New York Times, Wednesday, December 10, 2014

It came as quite a (pleasant) surprise when this puzzle was accepted because I worried that too few solvers would enjoy both aspects of the theme (the chemistry and the literature). My original submission had the theme answers THORIUM WHITE, MERCURY WELLS, CESIUM LEWIS, and OXYGEN HENRY, but Will asked for a revision because O. Henry only uses one initial while the other authors use two, and the result is what you see here!

I was glad for the chance to revise the grid. Although I like the original theme set and the new theme set roughly the same, the original submission only had two long non-theme slots, which were filled by the somewhat boring entries PATHLESS and SALT LICK. In my revision, I tried to work in more interesting long downs so that solvers could still enjoy the puzzle even if the theme did not strike their fancy.

Timely theme, what with the recent passing of P.D. James. I've never read any of her work, but all the news stories about her makes me want to explore. And a nice concept, using symbols from the periodic table, switched out for famous writers known by their first two initials.

The periodic table has been mined for crossword Au over the years, so we went through a spell where this had become overdone. It's nice to see a little chemistry back into the NYT xw (said the chemistry dork). I found it a little odd that the chemical symbols didn't typographically match the initials — Cs is not the same as C. S. — but I was able to suspend my hitch and enjoy the puzzle. Cool that Tom found 1.) enough authors that share this feature (I really like the consistency there), and 2.) matching pairs. A nice discovery.

When you don't have much flexibility in themers, the gridwork sometimes gets tough. I can't imagine Tom had many (if any) alternate name pairs ready to use, so a 12/14/14/12 pattern it was. These "unfortunate lengths" are tough to incorporate, because the themers have to be squished together to the middle of the grid due to black square issues. I quite like what Tom's done in the difficult middle of the puzzle, needing only a SOCIO and a STOA to connect the central two themers. Puzzles with themers so close together often come out with globs of EPOXY holding the middle entries together, so this turned out well.

And especially given that it's a relatively tough grid, it's great that Tom worked in a few long pieces of fill. (I always love reading about a constructor's solver-first mentality.) The proximity of DEBRIEFED and DRAWERS made the fourth-grader in me laugh. Along with some ROUND EYED awe at the cool extra chemistry content in LIQUEFY and INERT, I felt like the fill added to my solving experience.

Some excellent clues, too. It just takes two or three to make me notice and appreciate, so SHIH TZU (I triumphantly plunked down SHAR PEI), ONE A (way to make a normally blah entry interesting through the use of wordplay!), TESLA, DOT, all did the trick. If only TESLA were alive still, he'd be a current current researcher.