New York Times, Wednesday, December 7, 2016

This puzzle was accepted recently, so I'm delighted to see it come out so soon! I came up with the idea this summer while interning for Will and going through Andrew Kingsley's beautiful themeless from August 26. I recall spending an especially long time brainstorming clues for the entry PAST TENSE. (We ultimately settled on "Bought or sold, e.g.") In doing the research, I noticed a bunch of past tenses that didn't necessarily have to be past tenses, which intrigued me in a really nerdy way! I then wondered whether pairs of these past tenses could be combined to form new entries. And so the theme idea was born.

Coming up with a consistent theme set was a real challenge. I was initially hoping to avoid past tenses ending in -ed, since they struck me as less elegant than ones like SHOT or PUT, but the crossword Muse (Erato, of course!) gave me what you see. The next challenge was filling a grid around six theme entries and a reveal. IS BAD is bad (*rimshot*), but I'm pleased with the fill as a whole given the theme density.

I hope you enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

Great theme idea — both words in each theme phrase are also verbs in the PAST TENSE. I'm sure I've seen something similar before, but I really liked that David 1.) found snappy phrases, and 2.) hid the meanings of all those PAST TENSE verbs. LEFT HANDED is a perfect example, a solid phrase that disguises LEFT (departed) and HANDED (passed (out)).

I bet FIXED COST is going to raise some eyebrows and maybe even draw some complaints that it's a dry phrase, but this MBA really likes it. I enjoyed all my finance classes, so it was really fun for me to see FIXED COST. Okay, I admit that any time you have to use a dictionary definition, you're treading on somewhat thin ice, as there's absolutely no opportunity for clever wordplay or trickery in the clue. And I can see that it might not be a ho-hum or worse answer for some solvers.

CUT ROSE was the only one I didn't care for. CUT here doesn't disguise the PAST TENSE meaning of the word, and the phrase itself feels a bit stilted to my ear.

Great execution, such smoothness with excellent bonus entries. I especially liked that URBAN ART / DEAD DROPS (love me some spy lingo!), done without any crossword glue. (Okay, IS BAD is bad ... hey, David stole my line!) I love it when a constructor can pull something like this off — it's like when you see a sculpture constructed out of many parts, but you can't figure out where the joints are, or how the artist even assembled it.

STOPS PLAY wasn't as snazzy for me, but RUSTLERS gives that opposite corner some GUSTO. Again, beautiful gridwork in that lower left, nary an awkward or inelegant short entry holding it all together.

Super-solid mid-week puzzle, giving me a nice a-ha when I got to the revealer. I really like when I have no idea of what's going on until the lightbulb flips on at the end.