Seeding a themeless grid with a 15-letter entry is risky. It often means that the rest of your puzzle isn't going to have room for as ...
read moreSeeding a themeless grid with a 15-letter entry is risky. It often means that the rest of your puzzle isn't going to have room for as much liveliness as a themeless typically needs. If you're going to do this, you have to make sure that 15 is sizzling — like IT JUST AIN'T RIGHT. I love its colloquial feel.
With just one long seed, you can flow out from it, without worrying about any other constraints. It's way tougher to seed a puzzle with two 15s since that starts constraining the grid mightily. I wonder if ORGANIC MATERIAL was a compromise, something that happened to fit toward the end of filling. I liked it as an entry, especially given its clue referencing recent discovery on Mars, but "organic matter" sounds much better to my ear.
A couple of great clues elevated my solving experience:
- DOG TOYS is already a solid entry. Misleading with "chewable but not meant to be eaten"? Brilliant! I pondered various types of chewable vitamins and pills before the light came on.
- [Peabrain?] befuddled me ... until I realized that it was talking about a man who used peas in his study of genetics, Gregor MENDEL. Groan! (in a good way)
There were a few clues that took my solving experience down a notch, though:
- DST is a nonreligious observance? Aren't thousands of other things nonreligious observances, too? It's like cluing it as [Three letters].
- DAR as the Spanish verb for "to give" = yikes.
- People say "I made a RES for dinner tonight"?
And finally, one that I glossed over, unable to understand it. After two days of consideration, I finally got it. Well worth the work!
- MISADD means to add incorrectly. How is it [Totally screw up?]. Think "total-ly," as in "related to a total."
GHOST GUNS ... it's a descriptive term and no doubt colorful. But given the gun problem we have in the US, it's not something I want to be reminded of during my 15 minutes of escapism.
There wasn't enough snazz overall for my taste, REHEARSAL, IS IT SAFE, OUTDATED more neutral than assets. Thankfully, that feature of IT JUST AINT RIGHT had a big impact.
ADDED NOTE: Reader Eric Soderstrom mentioned that RES is used in the reservation sense in Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential." So the anwer to my question above is yes!