too much to ask for.

Note on PEWIT, which I have a feeling will draw complaints from some solvers. At first I had a negative reaction to it, but I then found it to be an interesting answer to look up. I think I would have seen PEWIT as an asset to the grid if it had been clued something like "Bird whose name imitates its cry". Funny sound, indeed. What can I say, I'm easily amused.

Nice NE and SW corners, containing such goodies as PAVLOVA and MOLIERE and NINE IRON. The NE suffers a bit from the crosswordese AWN, but all the crossings are fair. The SW is really good; a clean and fun triple-stack of 7's including the topical LEONARD. On that note, I enjoy it when a constructor personalizes his/her grid, and Pete's comment on LEONARD is a highlight for me. I like how Ben Tausig sends blurbs about his American Values Crossword constructors — wouldn't it be cool if the NYT were to even occasionally publish these little stories alongside the grid?