New York Times, Tuesday, July 29, 2014

As noted on the Wordplay blog, this puzzle was my first crossword construction and submission. It was accepted two and a half years ago, in late 2011. I've come to realize that little motivates better than being your own fiercest critic, so with that in mind let's do an unvarnished, retrospective analysis of proto-me.

Jeff will probably point out that the puzzle's pinwheel layout allows for more control over the fill, while forgoing the opportunity to introduce longer — and presumably fresher — entries. Here, the presence of the central 7-letter bonus theme answer I think justifies that choice to some extent. The layout also produces some nice open areas in the four corners.

If I were to re-do this puzzle, the following entries would never be included: MTS, AGNUS, ESTES, I GET A, EINS, ESO, and SEGS. Nor is DEEPER (comparative form) ideal. While none of these is puzzle-breaking in and of itself, there is so much wiggle room in this low theme-count grid that there shouldn't be any blemishes like long partials, foreign words or ugly/plural abbreviations. The 8-letter entries SOBERS UP, BASS SOLO, OPIUM DEN and MAMA'S BOY are fine, but where I erred in construction is that I cemented those entries into place and then filled in from there, as though they were theme answers themselves. Nowadays I would still try all of them, but when they resulted in the aforementioned imperfections I would back those entries out and try different options until the puzzle sparkled everywhere. VIRAGO and MESTIZA are two other favorite entries, although I must confess to shoehorning in XZIBIT (who is not at all within my ken) without much consideration. Maybe others will disagree, but I wouldn't jump at the chance to use that entry today — irrespective of its effect on surrounding fill — unless nothing else fit.

It had been awhile since I'd looked back at the submitted clues. Several are cringe-inducing. Way too many contain obscure or uninteresting pop-culture references, and a lot my attempts at wordplay and misdirection, which at the time must have seemed clever and pithy, are anything but. I would have thought that there was no way Will could have used more than 5-10% of my clues, but I just totted them up and 26 out of 74 survived, with minor editing, for a hit rate of 35%. Which is shockingly high. {Light courses?} for EASY A'S was the one punny clue that made the cut.

Warts and all, I don't believe this was a terrible first attempt.

I'm terrible with anything that requires watering (local watering holes excepted), but I enjoyed learning some new terms. Who knew there was such a thing as a SNAKE PLANT or a GOATS BEARD? Fun phrases that thankfully were relatively easy to uncover. I liked how the clues related to the slang meanings, not the common meanings, of the theme words. [Billy's facial hair?] and [Crustacean's turf?] would have fallen flat, for example.

Tim's point about the pinwheel arrangement is generally true, and he doesn't get anything over eight letters of non-theme fill today. But that's okay. Weekday puzzles don't require super-long fill — I'll take a couple of snazzy eights any day over some average 10's or 11's. And it's not every day the solver SOBERS UP to a BASS SOLO, or sees a MAMAS BOY in an OPIUM DEN. Well done there.

I appreciate that Tim worked those entries in while still keeping most of the fill relatively smooth. I GET A isn't a great entry — I personally find the "five-letter partial spreading over three words" pretty ugly, to the level of random Roman numerals, but that's simply personal opinion. And one or two of those types of entries in a puzzle is totally fine. Tim makes a great point about not getting tied to anything particular in your fill — glad to hear that if he could do it all over again, he'd explore different options in those eight-letter slots. Flexibility is the name of the game when trying to fill a grid with both smoothness and sparkle.

A minor nit: it would have been great to have 3-Down (all the theme answers, actually) clued with the full [Nursery worker's suggestion for a grouch?]. While the clues would be much longer, I found it a little confusing as is, as I hadn't gotten to 18-across yet.

Wow, that SW corner was both brilliant and baffling. Not knowing XZIBIT or MESTIZA, an educated guess saved me there (I'll be trademarking both MESTICA and XCIBIT, thank you very much). I really like the way it all looks, now that I go back to examine it. And I did learn a couple of new terms. It's too bad EINS and I GET A are hanging around that region; otherwise I might have really admired it.

I really appreciate Tim's self-awareness; his drive toward continual improvement. Great to hear.