New York Times, Wednesday, December 11, 2019

There have been puzzles where the idea for the theme came to me first, and I later went looking for a revealer, but the opposite order is probably more common for me, and if memory serves, today's theme is an example of the latter. The theme is rather constrained — in that there isn't an abundance of short irregular verbs like these, nor a great many phrases that contain each pair — which is basically a good thing.

My original submission had BIOMUSICAL (clued as [Hamilton, e.g.]) in the ON YOUR MARK slot, and I was a bit disappointed when I was asked to replace it (THEN), but I have to admit I'm happy with the revision (NOW).

Crossword themes go through life cycles, from birth to maturity, to past their prime, then out to pasture. Occasionally, though, there's an exciting evolution that extends a theme category's lifespan. Hidden word themes are reaching overexposure — Will Shortz recently said he has too many of them on file — but when you can find two related words within a phrase, that's notable.

Cool finds today, THEN AND NOW hinting at past tense / present tense verb combos. For all these years that I've been fascinated with DIDGERIDOOs, I've never noticed DID and DO inside that word. Neat discovery.

I didn't like it as much as one we saw a couple of months ago, though. One reason I enjoyed Erik Agard's more is that he included longer, more interesting finds. Not only are ATE and EAT short, but they're composed of common letters that are easy to work with. Using our Finder, I came up with a bunch of other fun ones: CHEATED DEATH, PATENT LEATHER, SENATE SEAT, WATER HEATER.

Constructors must often find a balance between smooth and snazzy, often one of them coming at the cost of the other. As with Jake's previous puzzle, this one had so many great bonus entries — WAGE WAR, CRIME BOSS, ON YOUR MARK, NEWS AGENCY, FIRST SNOW, CORN DOG, such lovely use of long slots! — but they came at a heavy price.

An elegant crossword has no more than 3 or 4 short entries that editors tell you to avoid. The 5-letter ones stand out more than the 3- and 4-letter ones since they take up more space, and ELEVE ENCLS GCHAT (outdated now), HIDER (along with STARER), IN ICE (partial-sounding) = too many. Add in even more 3- and 4-letter gluey bits, and it feels far from polished.

It's tough enough to build a grid around five themers. Audaciously weaving six long(ish) down slots through them often means trade-offs that are hard to swallow.

I'm enjoying the rebirth within the "hidden words" theme genre. Curious to see what new directions clever constructors take.