New York Times, Wednesday, October 1, 2014

While shopping at the supermarket one evening, I was intrigued by a bin of fruit advertised as "Avocado Pears." I'd heard of them before, but instead of picking up the fruit, my eye lingered on the lovely calligraphy in the sign — AVOCADO PEARS.

AVOCADO PEARS contains a number of words: CAD, EARS, ADO, PEA and DOPE. Is there a theme here? I wandered around the store, forgetting my shopping list and thinking of theme angles. At the checkout counter, the "inside dope" angle popped into my head. Aha! Are there phrases that share the word DOPE? On the walk home, I'd thought of GRAND OPERA (INSIDE DOPE's shadow).

Some ideas like BOTCHED OPERATION were discarded immediately. I don't like to solve puzzles with depressing ideas and words. I like puzzles that make solvers happy. WALDO PEPPER and PRIED OPEN (as you might have done with a delicious roasted chestnut last December) seemed to complement GRAND OPERA and AVOCADO PEAR.

Though the seed entry was inspired by a fruit, I never bought the Avocado Pear (which, I suspect is your basic, garden-variety avocado!) Have a good solve. I hope it brings some happiness to your day.

Generally I maintain two to 15 months of inventory of crosswords, depending on the day of the week. This puzzle, unusually, was accepted three years ago. I held it for so long partly because its theme is of a type that's become overly common, and I like to space out examples. But, also, as the standards for acceptance have risen over the years, grids that passed muster in 2011 might not do so today. Liz's original grid had a number of unappealing entries — RCPT, TASM, ENA, I IS, S DAK, and DELPY — which increasingly put me off. They're all gone now, and I think the result is pretty smooth.

Liz gives us the INSIDE DOPE today, four instances of DOPE broken across two words. A 10/11/9/11/10 in a 74-word grid is a tall order. Five theme entries already increases your level of difficulty, making the middle one nine letters ratchets it up further, and shooting for a 74-worder puts the triple hurt on a constructor.

I like the ambition of it, especially in all the long fill Liz had to incorporate. You'll almost always win my heart with BRUCE LEE in the grid, one of the few true Asian superheroes. Many a time in my youth I got saved from getting into a fight because kids assumed I knew kung fu. I didn't correct them, and I'll leave that ambiguous in case any of those people are reading. (If you are, I do.)

In the same vein, PHASERS in the same puzzle? You had me at BRUCE LEE, but dang! If only BRUCE LEE had been armed with two PHASERS in his movies, people would still be intimidated by me.

I had quite a bit of trouble finishing, actually giving up in the NW corner. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a RRN (random Roman numeral) as I was to see LII. Even then, GRAND OPERA is something I'll have to add to my vocabulary, and the proximity of the random river and the Madonna song I had never heard of made it tough. If only I had paid attention in art class with BERNINI, everything might have fallen. As much as I like the high-class nature of BERNINI and GRAND OPERA, it would have been so nice if they hadn't crossed each other.

I tend to prefer hidden words when there isn't solely one single hidden word. Synonyms for DOPE would have been a nice touch, perhaps ASS, FOOL, TWIT, etc. hidden? It was good to read Will's comment about this puzzle being three years old. The crossword art form evolves so rapidly these days.

But overall, a good amount of fill tickled my fancy today, BUYS OUT one of those finance terms I personally dig, and a great clue for LIME TREE. "Why on earth would you pick fruits when they're still green?" I asked myself, just before head-desking.