New York Times, Monday, November 21, 2016

My favorite part of this puzzle is the doubling of the clue numbers, and I'm excited to get something unusual into a Monday puzzle. I hope the high number values gave some solvers a minor jolt on first glance, perhaps like the one I had after coming back to watching Jeopardy! after a many-year hiatus and discovering the increased dollar values on the board.

I originally was just playing with a basic 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 progression and then the "Against All Odds" revealer came out of desperation, as having five theme answers was a pain to work with (the "four" entry having to be in the middle of the grid). It turned out having six theme answers gave me more flexibility. Then carrying the revealer to its logical conclusion led to the clue inflation. (It was unintentional, but fortuitous, that the grid is 16 rows by 14 columns — thank you 14-letter revealer!)

As a middle/high school math teacher, I'm on pretty friendly terms with the odd numbers, so I hope they don't take the puzzle personally…

Hey, a Monday featuring a trick! It's a lot of fun in print, where each clue number is doubled — thus getting even more at AGAINST ALL ODDS — but even without this customization, the puzzle works well.

At first I was a little confused why John worked in ZERO in addition to what I would have expected (just TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT), but then I remembered he's a math professor. There's some debate as to whether ZERO is an even number or not, but there is no doubt that it isn't odd — neat math factoid.

Going away from the usual 15x15 to 14x16 is also a nice touch, to continue avoiding ODDS. Neat that it happened to work out perfectly with that 14-letter AGAINST ALL ODDS! (A 14-letter revealer in a 15x15 is tough, since you end up having to put the revealer in row 12 instead of 13, thus squishing themers together.)

Strong themers (I wasn't familiar with EIGHT MEN OUT, but it was fun to learn that eight refers to the number of players involved in the Black Sox scandal), snappy long fill like SNOW TIRE and TURN SIGNAL, and not much crossword glue — just some IN SO, ENV, ADES minor bits — made for an enjoyable early-week puzzle. I even enjoyed PSYOP, an uncommon Monday piece of fill but very colorful and interesting.

The only hesitation I had was the SEGO / OSSA crossing. That might be a toughie for novice solvers. I think it's probably fair, but not ideal.

Three great extras — 1.) Woodsy OWL ("Give a hoot, don't pollute!" 2.) one of my favorite TEE shirt slogans ("I'm With Stupid") and 3.) DIAGON Alley of the Harry Potter world — helped win me even further over. I often find myself on John's wavelength, and today was no exception.

Really fun to see a kooky twist on what's often an unremarkable day of the week for the NYT puzzle.