New York Times, Wednesday, October 5, 2016

This puzzle is my sixth publication in the New York Times. The initial version of the grid was completed some three years ago, but it was a deficient draft to say the least. The puzzle sat dormant for a few years before I resurrected it from my crossword puzzle wasteland and performed some reconstructive surgery on it. The operation was a success. With eight theme entries, it is the first puzzle of mine Will has accepted without the need for further editing on my part.

"Bear Down, Arizona!" ARIZONAWILDCATS served as my seed entry and a form of homage to Tucson, where I met and married my wife. Our first date was a Wildcats basketball game during their NCAA championship season. Initially, I considered constructing a themeless puzzle, but the A & W theme emerged quite readily so I ran with it.

ABIGAILWILLIAMS made for a solid, 15-letter, vertical anchor in the center of the grid. Discovering a home for APPIANWAY and ALTARWINE as symmetrical crossings was serendipitous and somewhat of a coup. At that point, I knew I was on to something (OK NOW!). ACIDWASH and AIRWAVES worked nicely for the northeast and southwest corners, making for five theme entries crossing the central down entry. Finally, I placed ADWAR to offset the reveal, AANDW, as a bonus entry and clincher in opposite corners.

Interesting take on an initialisms puzzle, this one based on A* W*, tied together by the A AND W revealer. Some nice theme entries, centered on ARIZONA WILDCATS crossing ABIGAIL WILLIAMS. That latter one wasn't familiar to me, but it was interesting to learn about her role in the Salem witch trials. If you thought your teenager was a problem child, at least he/she didn't start a mass witch hunt! Crazy that she might not have been even a teen when she helped instigate it.

Kind of curious that AFIRE and WICCA are toward the bottom of the grid, where the kindling would go. Making a bit of a statement, hmmmmm, Mike?

For such an interlocked, theme-packed grid — with wide-open corners — it's amazingly smooth. I kept expecting SWEE, ASA type bits to pop up everywhere, but besides those and a RENT A, it came off well. Yes, ATIVAN and GRAZ (second-largest city in Austria) are toughies, and some people complain about random popes like ST LEO I, but all are legit. And I bet ATIVAN is much more common than most solvers might think.

It would have been nice to get a few sizzling long entries in the fill, but getting a couple of BARRETTE, IMMOBILE, MAGNOLIA entries was good. Reasonable trade-off to keep the grid on the smoother side, at the price of not very much jazz.

There's an interesting mismatch in play today. Almost any initialism puzzle is going to be early-weekish, since once you get the gist of it, it gets a bit repetitive. But the grid layout and construction is so late-weekish, given those big upper right and lower left corners. Along with the GRAZ and ATIVAN toughies, I couldn't figure out if I thought this was an interesting mix, averaging out to run on Wednesday, or if it would have been better as an earlier-week puzzle with an easier-to-solve grid.

Not the most mind-blowing theme, but I sure enjoyed learning more about ABIGAIL WILLIAMS. My daughter will be about that age in a decade — maybe I better hide my copy of "The Crucible" before she gets any ideas.