New York Times, Wednesday, June 21, 2017

I don't remember the moment when I stumbled onto the butterfly images, but I do think they look best when they are bright orange. We did go with solid bars around the edges on the final newspaper product, but we decided not to draw little "bodies" between the squares.

My first try at this puzzle had ELUSIVE as a theme entry, since "Elusive Butterfly" was a pretty big hit by Bob Lind in 1966. The melody and lyrics were very familiar to me when I listened to it, but it drew a blank for Will and Joel so they turned it down. I think I remember throwing a few more possibilities their way without success, but Pete Collins thought I should try ORIGAMI butterfly since it Googles well. If you want the full experience there is a nice video online showing you how to make one in no time flat.

Pete Collins also helped with the fill on this effort — I was hoping to be part of his 100th NYT puzzle publication but he turned down co-constructorship. He'll have to sit on 99 for a short while longer and make do with a big THANK YOU PETE!

Speaking of flying things, I am staying near Princeville on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i this week and here is a picture of me with two nene. I talked to a local Hawaiian woman who confirmed that these are them. She told me they were rare thirty years ago but not any more since they are protected. I have read that nenes are nonos in crosswords because they are so scarce but I can tell that they are not that rare!

Butterflies in today's grid! Sort of. If you turn your head 45 degrees. And squint. And stretch your imagination. Sure, why not?

Bruce has done a lot of grid art over the years, with A KITE and two bolts of ELECTRICTY the highlight for me. Just when you think grid art ideas have run dry … I'm curious what will come next.

Today's puzzle is a "word that can precede X" puzzle, a theme type that's gone by the wayside. But I do like the tie-in to the four butterflies in the grid, making MADAME Butterfly, SOCIAL butterfly, and MONARCH butterfly a little more interesting.

ORIGAMI butterfly didn't work for me, though. Having made a ton of origami, and even spending time at origami museums in Japan, the butterfly isn't at the top of the list of origami animals. I understand that the gods of crossword symmetry must be honored, but it would have been better to hide this entry in the center of the puzzle somewhere, rather than placing it at the featured 1-Across position.

Great fill, especially tough with big, wide-open corners. Working with so many seven-letter answers makes it tough to convert those slots into strong entries. NANOBOT, RUB IT IN, HOTLINE, I HAVE IT, GO VIRAL, PRO BONO = Bruce did very well.

Okay, ON DATES isn't great. ENDWAYS is a head-scratcher, but it does appear to be legit. If those are the prices to pay to get so much good bonus fill, I'm happy to pony up.

Good work on the short fill, too. I hitched on MUCKY, but that also has dictionary support. With just a bit of minor CDT and UHS (and I generally think those are fine), it felt like a smooth, well-polished solve.

Overall, I liked the creativity of the grid art, and I thought Bruce executed well on his grid. The theme didn't move me though; not different enough from the old "word that can precede" theme type. And those butterflies didn't look enough like butterflies to me — I wish the print version could have been artsified so those black squares actually looked like butterflies. Damn the crossword gods and their perfect little boxes!

*ducking from the impending bolts of electricity*