New York Times, Wednesday, May 14, 2014

I started with the punch line (conveniently 15 letters) and wondered whether there were good examples. MOSES quickly gave WINSOMELO(SESOM)E, which I liked. The other two themers came with minimal effort, and I loved SCHW(ARZE)NEGGER — I'll be back, and all that. The fill was not too hard, and I had all of those uncommon letters in SCHWARZENEGGER, so I decided to make it a pangram. It kind of screams "look at me, I'm a pangram," with QTIP and JINX in the corners, but I still thought that it was okay.

My original had the biblical partial EATOF at 43-A and a bunch of other garbage in the S and W blocks (in its defense, it did have ZINGER crossing SUNDAE, which I probably tried too hard to keep), but Will nixed it as too clunky. The version you saw was much better. My favorite clue that Will didn't change was undoubtedly the RWANDAn 5000-franc note because any clue that mentions a large animal is better than any clue that doesn't. My favorite clue that Will inserted was probably "Put the whammy on" for JINX, but I liked his pairing of identical clues for YIPES and UHOH also. My favorite clues that didn't make it in? I'll save those for another day! I hope that everyone enjoyed the puzzle, and I'm sorry that I couldn't come up with anything with HAINAHPEZ in the middle.

Amusing theme; I got a chuckle out of the TURNING A PROPHET revealer. I had no idea what was going on as I solved, so I had a nice a-ha moment at the end.

Great selection of long themers. WIN SOME LOSE SOME, ESPRESSO MAKERS, and especially SCHWARZENEGGER are all juicy entries. Typically I would like to see all of the themers be the same number of words, but the 4/2/1 progression was kind of nice. When you can't have perfect consistency, perfect inconsistency is the next best thing.

I did wonder why these prophets? A quick search turned up dozens of prophets, so it would have been nice to have some rationale as to why these three. It might have been impossible to choose three that were all related in some way (good luck finding a word/phrase with LEIKEZE), but wow, what a big bang it would have made if it had been possible.

Given that there were only four long themers, it would have been nice to see a pair of long downs in the fill. Victor does do a nice job with his sixes and sevens, MISHAP and ZAGGED and SKEWER being colorful. But having even one pair of snazzy eights would have been very welcome.

Ah, the lure of the pangram. I do like seeing Q, J, Z, V's in a grid. They do a lot to add to a puzzle's snazz. I didn't think JAS was worth the price of JAS though. Differences in philosophy — I definitely know both solvers that hate this type of trade-off and those that love it.

Finally, what a great clue for EMAIL! Perhaps a slight dig at the postal service, hmm? I enjoyed running through DHL, FEDEX, UPS, etc. before getting a smile at EMAIL. I find it baffling that the USPS is still allowed to survive in its current configuration, given its history of giant financial losses. One of you clever crossword people, get on that!