New York Times, Monday, November 13, 2017

Well, I'm serving up a pretty standard tribute puzzle today. It's in honor of my favorite movie! I recommend sitting down with a bowl of fifty hard-boiled eggs and giving it I shot. This is an idea that took a couple of years to round into shape. My first few attempts were too jam-packed with trivia from the film — stuff like PAUL NEWMAN and CHAIN GANG — in addition to the quote. Overall, the grid couldn't breathe, so I decided to go pretty bare-bones with the themed material. In the end, I just included the quote and the movie title. Sometimes less is more. Like when Luke bluffs his way to winning the poker game in the bunkhouse, holding a hand full of nothing. But, as Dragline said, sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.

On a personal note, this is my first NYT puzzle without my biggest fan. My dad passed away on August 23 at age 92. Even though his eyesight was failing and his knowledge of pop culture ended sometime around the time Cool Hand Luke was hitting the theaters, he tackled every one of my puzzles with enthusiasm. Our phone calls often ended with him saying, "Hang on a sec" as he grabbed the clipboard on which he did his solving. He'd ask me about the clues he couldn't crack — a TV actor's name, a singer, some recent slang. I'm going to miss those conversations.

Sadly, I've lost a father, and our country has lost another member of the Greatest Generation. He was quite a guy.

COOL / HAND / LUKE, one of the classics! Pete gives us the (oft-misquoted) WHAT WE HAVE / HERE IS (a) FAILURE TO / COMMUNICATE. Imagine how much it would stink if you were that actor, having delivered an incredible line … only to have people say that you said it wrong?

Both work, grammatically. There's a good case for the line as is since that implies multiple instances. Given Paul Newman's constant needling of authority in the movie, that's clearly the case. So why do so many people insert the "a"?

I DON'T KNOW, BUT WE JUST DO.

Theme felt thin, what with just the movie title and a single quote. But the quote does take up a good amount of real estate: 11 + 15 + 11 = a lot of squares. And when you consider how difficult splitting up COOL / HAND / LUKE makes things, I can see why Pete didn't try for anything else.

Wait, wait, wait, failure to communicate, you say! What's the big deal about putting in three little teeny tiny itsy bitsy words? Well, let me tell you! Check out that south section, bounded by COMMUNICATE and HAND. Fixing a ceiling and a floor into a region like this is akin to eating 50 hard-boiled eggs. (I love that scene, Pete!)

It is true that Pete could have shifted HAND over one space to the right, so that did give him a little flexibility. But not a lot. So, not a surprise to get a rough crossing in MITA / OTOE in that region. This isn't a friendly crossing for novice solvers. Perhaps on the order of eating ten hard-boiled eggs.

Along with some USE NO, ETE, OF IT, and the dread OSO (O SO unfriendly to newbies), it's too much for a Monday puzzle. I did appreciate Pete's efforts to work in some extras, though — I CALLED IT, OLD FLAMES, and LETS SLIDE. Important, given how thin the theme felt. So tough to find the right balance.

I enjoyed the shout-out to one of the greatest movies of all time. I would have loved something more, though. Hmm … hard boiled eggs look like Os…