New York Times, Thursday, December 25, 2014

Because the anagramming makes this more challenging than a typical rebus puzzle, I decided to help solvers out by placing the rebus squares symmetrically. That turned out to be pretty constraining for both the theme answers and the resulting grid.

I spend a lot of time on grid design, and it's worth noting that this grid is definitely an odd one, even for a rebus puzzle. I tried some of the more obvious designs and ended up rejecting them on the basis of fill, before settling on those odd crosses in the center. For instance, the most obvious tweak to the current design is to replace that left cross ...

. * .
* * *
. * .

with this instead:

. * .
* . .
. . *

(where * = black square, . = white square)

This is a much more efficient use of black squares which increases interlock substantially without altering the layout of the words. But it came at the cost of boring or lousy fill and I wasn't willing to pay the high price. That's a judgment call. Better interlock makes a puzzle more fun to solve, and so does better fill.

I really enjoyed this solve. I don't think rebuses as a genre are completely trite or tired yet — there is a reason that Will spaces out his rebus puzzles these days though. So I do think that it's important to push the boundaries a bit. I like what Xan has done here, using MIXED (NUT)S as a rationale for six rebus squares, each one containing a unique permutation of the letters N, U, and T.

Some of those sequences are easy to work in. There's a ton of phrases incorporating *TUN*, for example. But UTN? TNU? NTU? Those are much more difficult. I really liked the assortment of strong phrases Xan picked out, from DOW(NTU)RN to SP(UTN)IK to OU(TNUM)BER to WE(TNU)RSE.

I felt slightly uncomfortable at the [Milk maid?] clue for WETNURSE, BTW. I'm not sure why that is. At first glance perhaps it seems like it could be a fun bit of wordplay around a common phrase? But it didn't sit quite right with me, perhaps feeling a bit too off-color for the NYT.

I'm impressed with Xan's gridwork. Aside from the start, where I never know if I should love or hate YEGG, and the awkward ETCHA, I appreciated that I kept on going and going without hitching over gluey bits. All the cleanliness, with even GO VIRAL, ARCHWAY, TAP WATER, DEVIL RAY, etc. worked in = admirable job.

I might have even given it the POW if it hadn't been for the aforementioned items, plus one aspect I usually care nothing about: the number of black squares. That in itself is meaningless to me, but there are two issues in the way Xan lays out his grid: 1.) the choked off feeling from subsection to subsection, and 2.) the visual impact of all those chunks of black. Those two central crosses do a number on the feng shui of the grid.

But overall, I appreciate the fact that Xan pushes the rebus genre a little here with a well-executed grid which gave me a very pleasurable solve. And that [Break down in tears?] clue was gold. I didn't understand it even after filling in RIP UP, but I loved that headslap moment of realizing that "tears" meant "rips," not "salty discharge."