New York Times, Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Once the inspiration came for this theme (no, I wasn't at the zoo when the idea hit), I knew that this was the kind of theme that was just begging for interlock. I honestly wasn't planning for this much interlock, though. My original plan was to have the two vertical theme answers intersect the A two columns closer to the center than what you see here, but I decided for the heck of it to see if I could wedge a seventh in there. (Well, "wedge" is the wrong term, I hope... that implies it fits where it shouldn't have. I suppose you all will be the judges of that.) It was a happy accident that it turned out to have a themeless word count, because the interlock forced my hand here; I needed to keep the sevens in the top left and the sixes in the top right (the unsightly clump of five blocks on the top and bottom were necessary too).

It was also a happy accident that I was able to include 1A and 16A in the same stack; I'd like to say that I meant to do that. With the multitude of 3s and 4s that resulted, my concentration was on the sixes and sevens. I spent more time than usual trying to get as much good fill in the top left and lower right as I could.

A really nice change of pace today, a hugely ambitious grid that delivered a quality solving experience for me. A collection of "adjective as an animal" similes, Tim not only packs in seven strong ones, but does so in a 72-word grid that gives us additional long fill and mostly clean short fill. Quite a fun experience for me, both to solve and to admire as a constructor.

It's easy as a constructor to fall back upon standard methodology in grid design (or even just use grids out of a grid library), so I really like seeing constructors push boundaries. I'm not sure I would have ever come up with the same grid design as Tim, especially considering how he carefully packed everything in. Some crossings will be natural given the simple theme — themers crossed through part of the "AS A" is a natural way to do that — but look how Tim crosses FAT AS A COW and BALD AS A COOT and SLY AS A FOX. Very cool.

And with seven themers, it's altogether too easy to call it good once you can fit them all in. So I really like the extra step, squeezing in BASS ALE over LOCAL PUB and TRASHBIN and ART DECO, all nice answers. As I go back and study this grid, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how Tim managed to get everything so tightly packed. It's a Tetris-like solution.

There are blips here and there, not surprising due to the level-ridiculous constraints. BIG AS A WHALE overlapping BUSY AS A BEE is naturally going to be problematic, for instance. The ?HS?? pattern is not particularly friendly, so the OH SAY partial is one of the only options there. Our crossword monkey friend ABU shows up too, but that's an impressively low number of glue entries. Tim's work in the west section is remarkably clean, only UGA raising an eyebrow, at least until I remembered how cutely ugly the UGA bulldog mascot is.

Not a mind-blowing theme, but a great example of how to pull something off with panache.