New York Times, Wednesday, December 23, 2015

This puzzle started more traditionally with theme entries GODSEND, BLESS THIS MESS, US AND THEM, EVERY TIME, and ONE LIFE TO LIVE with the revealer TINY TIM (no rebus). But I wanted to rebusize (is that a word?) the TIM in TINY TIM, 'cuz he's such a cute li'l guy! So that meant aiming this puzzle at a Wednesday or Thursday.

Will has run a one-square rebus on a Wednesday before, so I thought this might be a good candidate for that type of treatment. But that meant hiding the words better. It wasn't possible to span them across multiple words (thanks to BLESS) so it was a matter of finding interesting ways to hide my words within other words. I came up with a pretty good grid, but I wanted to add one more layer — the novella's title as the central grid-spanning themer. The result is what you see today.

A lot of theme material means some compromising fill. I built this puzzle two years ago when my threshold for gunk was lower. I wish I had taken the time to come up with something better, even after it was accepted.

GOD / BLESS / US / EVERY / ONE = the last words of A CHRISTMAS CAROL = an excellent way to put solvers into the holiday spirit. Very fun to get the bonus of TINY TIM, the speaker of the quote … as a (TIM) rebus! That's a ton of theme material.

I enjoyed finding those five hidden words. BLESS inside NO(BLESS)E is a good one — tough to hide that letter pattern. EVERY in TH(E VERY) IDEA too. PUSSY GALORE was hilarious to me as a kid, and I do still find it somewhat funny. But it felt somewhat out of place in such a Christmas-y puzzle.

I normally am not a big fan of circled letters / shaded letters puzzles unless the hidden words aren't obvious. Here, uncovering GOD BLESS US made it pretty clear what the last two words would be. Also, given that these are the last words of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, I really wanted GOD / BLESS / US / EVERY / ONE to be the last words of the five themers. I don't think that would have been possible, since what phrase ends in EVERY? Or BLESS? But how cool would that have been! Given the constraints, I like Jim's choice to "hide" the five words.

I really liked the single rebus square idea — getting TINY TIM worked in, with TIM as the "tiny" rebus square is a great idea. IT would have been spot-on perfect to have that TIM square at the very bottom corner, but that certainly would have made for a harder grid arrangement. The only thing I could think of is TINY (TIM) crossing VIC(TIM), but that would make for a bigger SE corner, much harder to fill. As it is, there's already a rough crossing in MONA / FRODO — I'm a big LotR fan, but for non-believers (infidels!), I could see how MENA/FREDO or MINA/FRIDO would seem equally likely.

Fun concept, with not that much gluey fill (I LEFT, MGMT, ECTO, etc.) given the high theme density. Nice, uplifting puzzle.