The constructors' eternal trade-off is snazziness vs. smoothness. Almost all of us want to work fantastic entries into our themeless, ...
read moreThe constructors' eternal trade-off is snazziness vs. smoothness. Almost all of us want to work fantastic entries into our themeless, of the LASER TAG, BAD KARMA, HAVE A COW, GEEK CHIC type. Lovely phrases. Most of us would also get satisfaction out of weaving in GEE WHIZ, SQUIBS, TOY CAR, YOWZAH, too — great use of slots that too often contain neutral filler.

But almost all of us would also like to avoid the gluey bits that are so helpful in holding a grid together. ITEA, A BEAT, SSR, EAN, ON ME, VTEN, DREWS, etc. are so handy, but so inelegant. (Not to mention, the oddballs like SEINED.) As a solver, more than roughly five of these uglies and my enjoyment level falls off exponentially.
It's tough to balance these two opposing forces, and every constructor has a different balance point. For me, that falloff in enjoyment is so steep that I work hard to keep it to maybe three or four dabs of glue at most.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm mired too deep into construction to enjoy puzzles as much as I used to. Like I mentioned to Jim a week ago, I LURVED Harry Potter the first three (okay, five) times I read the series. But after reading critical analyses, I started noticing every unnecessary adverb Rowling employed — they were everywhere! Although my fourth (six) reading of the books was still enjoyable, it diminished because I kept on picking those up.
Two fantastic clues elevated my overall experience today:
- Having a business background, I'm used to dealing with contractual problems … not the type of contract-ual SPASMS type of problems, though!
- A TOLL as something needed to "raise the bar" — the toll gate bar — put a smile on my face.