New York Times, Monday, January 8, 2018

Yep, that's my byline above a Monday puzzle. *Rubs eyes* Is this real life?

The theme I came up with was friendly enough for beginner solvers?

There's nothing too crazy in the fill?

The clues are ... easy?!

I started where most constructors don't, and shouldn't: telling myself that I really needed to make a Monday puzzle with no ideas for it whatsoever. I decided to poke around XWord Info for past themes I enjoyed, and came across this Lynn Lempel gem, which contained eight phrases that all rhymed despite having different spellings. I thought the idea was so clever and wondered if I could vary it somehow but still introduce a novel concept.

I figured the long "A" sound was worth pursuing and noticed that MILO O'SHEA and ANCHORS AWEIGH stacked nicely together in a grid. From there, I refined the long "A" answers to have the "short-short-short long" cadence of the two above: CHINESE BUFFET, SO NOT OKAY, etc. But I still wasn't satisfied yet.

That's when CAFE AU LAIT emerged from the cobwebs to make a grand entrance: AU LAIT double-rhymed with both OKAY and O'SHEA, their associated phrases followed the same rhythm, and they were all spelled differently. What an "aha" moment that was! With OBEY and OJ proving viable as well, I realized that this was the grid I had to make.

As far as fill goes, I obsessively focused on keeping proper nouns to a minimum, unless they were truly zippy and worth knowing (TY COBB, ST. CLAIR). After watching my friends develop from novices into regular solvers, I now know that normally fine answers such as LETO and TULL may be tough early in the week.

Hope you enjoyed! Have you signed up for the ACPT yet?

Rhymers, OKAY / OJ / OBEY / OSHEA / AU LAIT at the ends of themers. Bonus points for ending an entry with a J. That ...FOJ string looks so neatly bizarre! AU LAIT was an interesting one too, tougher to uncover than the others. I was expecting an O' somewhere (Cafe O'Lait = Irish coffee?).

Rhyming words have been mined for many crosswords, so it's important to go above and beyond with some extra layer. Here, I like Sam's tightness, nearly covering the solution space of O-?AY rhymers. The only other ones I could think of were OIL OF OLAY (oil of au lait?) and ANITA O'DAY. Something elegant about using a complete(ish) set.

CAFÉ AU LAIT is a great entry in its own right. MILO O'SHEA is definitely crossworthy, although he might be on the cusp of what an educated solver (especially a newer one) ought to know.

GLASS OF OJ … I hesitated at first, as the phrase didn't feel solid enough for my taste. But it's something I've said at diners, so I'm not sure why it didn't strike me as strongly as CAFÉ AU LAIT.

I had the same reaction to IS THAT OKAY. It doesn't feel like something I'd strive to work into a crossword. YOU WILL OBEY left me with the same feeling. Maybe I haven't been to enough hypnosis acts?

Audacious layout. I said DEAR GOD to myself when I turned up ETES and ESS within seconds of starting the grid — neither is friendly to beginning solvers. Thankfully, OTHELLO and TEA CADDY felt worthy of those prices.

KLATCH might be a toughie for newer solvers, as might be MALA fide. And the crossing of URBANA / AVEDA could be a trap that takes away a solver's feeling of accomplishment … if they guessed URBINA or URBENA I would be sympathetic. All in all, I would have preferred a grid layout that didn't push the Monday boundaries so much. Breaking up the four corners more would have been my preference.

Overall though, I appreciated that Sam gave us something a little more than a standard rhyming theme.

ADDED NOTE: Glad I read Sam's commentary! I didn't realize the short-short-short-long pattern of syllables! That's a neat extra layer. Wish there had been some revealer in the grid to point it out.