New York Times, Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Since I expect a lot of XWord Info's avid readers are puzzle constructors, I'll limit my comments here to my quest to wrestle this puzzle into shape, but I'll include some other notes on the Wordplay blog.

The grid layout you see here is the 3rd iteration of this puzzle, and by that I mean the 3rd grid I filled completely. According to my Crossword Compiler folder there were 43 versions that crashed and burned. A quick glance at the theme answers and you might think that an infinite number of grids could have accommodated all those short H/T words, but the fact that those words had to be paired with one another (across and down) put significant constraints on a symmetrical 15x15 grid. Tense was also limiting; BASHED and BASTED work in the past tense, but BASH and BASTE don't have the same number of letters. I added the additional constraint on myself to try* and space the theme answers out into different sections of the grid as much as possible.

Things were further complicated when I got Will's comments back after my first submission. He said he really liked the concept, but wasn't sure about a few of the H/T theme words. For example, I tried to use "Flag" as a clue for HIRE (as a cab) & TIRE, and "Turn" for SHEER & STEER. Looking back, Will's feedback vastly improved the puzzle. So even if some folks take issue with the clues for some of the theme answers... it could have been worse! Once a few of my theme H/T words were tossed out, the whole grid had to be scrapped to accommodate the constraints I mentioned above. Will also had to change the majority of my clues to get this puzzle in on a Tuesday; my favorite clue that was victimized by early-week editing was "Yankee's lineup?" for SCENTS, and the clunky but imagination-triggering "It's only legal if you're shorthanded" for ICING.

I am absurdly excited and honored to be the newest member of XWord Info's Schrödinger puzzles page. I'd put the odds at me attempting another one of these puzzles at no less than 50/50.

I cannot resist the allure of the Schrodinger puzzle. It's so cool when there are two answers which work equally well. Sometimes one answer is more tortured than the other, but most all of them today are very nice. A prime example of a home run is FISH and FIST, both of which are landed by a hook (a FISH by a fishhook and a FIST by a right hook). Very clever clue for both!

These types of squares are very difficult to pull off, so it's even more impressive that Andrew was able to incorporate so many of them. Thirteen answers are affected, with eight squares needing to work with duality. Just getting one or two to work well is hard enough, so tossing in a huge handful is incredibly impressive.

And given the theme density, I would expect the fill to suffer greatly. Not only does Andrew need to work around the themers BEST THREE / OUT OF FIVE, but he has to place five "coins" throughout the grid. Each of those "coins" requires two answers to be placed (one across, one down), and a set of intersecting across/down answers generally makes for tough constraints. When you have five of them, you're asking for trouble.

As if that wasn't enough, there's the HEADS/TAILS in the center, making the entire puzzle heavily constrained. Sure, there are a few bits like AMBI, SKAT, and OST (all in the NW area), but the grid is remarkably clean. I wondered if Andrew could have gotten rid of the OST and AMI by placing the first coin in the SW corner instead of the NW? That SW corner feels much less constrained and ripe for a "coin," although this would require a different set of dual-working answers than ISH/IST and GUSH/GUST due to length requirements.

And yes, the grid is too segmented for my taste (the entire NW and SE can be sectioned off by adding just one set of black squares, which breaks up the flow of the puzzle), but I'll happily take that sort of thing when the payoff is good enough.

My final reaction: at first I felt like there was almost a little too much going on. What with all the coins and the answer in the middle and the theme answer telling me BEST THREE OF FIVE, I wasn't sure what to look at first. I started to overthink it all, brainstorming how nice it would have been to make it some sort of predictive magic trick, or to tie the central answer to the coins themselves somehow. And then I decided to just sit back and enjoy it.

Neat idea, and a grid executed with obvious care and devotion to clean fill. Much appreciated by this solver!