New York Times, Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Indie crossword constructor with a recently-released pack of freestyle crosswords here, with a puzzle that dates back to about 2018 or so, which is when it was previously accepted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Unfortunately, it never made its way into print before they ceased running their crossword, but I'm glad it still found a home.

That said, if I was making this puzzle today, I probably wouldn't make it like this (which is not to say that I don't like it). With a theme like this, getting intersecting theme answers isn't too hard (since they all have shared letters), so I decided to do just that. But the theme density and interlock puts a lot of pressure on the grid; as a result, the layout is rather defensive, and there's a lot of shorter fill (some of it kinda meh) with minimal opportunities for bonus fill.

The middle, especially, was tough, with four theme entries poking in and very little flexibility w/r/t black squares. Plus (and I can't believe that I only noticed this now) two of the theme entries use the same permutation of BOOTS, despite me explicitly trying not to do that — I don't know how I didn't notice that, but I blame the extra S in SOB STORY.

Anyway, again, I still like this puzzle, and am glad to see it in print, but I hope the above at least shows why considering grid decisions such as these and how they impact the puzzle is something worth doing in making your own puzzles.

Five years ago, I was hanging out with a bunch of crossword folks, and one was gushing about this musical called "Hamilton." Everyone seemed to be agreeing with her, so I innocently asked, "What's Hamilton?"

After the derisive laughter died down (three months later), I figured it was better to keep my mouth shut in these situations.

So it was with trepidation that I asked Jim Horne, "What's KINKY BOOTS?" Thankfully, he was gentle, explaining that it won the Best Musical Tony Award and that his band plays a cover of a KINKY BOOTS song. Then I asked, "Is winning the Best Musical Tony Award a big deal?"

I had to get a new phone after Jim's howling laughter cracked my speaker.

In cryptic crosswords, there are hundreds of words that indicate anagramming, and KINKY or "kinked" is one of them. (Don't ask me why.) Thus, all the sets of circles contain the letters B O O T S in some random order.

After tending to my ruptured eardrum, I asked Jim why pairs of circled letters crossed. It had to be some insidery reference to the musical. Or they were meant to look like kinked-up boots, like my kids do after they sit on them and swear that someone named Yehudi did it? (Again, don't ask.)

Would you believe that the sets of black squares at the bottom of the grid look like two boots? Made for walking, perhaps?

The pairs of crossing themers made for such rigid grid constraints, that I struggled through the results. Starting off debating if it was Jaromir JEGR and Inter ELIA or JAGR / ALIA led to another pause at Donna KARAN … or was it KERAN? I had a reasonably high degree of certainty for each cross, having seen all these in crosswords several times. Might be tougher for newer solvers, though.

I would have preferred fewer themers or stronger boot-like visuals generated by the crossing pairs. I did enjoy getting a reason to hear Jim, a professional musician, talk in detail about something he knows a great deal about. Totally worth the trip to the otolaryngologist.