In an effort to spread around Puzzle of the Week awards, I've recently held Patrick to an impossibly high standard. So many of his themelesses could have been a no-brainer POW choice — almost all of them are that good — but I can usually find some minor nit to pick, some point of critique that us mere mortals can learn from.
Not today. It's a great feeling to be able to gush over a PB puzzle, even as I compare it against his own lofty standards!
What really sold me on this one was those daunting NW and SE regions. Almost no one quad-stacks entries these days, because it's so difficult to fill them cleanly and colorfully. Usually there's some crossing answer which causes a groan, or some answer within the stack which is pretty neutral at best.
Patrick doesn't just use a (quasi-)quad-stack today — he RUNS LONG ANSWERS THROUGH THEM. Not only that, but he DOESN'T SEGMENT THESE CORNERS FROM THE REST OF THE PUZZLE, which usually people need to do in order to pull this off. Such beautiful grid flow.
I never work with these sorts of gargantuan swaths of white space. They're just too hard to execute on. So it's stunning to see all the snazzy material, all pulled off with the usual PB uber-cleaninless. Take the bottom right. SHOULDER STRAP / WHITE FLAG / HONEST ABE / IN ESSENCE is great enough by itself. (So challenging to parse HONESTABE, which I thought was some football player #16, HONES ????) Run IT'S A PLANE through that all, along with no gluey crossing entries = amazing.
Same goes for the upper left. RICE A RONI, BLENDED IN, SAY CHEESE, DEEP SEA DIVERS, with ACEY DEUCY running through them (and no junky fill). Dang, that's incredible.
FILLIP was a tough word for me and I don't know I'd ever use it to replace "bonus," but I liked learning it. AQUIVER doesn't sound as good to me as ALL AQUIVER, but it's no problem.
The only complaint I had was that PB's puzzles as of late have been so wide-open, so difficult to start, that I've found them much harder than any other Friday puzzle. Maybe Saturday would be a better slot.
Some of my friends call PB the Crossword Jesus, and it's puzzles like this that justify that name.
1 O | 2 L | 3 A | 4 F | 5 C | 6 L | 7 A | 8 P | 9 F | 10 A | 11 S | 12 T | 13 S |
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14 R | I | C | E | 15 A | R | O | N | I | 16 I | Q | U | I | T |
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17 B | L | E | N | D | E | D | I | N | 18 L | U | I | G | I |
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19 S | A | Y | C | H | E | E | S | E | 20 L | I | T | E | R |
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21 D | E | E | P | S | E | A | 22 D | I | V | E | R | S |
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23 S | 24 H | E | R | R | Y | 25 P | O | P | E | |||||
26 H | O | U | S | E | 27 H | 28 I | P | S | 29 R | 30 I | 31 G | 32 S |
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33 O | R | C | 34 S | 35 P | O | I | L | E | 36 D | 37 T | N | T |
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38 E | N | Y | 39 A | 40 E | R | I | E | 41 I | 42 S | S | U | E |
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43 C | 44 A | N | S | 45 A | G | H | A | S | T |
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46 S | 47 H | 48 O | U | L | D | E | 49 R | 50 S | T | R | A | P | ||
51 M | A | N | T | A | 52 W | H | I | T | E | F | L | 53 A | 54 G |
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55 O | T | T | E | R | 56 H | O | N | E | S | T | A | B | E |
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57 R | E | A | L | M | 58 I | N | E | S | S | E | N | C | E |
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59 E | S | P | Y | S | 60 P | E | S | T | 61 D | E | S | K |
Answer summary: 3 unique to this puzzle, 6 unique to Shortz Era but used previously.
Found bugs or have suggestions?