New York Times, Thursday, May 22, 2014

The initial inspiration for this puzzle came from "See Me After Class," which I transformed into CLASSSEEME, but the 10 letter mate to this themed entry proved much more difficult. Initially I had NOONDOGDAY (Dog Day Afternoon), but Will rejected it on the grounds that AFTER was a part of the larger word, Afternoon, while in all the other themes, AFTER was implied as a single word. I spent weeks and weeks trying to come up with a good 10-letter substitute, all of which fell short(z).

In all of the earlier versions of the puzzle, I had the word AFTER at the bottom as a revealer, but Will thought it was unnecessary. I had one version with ten themes, one that was a pangram, but Will kept encouraging me to keep it simple.

I finally had to reluctantly abandon the two 10-letter entries and went to a pair of 15-letter themes instead. I had ANOTHERONETHING (One Thing After Another) but couldn't find a suitable mate until I came up with CIBEFOREEEXCEPT (I Before E Except After C). By this time I had made 18 different versions of the puzzle! I am particularly pleased that Will kept my clue for this last entry, "Rule contradicted by science?"

So when people ask me how long it takes me to make a crossword puzzle, I answer "Anywhere between 45 minutes and three months."

Nice theme today, a literal interpretation of phrases with the word "after" in them. The morning after pill becomes literally PILL MORNING, one thing after another becomes ANOTHER ONE THING, etc. At first I wondered what these four had in common — there have to be hundreds of "X after Y" phrases out there. But sometimes you just have to turn off your constructor's brain and enjoy the ride. I mean, I BEFORE E EXCEPT AFTER C transmogrified into the crazy looking CIBEFOREEEXCEPT, plus a great clue for it? Excellent.

Unusual placement of themers today, but Adam makes it work pretty well. Typically it's best to spread out themers as much as possible, as having two rows in between themers is much better than one (three is even better, but that usually isn't possible unless you only have three themers). Note how all four of them are crammed together toward the middle, only a single space between adjacent ones. I do like how it presents all the meat in a group, sort of concentrating all your best material into one fell swoop. But it does create some difficulties.

Check out the west and east sections. When you have two grid-spanners so close to each other like this, the west and east sections will be often be constrained enough to cause difficulty. Adam does well to get by with just PARC and RTE. Not shabby at all. I wonder though, if those two glue-y entries could have been reduced by spreading those themers apart, perhaps even switching things so the grid-spanners were in rows 3 and 13. I realize this may come off as nit-picky to some, but in today's world of rapidly increasing crossword quality, I believe many solvers are expecting more and more smoothness from their puzzle.

A huge number of really good clues today, enough that I slowed down my pace to enjoy. [Twenty-one words] for HIT ME (blackjack-related clue), [Starbuck's orderer] having nothing to do with the coffee chain but everything to do with the Moby-Dick characters, even [Make a long story short, perhaps] for EDIT and you have a lot of nice material concentrated up top. I really enjoyed that. And then saving the best for (almost) last, [One acting on impulse?] for AXON — that's the way to make your clues work for you.

So even though I would have liked the themers to be more specific, tying together better somehow, much of the rest of the puzzle stepped up its game to produce a very enjoyable experience for me.