New York Times, Monday, April 21, 2014

As a high school math teacher, I use the word "counterexample" fairly regularly, but the idea for using the word as the basis for a puzzle theme struck as I was being a student, taking a grad school math class this past summer. Sitting in a lecture, trying to track a proof that was a bit out of my reach, the mention of a "counterexample" set my mind in a different direction, and I started trying to come up with people that count for a living (likely not the kind of thing my students daydream about!)

Realizing that "counterexamples" was 15 letters long made me intensify my efforts, and I lucked out by finding two other 15-letter examples and then two 11-letter examples. Getting two words to cross three theme entries made filling the grid a little easier, and I enjoyed the changes Will made to many of my clues, as I'm still trying to find the sweet spot of easy but interesting clues for a Monday puzzle.

As I was constructing the puzzle, I was inspired by my first, and perhaps the ultimate, "counter example", a certain monocled denizen of Sesame Street. Imagining him in each of the four roles amused me (he'd be easy pickings for a pit boss!) and poking around the Internet, I found this clip from the late 80's, in which I greatly enjoyed seeing the confluence of Count von Count, New York, and the setting for a 17-Across.

A perfect puzzle for a math teacher, no? It's not often I get a chuckle on a Monday NYT, so I really enjoyed getting to COUNTEREXAMPLES, or COUNTER EXAMPLES as per the theme. The four (non-revealer) themers are all professions where counting is indeed necessary, thus, COUNTER EXAMPLES. Fun interpretation. But seriously, John, you wouldn't include MATH TEACHER? I was counting on you.

Wah wah.

The grid is absolutely packed today, the 15/11/15/11/15 making for a whopping 67 letters of themage. It's a wonder that John was able to work in two nice long downs, PRATFALL and MOCCASIN. Too often in these circumstances, it's so difficult to work in long fill that the best a constructor can do is put in something long for length's sake. But both PRATFALL and MOCCASIN are beautiful entries.

There is so much overlap between the five themers that I was worried to see a bunch of crossword glue, especially at places where there are five letters exposed. But check out the NE corner: UMPIRE and MANAGER have five spaces between them (where ERNIE sits), yet that corner is so smooth. Some people may complain about AERIE, but it's a fine entry in my book, especially since it reminds me of The Eyrie in "Game of Thrones."

Even the symmetrical corner gets executed pretty well, ABOIL sitting in between CENSUS and COUNTER. ABOIL in itself is pretty iffy, but to work in the crossing MOCCASIN and SULTAN is pretty cool.

Overall though, it tended to add up for me. You get an AON here, ANE there, along with an ASTA, ESTE, NO USE, TSOS... John did well to space them out through the grid so they didn't pile up on top of each other, but it felt like more than I would like to see in a Monday puzzle. Trade-offs, as always — with such high theme density, it's pretty difficult to pull off something completely smooth.

In terms of theme selection, all of them are nice, snappy answers. BLACKJACK PLAYER really did it for me, especially after reading "Bringing Down the House," the story of the MIT (card-counting) blackjack team. I might have liked to see more professions directly involved with counting like ACCOUNTANT or ABACUS WORKER or something, as I imagine a BANK MANAGER would focus more on people management, but you can't have 'em all. A fun theme providing me a chuckle is a good Monday puzzle in my ledger.