New York Times, Wednesday, February 10, 2016

I had this math theme sitting in my notebook for a couple of years. Hope faded that I would ever find a phrase that started with INTEGER. One day the thought popped into my head, "why not make the missing phrase a revealer of sorts?" And that's what you have here.

I love what Will and Joel have done with the clue for the revealer, which strikes me as much more interesting than my original. Also, as more accurate, since it helps hide the fact that I didn't/couldn't do anything with irrational numbers. I'll hush now, before I reveal the true depths of my math ignorance.

I have a feeling this one is going to leave some solvers cold, but I'm a sucker for most anything math-related. John gives us types of numbers at the starts of phrases: NATURAL, WHOLE, RATIONAL, and IMAGINARY. He could have used a NUMBERS revealer, but that would have been pretty dull, falling into the "words that can follow X" theme type that has fallen by the wayside. The clue for INTEGER was so long that it took me a while to figure out what it was saying, but what a neat way to tie together the puzzle. Innovative and interesting.

For those with math-aversions, NATURAL numbers and WHOLE numbers are more or less equated with INTEGERs (numbers without a decimal point). RATIONAL numbers can be WHOLE numbers like 1, 5, 144, but they can also be 15.4 (IRRATIONAL numbers are those that can't be expressed by a fraction, i.e. pi or the mathematical constant e.) Finally, IMAGINARY numbers are those including i (the square root of negative one).

Ah, takes me back to the good old days.

Yes, I'm weird.

Even if the theme didn't float your boat, the execution should. It's tough to work in four grid-spanners (15-letter entries) without a little compromise here or there in short fill. To add in a seven-letter revealer + some very nice long fill in BLUE LAW, SIPHONING, SEA ROVERS (wasn't sure what that was, but I decided I like the term after Googling it), and the crazy plural NAUTILI + virtually no gluey answers = dynamite execution.

Okay, I can see the argument against STOMA, given that it's pretty esoteric unless you're a biologist. But it's a real word used in botany, and all the crossings are very fair, so it didn't bother me. (I like botany, anyway.)

Finally, you have some nice short stuff in MOTIF, HUFF, the JUDEA/JAMS crossing nearly the same as yesterday (EERIE!), WICCA, ROIDS, and a hilarious clue in ASS-backwards … all in all, I found this puzzle to be a real winner.