New York Times, Tuesday, December 1, 2015

I constructed this puzzle in 2013, shortly after it hit me that early Beatles tunes were approaching their 50th anniversaries. Given the boatload of memorable Beatles lyrics to choose from, I decided to try to do a quotation puzzle using one of their hits. Happily, "Norwegian Wood" fit the bill.

I constructed two versions: one that included the additional theme entries JOHN/LENNON and RUBBER/SOUL, and one without. The added theme material would have been nice, but ultimately wasn't worth the cost in terms of the quality of the fill, so I'm happy that will chose the puzzle you see today.

Tribute puzzle celebrating NORWEGIAN WOOD's 50^th anniversary. Well, almost. It's such a shame that this was published two days shy of that occasion. Dec. 3, 2015 is a Thursday though, and this theme isn't nearly tricky enough for that day of the week. Rats!

I used to be a big Beatles fan, so that first line, I ONCE HAD A GIRL (very waltz-y, sing it in 3/4 time!) came easily. Hoo boy, the rest wasn't so easy. Pretty cool find that the first three lines happen to break so nicely, so as to fit into a crossword grid when NORWEGIAN WOOD is the revealer.

Sometimes people come to me with theme ideas with 12-14 letter themers, and they wonder why I cringe a little. Entries of this length can be so inflexible, causing spacing issues. Usually you want to put your revealer in row 13, which helps you keep two or three rows of space between themers. This gives you so much flexibility in placing blocks as you trying to separate themers.

Check out how Dan's themers are squished toward the center of the puzzle. Pretty tough when OR SHOULD I SAY and SHE ONCE HAD ME have just one line separating them. Dan does quite well given this constraint, although IRES is kind of a wonky word in the present tense verb, and I always wonder if ARTY shouldn't be "artsy."

As tribute puzzles go, I liked the fact that Dan found a fortuitous split of the lyrics. That's much, much better than having a listing of THE BEATLES, something about the song, something else about the song, and NORWEGIAN WOOD. It would have been cool though to aim for the actual anniversary, and figure out a way to add in a Thursday-ish layer (not sure what that is, but it'd be fun to try to riff on NORWEGIAN WOOD somehow). As it is, it felt slightly thin to me, like I wanted a little something more to chew on.