Could it really be that this is Byron's Tuesday NYT debut? I think of him as one of the few "five-tool constructors," with the ability to ...
read moreCould it really be that this is Byron's Tuesday NYT debut? I think of him as one of the few "five-tool constructors," with the ability to construct:
- 140-word Sundays
- Tricky Thursdays with a clever twist
- Themeless with both voice and clean execution
- Early-week ultra-smoothness
- Mid-week intermediate difficulty
I list these in approximate order of difficulty/rarity, so I suppose it's no surprise that Byron hasn't worked much on tool number 5 — not as much of a challenge. I am curious to see if he can hit for the cycle with an ultra-smooth, interesting Monday puzzle.

I was very glad to get a revealer today, GONE FISHING sort of hinting at the theme: four fish starting long entries. I really liked Byron's consistency of starting with a type of fish that has a different meaning, making it past tense, and then adding a preposition to finish it off. FLOUNDERED AROUND seemed like the weakest of the bunch, as I usually think of FLOUNDERED by itself, but I can see the usage. It's impressive to find four fish that work this consistent manner — without repeating a preposition.
Byron has great ability to work in vocabulary that makes me think. I mulled over RICE SEEDS, wondering if rice really starts with seeds? (It does.) I wasn't familiar with SALT DOMES, but they were interesting to read up on. And then to get SIR GALAHAD, KEPT IT REAL, OLD MONEY, TAX DODGES — that's the kind of great stuff I expect out of a Walden. Even BAD PR is a great little entry.
It does come with a price, in gluey bits like IME (partial), GINO (poor guy never went anywhere after his Heisman), ENNE (suffix), APAL (partial). This sort of thing is to be expected when you cram so much good long fill into an already theme-dense puzzle, but I normally don't see quite this much in a Walden puzzle.
I think this trade-off is fine though, as mid-week puzzles can tolerate a little more crossword glue than Monday puzzles (where the gluey stuff might turn off newbies) or most themelesses (where there are so many people making them that the bar is ultra-high).