New York Times, Monday, November 4, 2013

This puzzle came about when, for no particular reason, I was considering songs that start with "It's" (It's Not Unusual, It's So Easy, It's Tricky…). When I got to "It's Raining Men", Finn Vigeland's January 2012 Sunday puzzle "Weather Report" sprang to mind, and I thought it might be fun to have various men's names running vertically in the grid. Of course, "men" is a bit of a broad category, so there had to be something unifying the names. The RAIN/REIGN homophone then hit me and things were off and running.

The word "reign" makes me think of kings and queens, so I wanted to use four well-known historical names, rather than modern rulers like Obama and Putin, and these four rulers fit the bill (and fit symmetrically!). I liked the contrast between a gimmicky 80's song (co-written by Late Night's Paul Shaffer, by the way) and these old-time rulers. In terms of construction, getting two entries to cross through three theme answers was helpful to make what I thought was a fairly open, interconnected grid pattern. I also like how RICHARD III looks vertically in the grid. I enjoy doing and trying to make Monday puzzles, so I hope people have fun with this one.

I don't usually run punny themes on Mondays, but this one felt simple enough to still be appropriate for the easiest day of the week. Apparently, John Lieb expected this puzzle to appear later in the week, because the clues he submitted tended to be on the hard side. As a result, most of the clues here are mine.

The Monday-Thursday puzzles this week appeared last Saturday at the Arlington Puzzle Festival in Arlington, Va. The 2013 results should be posted soon.

Hilarious theme today. Took me a while to figure out what was going on, especially for a Monday, but when I finally uncovered ITS RAINING MEN I chuckled. Neat idea and I really appreciate the image of CHARLEMAGNE dancing to the song. Bravo!

Nice change of pace to have theme answers run in the vertical direction, and I really like it when there's a real reason to do so (evoking the image of falling rain). Very cool. This type of arrangement can be tricky because long fill in the across direction can muddy up the theme, making the solver think that any long across answers are thematic. John does well in this regard, only using two long across answers, ALCATRAZ and PARMESAN. Even though there isn't any other long fill, I appreciate how John incorporated the fun KALKAN and DEAR ME. Fun 6's.

In terms of short fill, there's a touch too much crunchiness for my taste. As with every five-theme answer puzzle, smoothness can be an issue, and the inclusion of AROO, OSO, BEI, ESTOP, and ASCAP are a lot of any day of the week. I don't usually mind a smattering of the lesser offenders, but I SHOT, AMER, plus the pile-up of acronyms and abbreviations (MSU, INT, NATO, ECON, MSRP, etc.) detracted from my solving enjoyment.

Finally, although I really liked the cleverness of the theme, I would have loved to see four reigning men who were related in some way. Perhaps it's just having watched The Tudors that made me wonder why HENRY VIII didn't get his props? And apparently dusk has set on the poor Sun King, LOUIS XIV.

Anyway, enjoyable start to the week. I'm still giggling, imagining KING ARTHUR and CHARLEMAGNE prancing about together.