New York Times, Saturday, October 12, 2013

Filling a grid is an act of discovery as much as construction. Construction implies you know the end product before you begin, as if working off a blueprint. Maybe there's something to that when building a themed puzzle.

Making a themeless puzzle is different. More like a journey, you pick a place to start, head off in one direction or another, not sure what you'll find but hoping for memorable encounters as you try to reach the other end or come full circle. In this case, I set out from the northwest, traveled south, then east, and finally up north again. For the most part, not a bad ride. Every section has a thing or two worth the visit — a lively answer, a clever clue, pleasant accommodations.

One spot where I feared the wheels were coming off was the middle. My attempts to avoid F-SHAPED were for naught. But if you can't get around it, you go through it, so that's what I did. Luckily, there is something shaped like the letter F. For anyone unfamiliar with cellos and their sound holes, don't think of a capital F in sans serif font, but a lowercase f in calligraphy. That's a better image, and the reason that musical types call them f-holes.

I also thought twice about TURTLE DIARY. It offered better crossings than the alternatives, but I imagine not everyone knows the movie. I had good memories of it, watched it again this week, and I'm glad I went with it. The film is a small gem, based on a Russell Hoban novel that is now in print again. I give the title a big thumbs up, too — it looks good in the grid. And it is the end of the week, so why not?

Lots of great entries in this grid. Besides the wonderful NASTYGRAM at 1A, I especially like CAMERA SHY, EYE EXAM, BAD END, POOL HALLS, DEATH STAR, AALIYAH, NOBODYS HOME, SLY FOX, and OMAHA BEACH. I could do without SDI, which is over 25 years old and something you don't hear much about anymore. In fact, I'd like to see this entry banned. In this particular puzzle, though, it helps set up too much other good stuff, so I made an exception. BTW, John Farmer writes great clues. Nearly all of today's are his.

Nice puzzle from John today, with a highlight of NOBODYS HOME and its brilliant clue. Bravo as well for the misdirectional clue "John Paul's successor", referring to John Paul Stevens, not Pope John Paul (I or II). I tried LEOIX, LEOXI, PIUSI, etc. until I realized that both Pope John Pauls were recent. I blame the fact that my buddy Merlin gave me his backward-progressing timeline. I'll tell you all about tomorrow's puzzle yesterday.

Quite a bit of good stuff in this puzzle, as Will mentioned. The SE stack in particular is fantastic, with not only three great answers but two more (RED ZONE and SPAMALOT) crossing them all. Now that's a beautiful piece of construction. I also appreciated how little dreck John incorporated overall. APTER isn't great ("more apt" being more common) and ULCER feels a bit grim, but overall, excellent work.

TURTLE DIARY: curious choice of answer. There are only two slots for 11-letter entries, and at first, I winced when I needed most of the crossings to uncover what seemed to be two random words strung together. After some searching, I found that the movie made $2.2M domestically. Yes, Harold Pinter (definitely gridworthy, Nobelist in Literature) wrote the script for TURTLE DIARY, but it still feels a touch questionable. I was curious if it was a necessary evil to make CAMERA SHY/EYE EXAM/BAD END section possible, or if it was a seed entry, so I'm very glad John weighed in on that (I will see it, John, thanks for the recommendation!). As for F SHAPED, I played cello for 20 years, so from my perspective, F SHAPED was both a gimme and an asset to the puzzle. The great thing about the diversity of constructors is that we as solvers get exposed to a huge range of subjects.

Finally, I love the fact that Will points out an entry he wants to see less (or none) of. SDI was an important acronym 30 years ago, but it's faded into the background by this point. It's important for crosswords to evolve, to keep relevant to people's lives, and I enjoy observing this process of adaptation. I really appreciate hardly ever seeing ADIT (esoteric term for a mine opening) anymore: ADIT instances in the Maleska era = well over 100 (in the puzzles litzed so far), in the Shortz era = 20.

Excellent Saturday challenge.