New York Times, Monday, August 4, 2014

I came up with this simple theme on a plane ride, of course. It felt pretty average as themes go, so I decided to make it distinctive by really lowering the word count. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a Monday puzzle with only 70 words, but it seemed like a fun construction challenge to make a puzzle with this much open space still have all easy vocabulary. I'm really happy with how clean it came out in the end (AWNS was OWNS and BRAGS was BLOGS for a while until I noticed the OWN A GUN/OWNS dupe), and that I was able to work some lively fill in. I'm not sure whether Monday solvers will find the chunky corners too difficult, so I'm interested in reading the response to this one.

Joel's done some great work in his nearly 30 puzzles for the NYT. But I can't remember ever thinking "how the heck did he do that?" until today. I was wondering why my solve went so slow. It wasn't a lack of smoothness — there's only one piece of glue I can point out (AWNS), and all the crossings are fair. It wasn't that the cluing was extraordinarily hard. So why did it take me roughly 50% longer?

I realized there's a bit of magic involved. This is a 70-word puzzle... without looking at all like one. If you eye the empty grid, you wouldn't think it was a themeless, would you? Doesn't have the wide-open four corners most exhibit. Yet its 70 words puts it WAY below average for a Monday. It's a real testament to the quality of work that it took me so long to figure this out.

I've put together 72 word-count themed puzzles before and found them extremely difficult. Most of the time I can't fill them cleanly enough so they could run as an early-week puzzle — crossword glue in Mondays and Tuesdays risks alienating beginning solvers. So to see the smoothness of this 70-word creation is amazing. Unbelievable how he left so much white space between themers (note where SNEERS sits sandwiched between WINDOW and AISLE, for example) and managed to keep things silky.

Life is all about expectations, isn't it? I experienced a bit of disconnect. A straightforward theme (WINDOW MIDDLE AISLE) with a themeless-esque grid was a bit like eating a cheeseburger while watching an art film. I still really enjoyed both, but I wonder if I would have preferred them separately? Might just be human nature — my resistance to change.

And a minor nit, it would have been great if all three themers had the same verb structure (CRACK, MEET, GO, e.g.). But overall, a really nice change of pace for a Monday. It's so hard to make a low word-count grid this smooth. I'll be interested to see if we get more of them, considering how challenging they are to create. I'll be dissecting this one further on my own.