WHAT'S MY LINE?

The idea for this puzzle came from one of my favorite clues that I originally used in a themeless puzzle — "Subway line" (answer EAT FRESH.) I also had a similar clue waiting to be used in a puzzle — "Finish line" (answer THAT'S ALL FOLKS.) So I decided to try to find more of these and weave them into a Sunday crossword. What resulted were the ten theme entries you see in "What's My Line?" Sometimes clues are a good source for theme ideas I find. For example I once did a puzzle on diets, because there were so many clever ways to clue that word, e.g. middle management (diet for a white collar exec?), lessen plan (diet for a teacher), etc.

It's always a challenge to fill the puzzle smoothly when you have more than 8 theme entries (I usually like to have 9 or more in my Sunday puzzles because I think the theme entries are the most fun for solvers to fill in and the most fun for me to construct and clue). In this puzzle the toughest part was have two pair of theme entries side by side in the upper right and lower left.

Some particularly tough areas to fill in were in the upper left corner… I chose to add a cheater black box in the corner rather than present the solver with some crosswordese. I had to come up with THROW TO (a new entry I believe) in order to finish that corner. In the lower left I had some back and forth with Will about the entry FARFEL. I remember FARFEL as a famous ventriloquist's (Jimmy Nelson) dog who appeared in a memorable commercial for Nestles Chocolate. (It's also a pasta found in Jewish chicken soup.) Will wanted me to consider another entry but any I could think of would have changed 94A STOLE to STELE, a much inferior fill in my opinion. These are the decisions constructors have to make all the time and editors have to rule on. My favorite fills were DOOZIES, SCHEDULE A, PRMEN, FARFEL, RIPPEDOFF, CHUNNEL, OHWELL, and INTHERE. These are not seen too often in puzzles. I also enjoyed cluing ITGO by referencing Travolta's made-up "Adele Dazeem" (sorry it didn't make it past the editor's desk).

This is my 101st published NY Times crossword, most of which were edited by Will. Much appreciation to him for editing my work and making my puzzles better.

101 puzzles! Impressive. Scan through Randy's constructor page, especially noting how many Sundays he's made. It's hard enough to get a single puzzle into the NYT, even harder to get a Sunday, and he now has 45 of them. Wow!

Fun take on "___ line" phrases today, all reinterpreted as verbal lines from a phone call, a date, from Tom Cruise, etc. I like how Randy stuck to almost all in-the-language phrases. MAY I SEE YOU AGAIN seems arbitrary to me, but all of the nine others are choice entries. And I also like how he stuck with mostly all common "___ line" phrases as clues. The best ones are those that require a jump from clue to entry, i.e. Cruise line (like Holland America) is very different from Cruise line (like from Tom Cruise). Ones like [Story line] and [Telephone line] weren't quite as amusing for me, in that the clues and answers were quasi-related.

Ten themers is a tough task. I appreciate what Randy said regarding the fun being mostly in the theme. Will sometimes runs a Sunday puzzle with less theme density but more juicy fill. More often than not, I tire of those, as they feel like a gigantic themeless puzzle. So I enjoyed uncovering all these ten different "lines."

Always the trade-offs. As much as I like EAT FRESH and ILL GET IT and their respective clues, they sure presented grid difficulties (stacking two theme answers right next to each other will almost always present a challenge). It's hard to say whether or not each of them was "fair." AMOCO, FARFEL, Chris NOTH in the SW. Robert DONAT, Edouard LALO, AGITA in the NE. There's a certain amount of knowledge that a NYT reader is expected to have. These strike me as pushing that fine line (is SEE IF I CARE! is a "fine line"?).

I applaud Randy's use of cheater squares in the very NW and SE. Those regions are nice and smooth, helped out by those two black squares (there's a reason why Rich Norris calls them "helper squares"). A black square either at the D or T of DONAT would at least have opened up some other options to reduce the glue-y entries. Now, I don't advocate tossing in black squares willy-nilly — too many compromise a puzzle's aesthetics — but I personally would like to see them used more, especially on Sunday puzzles, which are so very tough to construct smoothly.

Anyway, a fun outing with a few rough patches. Excellent theme choices and a great title.