New York Times, Monday, September 12, 2016

VIC: While in Tampa for Merl's memorial service last August, Andrea and I talked about possibly collaborating on a puzzle at some point in the future. We'd both collaborated with many others, so it seemed a logical fit.

Weeks later, I ran an idea or two by her. I was impressed by her keen insight. And her quick resolve not to delve into a theme that wasn't clearly "fun." I tend to default to "complex" and then try to make it fun.

And then … I was reflecting on my first Times puzzle—a 2005 collab with Nelson Hardy that seemed both complex and fun: theme answers were punnily clued phrases in which the present and past tense of the same verb ran consecutively. E.g., SIT SATURDAY, HAVE HADDOCK. An idea came to me: 2-word phrases consisting of back-to-back homophones.

How happy I was when Andrea wrote, "This is fun!" We exchanged a few emails, developing the theme, filling the grid, writing the clues. Will liked it, but wanted some fill upgraded. This led to several revisions. When Will finally wrote, "This turned out nicely," he was holding revision no. 15!

ACME: Judge Vic and I bonded during Merl's memorial last year in Tampa. We discussed turning one of the illustrious judge's ideas into a Monday. PARESPEARS appeared in databases, but we figured the four others were fresh.

As this appears so close to the anniversary of our dear friend's untimely passing, I hope it will do him proud.

Homonyms paired to make kooky phrases. It reminded me of one I worked on with a friend a few years back, but I like how Acme and Judge Vic picked out examples that are very accessible to novice solvers for this Monday puzzle. It was also nice to see consistency, each themer using the same verb tense for the first word + a plural noun for the second.

This "windmill" layout of themers is usually easier to work with than a more traditional layout of every themer going horizontally — the windmill pattern allows for more space between themers. It tends to make adding in bonus fill harder though, so I appreciate the effort to work in ONE PIECE, a colorful entry. IRISH SEA ain't bad, either.

I don't mind a bit of minor glue like ASSN (pretty common) and RRs (who hasn't tried to collect all the RRs in a game of Monopoly?). And SGT is used everywhere … but not S SGT. This one irks me more, since it feels like a constructor's crutch, as that first letter can be M, S, or T. It's similar to ?STAR, where that question mark can be so many things. Feels inelegant.

LOCI doesn't bother me even in a Monday puzzle, as long as all the crosses are fair. Granted, I did take a lot of math in college, but it is a real word that NYT readers ought to know.

ENO, ERTE, ESAI are all real people; ones I have no problem with since they've all achieved adequate fame in their careers. To have three of them in one puzzle feels like too much to me though — I can imagine a newer solver struggling with any one of them, much less all three. (MAUD Adams might be a fourth.)

Easy-breezy Monday theme, although since there are so many possible homonym pairs that can work like this (AIRS HEIRS, SCENTS CENTS, DYES DIES, WRITES RIGHTS, etc.), it would have been nice to get some extra element to tighten up the theme. Not sure what that might be — all long ones? All ones with huge spelling changes? — but it's fun to think about.