New York Times, Wednesday, September 11, 2013

I made this one while I was writing "Scratch & Solve Word Ladders", and I remember consulting with Acme on the theme and discussing the option of UMBILICAL CORD versus EXTENSION CORD for some time. There were two J's in this grid when originally submitted, but one of them was changed since it created a too-tricky vortex of literature and music. I was happy to see that many of my clues made the cut, and if I had it to do over I would probably change IPODS to IPADS... though in my defense: they didn't exist at the time!

This puzzle has been in my files for a long time, because I have a lot of puzzles with word-ladder themes, and I try to space them out. The two long non-theme entries at 3D and 34D are especially nice.

I had to stop myself from squealing when I first met superstar constructor Patrick Blindauer at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament two years ago. We had a funny exchange of glances when his Puzzle 5 (usually the hardest of the tourney) was announced and people groaned, anticipating the combination of pleasure and pain. He's known for his devilishly hard masterpieces.

Patrick brings us a word ladder puzzle with a twist. Nice to see the progression go from a logical start to conclusion, WARM BLOODED to COLD HEARTED. Also nice that he found five snazzy phrases in which to incorporate the ladder. Slight deduction for CARD being a part of another word when WARM, WARD, CORD, and COLD are separate, because it's more elegant if all the theme entries work exactly the same. Consistency is one of the criteria many people use in judging a set of theme answers.

Look at the very high theme density: 11/13/15/13/11. It's hard enough to incorporate five shorter theme answers, and Patrick raises the difficulty level by choosing long entries. Note how he chose a 15-letter entry across the middle. Although it might seem like a central 9 or 11 would be easier, that would actually make the construction more difficult because the center row would need to have black squares at its ends. That arrangement breaks up the grid in a way which is hard to deal with in terms of overall black square placement. Try it if you're curious.

The high theme density requires there to be many vertical answers which cross two themers. The result is that virtually every subsection is constrained multiple times, making the filling process challenging. Most everywhere the fill is pretty good, although Robb NEN feels like an ORT (leftover bit). All in all a nice job considering the tough constraints.