New York Times, Friday, September 11, 2015

Grrr! I got scooped on THIS IS SPINAL TAP by Julian Lim! He used it on February 27^th of this year on this very fine Friday puzzle. I submitted my puzzle long before Julian's was published, of course, but so it goes in the cruciverbalist business.

In looking over the grid, I see that the triple-vertical-stack of proper nouns WALPOLE, GARDINER, and COLLINS might cause issues for some. By the way, I would tell you that I didn't put COLLINS in the grid for megalomaniacal reasons, but you wouldn't believe me anyway.

I have a question to throw out there in the court of public opinion. My clue for WATERMELON SEEDS was "Farmers might cover them in patches." I thought it was brilliant (but then again, I also thought New Coke was brilliant). The editor didn't share my enthusiasm for the clue. What say you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury?

THIS IS SPINAL TAP is one of the few movies on my Top Tier list, so I had a big smile with the "Smell the Glove" clue. (The album cover ended up being solid black, due to NSFW reasons. Ahem.) BTW, "Smell the Glove" came between "Shark Sandwich" (described by a critic as "Sh*t Sandwich") and "Break Like the Wind."

Did I mention how much I love that movie?

Neat layout, built upon two pairs of grid-spanning entries. Sometimes puzzles built around grid-spanners use ones that are pretty average; snazziness sacrificed in the name of getting the darn grid to work. Here, I think Pete does great, four for four. Bravo! And while I really like Pete's WATERMELON SEEDS clue, I love Will/Joel's "spitting distance" one. (Sorry, Pete!)

It's great that Pete doesn't just depend on his grid-spanners to provide snazz, leaving slots for eight more long entries — colorful stuff in CHE GUEVARA / CEDAR FALLS and STUNT PILOT. (STAY AT HOME doesn't sound as good to my ear since it's usually paired with MOM or DAD, making it feel like a partial.) Crossing pairs of long answers is a rough task, so it's no surprise to see some URE and ALEF (a variant of ALIF) and MSS / OCTO around those regions. These are mostly minor, although personally, any entry that requires the "variant" tag is to be avoided at all costs.

Check out the big swaths of white in the north and south — ambitious to leave grid sections so wide-open. These big sections make it hard to work in great entries though, and the assortment of potentially esoteric proper names in the bottom — WALPOLE, GARDINER, COLLINS, MARLO — isn't ideal. I like the north better, with a great clue for KFC's The COLONEL, and MEMOREX, which takes me back to fun TV ads from childhood.

Finally, some solvers will be confused by REL, so I'll explain that the "little" in [Little brother or sister?] cues you that an abbr. is in play — REL for relative. "For short" or "briefly" or "quick" all work similarly. A good crossword convention to know.

A lot of fun stuff today!