New York Times, Tuesday, March 1, 2016

This puzzle, which I like to call "Eve All About", was submitted 2 years ago in March 2014, aiming for a Monday audience (I missed). I guess KEROGEN and KOPECK ruined it for a Monday…

The revealer / idea really just came out of the blue. With that in hand, the remaining theme entries followed quickly, though the symmetrical EVEs around the grid took some work to get a clean fill. After finishing the fill however, an "Uh-oh" moment struck me during cluing, when I realized that Americans rarely used EVEN STEVENS to mean "balanced", but instead used EVEN STEVEN. The former is much more common in the UK where I'm from, so it didn't even occur to me till then that I had a problem. Luckily, after a frantic Google search, I was rescued by the Disney TV series of the same name, and in the process learned quite a bit about its etymology.

As for EVEL KNIEVEL, I remember seeing him in his snazzy outfits on TV when I was a kid, and thinking, "Hey, that doesn't look too difficult, I can jump 20 double-decker buses easy, what's the big deal?!" That's the amazing thing about a child's mind — nothing's ever impossible, and, anything goes. Luckily for me, I only had a push-bike to experiment with…

About half of the clues survived the editing process, and that's a good ratio for me. Pro-skater Tony HAWK didn't make the cut (rightly so, since it would have made that area too difficult), but "Tri and tri again?" for HEXA did. Personal favorite entries: PETPEEVES / SEALEVELS. Note: even though in real life the first bothers us a heck of a lot more than the second, we should really pay a lot more attention to the second!

Freddie interprets ALL ABOUT EVE to mean "place 15 instances of EVE in the puzzle." I often have trouble with this sort of concept, as the jam-packing usually necessitates all sorts of gluey bits, and it can result in an underwhelming payoff. But today, I enjoyed seeing all those EVEs strewn about. Although it's not the hardest trigram to incorporate (what with those two Es), that V does make it non-trivial. And there's something kind of mesmerizing about all those EVEs jumping out at you.

I liked many of the long entries Freddie chose containing EVE — NEVER MIND and PET PEEVES are excellent. It's also fun that EVEN STEVENS, EVEL KNIEVEL, and SEVEN ELEVEN all contain two instances apiece, but EVEN STEVENS feels a bit outdated (show ended in 2003 after only a few years), and I always see the convenience store written as 7 ELEVEN.

Although there are quite a few EVEs in shorties like EVENT, SIEVE, and ALEVE, I appreciate that Freddie stuck to all fine entries (no MEVE, EVEA, NIEVE kind of ugly bits).

There were some gluey bits, no doubt. Starting with ESSO is passable (it's a major brand in Canada), but when you need OLEO and ALEE and HEXA before leaving that NW section, that adds up. It's too bad there was a concentration right at the start, because the rest of the puzzle was pretty smooth, aside from an ANO crossing ENERO and a random STEN. It's not easy at all to pack in so many trigrams, so it's not a bad result.

(I loved the clue for HEXA: [Tri and tri again?]. It still doesn't erase HEXA as a piece of crossword glue, but that wordplay sure did give me a smile).

KEROGEN is an interesting word. Even having a decent science background, I needed every crossing word (thankfully Freddie laid it out so every cross was easy!). Given how much press fracking gets, I'm surprised I haven't come across this term before today. Glad to add it to my vocabulary.