New York Times, Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The impetus for this puzzle was a desire to break something. I looked through the archive and discovered that hearts and promises had been broken before, in several different ways, and even "bad" had been broken multiple times (in other venues). So I settled on RECORD.

Almost immediately after I mailed this puzzle in, about a year ago, I experienced a severe case of constructor's remorse; I regretting submitting a puzzle with so much short ugliness and crosswordese, especially in the "theme rows" (all of my more recent puzzles are cleaner than this). But when I was notified that the puzzle was accepted, it was very instructive: Will didn't comment at all on the bad fill, but rather on how he liked some of the long Downs. It made me think, "Hey — I liked those long Downs too!" but I had forgotten that as I was brooding over the fill.

So I guess the point is that there are different ways to assess a crossword puzzle. (I think that was my point...) Anyway, enjoy!

RECORD gets "broken" across multiple entries today, with a BROKEN / RECORD revealer. I can see why Will pointed out the long down entries he liked — with HORSE CAR, BAT AN EYE punnily placed next to ROD CAREW, CHEERIO, TURN RED, VIAGRA with its fun Hef-related clue, that's a lot of added bonus material.

I liked the diversity in how Daniel broke up RECORD, too: RE / CORD, RE / COR (although I don't care much for this little bit of glue) / D, R / ECO / RD, REC / ORD. I can see how it would have been a challenge to figure out how to do this, and I appreciated the difficulty of the task. Some of the "theme answers" are pretty good, too: GRANDMERE was fun even though it reminded me of my five grueling years of high school French, of which I remember rien. It would have been nice to get a few sizzling "theme entries" though — perhaps something like CORD BLOOD or BUSH V GORE.

Sometimes I wonder if my stupid memory spoils puzzles for me. Around the time I first started dong puzzles, I ran into this tricky Thursday puzzle and was just blown away. It made me realize how clever crossword themes could be; how they could be a true expression of creativity, and how I badly wanted to become a part it. This puzzle unfortunately comes to mind every time I see a theme type with words broken across multiple entries, separated with a black square. It's completely unfair to today's puzzle, but it is what it is.

There are a lot of constraints Daniel had to work with. Five themers is hard enough. But when you split four of those themers and fix black squares into place like this (between EIRE COR DESERT, for example), you deplete your allotment of black squares much earlier than usual. Makes for big, wide-open spaces in the four corners. It's good to hear Daniel say he perseverated (my wife had to tell me what that meant) over the short fill, as I definitely noticed the globs of glue during my solve. I don't mind A BONE here (hey, ULNA is A BONE!), ORAMA there, etc. but it felt to me like there was quite a bit. And the partial TAKE ME… most editors these days disallow 6+ letter partials (Merl Reagle being the only one I can think of who's okay with them), so I was surprised to see the exception.

Nice to hear constructors aim for higher and higher standards. I love that type of continual quest to make oneself better.

Actual errors in NYT crosswords are extremely rare but this puzzle has one. The clue at 20 Across reads: [Playwright who wrote "What is originality? Undetected plagiarism"].

The answer was INGE, as in William Inge. But it wasn't the playwright William Inge who was responsible for the quote. It was the Anglican clergyman and author William Inge, better known as "Dean Inge," who said it. So the word "Playwright" in the clue is wrong.