New York Times, Monday, December 8, 2014

Kevin:

I'm very lucky to be able to collaborate with Andrea and very pleased that we're having a Monday puzzle published together. Andrea is one of the most accomplished Monday constructors of all time. She's had 31 Monday puzzles published (now 32), which is the 6th most in the Shortz era. Plus she's fun to hang out with, she's friendly and nice to everybody, and she organizes lunches at restaurants in San Francisco for Bay Area constructors to get together!

We started on this puzzle in early 2013. I emailed Andrea with a long list of possibilities, and we narrowed them down as follows. We started with a long list of SAY possibilities. I was trying to find a SAY 10 to go with SUE GRAFTON, but Andrea decided early on that her favorite SAY answer was SAY HEY KID, so we decided to look for a SUE 9.

Eventually we figured out it didn't have to be SUE, it could be SOO or SIOUX, so we went with SIOUX CITY. I proposed SEE NO EVIL and SO FAR AWAY (clued as the Carole King song) early on, and we both liked both of those, so we stuck with those. We had some SIGH possibilities, but none we were crazy about, and several of them were even lengths. Eventually we figured out we could do SCI FI something, with SCI FI CONVENTION and SCI FI SHORT STORY both as good options that were length 15.

I find easy puzzles are hard to make and harder puzzles are easier to make, because the universe of fill answers you can use in an early week puzzle is relatively small, but the possibilities for a later week puzzle are much broader. For this puzzle, we went through at least a dozen versions of the grid before we found one that was clean and crisp enough to be Monday-worthy.

ACME:

I love collaborating with folks who are really excited and dedicated, like Kevin. It makes me feel like there is more of a community that goes beyond just an individual little puzzle. He had a nice idea based on my vowel-run "poems" that stretched it in fun ways. It was a true collaboration.

Nice start to the week, a vowel progression using S + the five long vowel sounds. I like that Kevin and Acme choose some wacky spellings like SIOUX instead of the straightforward SUE. Kept me on my toes. And the themers are well-chosen, a quintet of strong phrases. It's hard to argue with SCI-FI CONVENTION. I've never been to one, but I'm hoping my brother and I get a chance to use our Spock and Evil Spock (one guess as to which one I am) costumes again.

Great layout today. Vowel progressions necessitate five themers of course, which usually makes gridwork a little challenging. Many constructors would section off the grid into bunches of short fill to make things easier, but Kevin and Acme do well to leave four slots for longer fill. WHERE AM I, TIME FLIES, NON TOXIC, GET OVER IT! Four for four, if you ask me. Also, just as they've spaced the theme answers out, they've spaced these four long fill entries out too. Good spacing often is key in achieving sparkly, clean fill.

Since this theme type has been done quite a bit in the past, I would have liked a little more tightness. The first three had me smiling (aside from SAY HEY KID missing the important "THE" start), with identical three-word phrases (allowing for hyphenation is fine by me in this case) and three-letter starts. Perfect! The fourth made me pause, as the SO broke the pattern. Why not SEW? I wondered.

And the fifth went completely different with SIOUX. That's perfectly fine, but I think I would have really liked it if all the themers had fit identical patterns, or all of them had been completely different. Personal preference, of course.

Nice work in the fill today, really just the NE corner giving me a slight pause with its ONE TO, OR A, and OTERI. The last is a perfectly fine entry, and the SNL tie-in helps, but until she does something with her career like Kristen Wiig, I'll usually try to avoid using her in grids.