New York Times, Wednesday, November 5, 2014

All crossword constructors are in it for the records right? I'm hoping this goes down as "earwormiest NYT crossword". You do have that list, right Jeff & Jim? It was conceived while watching a local advert for I think Standard Bank that uses SHBOOM as its theme. Like every good (and not so good) constructor, I rushed to see if that answer had been used. As far as I could tell it hadn't. My next thought was that a whole puzzle of sound-effect songs could create a pleasing effect. It's a lot simpler and "listier" than most NYTs, but I think it works. I regret this puzzle's density, especially as, only the week before making it, I vowed never again to force too much theme into a puzzle! It was a bear to fill, especially all those accursed M's! The result, inevitably, is a puzzle that has little to offer if you don't enjoy the theme.

Lastly, I'm happy to have included a quasi-South African theme answer in DO WAH DIDDY DIDDY (the eponymous keyboardist of the British band is South African).

How Gareth Bain, a South African, understands American crosswords — and culture — so well, I will never understand. This is his 12th puzzle published in the Times, with more in the pipeline.

I was glad to read Gareth's note, as my ineptitude with pop music did me in today. I was trying to figure out if the four songs were all ones that had repeated words? Or maybe the artists all tied together somehow? Now it makes more sense, all of the themers being ones featuring sound effects. And I was a little embarrassed to find out that there are actually six themers, including IKO IKO and SHBOOM. Pop music, my arch enemy!

I really appreciate Gareth's comment about not trying to do too much. Shows a level of self-awareness and maturity that not a lot of constructors (or people in general — sigh) get to. I was all set to comment about the flow of crossword glue around the EMI / RMN / CSA region, but now that pile-up makes more sense given how many constraints Gareth put on himself. Just dealing with a huge string of M's is a tough enough task. Throw in IKO IKO and SHBOOM as further challenges, and I'm impressed that Gareth got the grid as clean as he did.

All those constraints in the middle of the puzzle did force him to deploy a lot of his black squares, which is a reason why we see big swaths of white in the NW and SE. Working with a maximum word count of 78, placing a lot of short words in one region usually means having to fill a few longer spaces elsewhere. So getting the unfortunate pile-up of ONT / OTT / DEO is a side-effect, in a way, of the huge theme density and high constraints.

It's tough for me to assess pop music puzzles given my fourth-grade level of knowledge there, but I think I would have appreciated this one more if there were a more overt way all the themers tied together. Even a music moron like myself can grok the repetition factor of IKO IKO, MMM MMM MMM MMM, and DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO. Not as easy for me to tell how the others fit in. I don't often like being hit over the head with a metaphorical hammer (or a real one, for that matter), but in this case a little noggin-tapping would have been a good thing.