New York Times, Tuesday, September 29, 2015

I'm a retired business executive who was lucky enough to retire very young. I still serve on several Boards of Directors, but I spend the bulk of my time reading, traveling with my wife, enjoying my grandchildren and constructing crosswords. Since I took it up five years ago, I've had two puzzles published in the NYT and eleven published in the LAT. This is my third puzzle to be published in the NYT.

I think that the "travels" of this puzzle are a bit unusual. I first submitted it to Will on September 21, 2012 — over three years ago. Will had a pretty speedy turnaround and accepted it on December 2, 2012. Then we waited … and waited … and waited. I checked in with Will several times over the years to be sure that Mr. Puzzle was still alive and kicking. Each time, he reported that Mr. Puzzle was in very good spirits, but that he (Will) had a backlog of early-week puzzles of a similar genre and that he needed time to space them out. If it had occurred to him, Will would likely have said "Patience." And he would have added "Remember the theme: AGES. This puzzle is aging quite nicely."

Eureka! Today's the day!

Five AGES packed into the grid: STONE age, ICE age, IRON age, etc. This Seattleite was pleased as punch to see the SPACE NEEDLE as a feature entry! (Although just between you and me, it looks ridiculously tiny in real life. More like the Not-Even-to-the-Clouds Needle.)

I liked the themers Kurt chose. STONEHENGE is a magnificent structure full of mystical meaning, the IRON HORSE is not just the nickname for the railroad engine but one of the greatest sports nicknames of all time. Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak stood for so many decades before Cal Ripken, Jr. broke it.

I really wanted a chronological progression, though. As I was solving, I enjoyed seeing the puzzle move through the STONE age to the ICE age* to the IRON age to the SPACE age … back to the BRONZE age? It seemed haphazard to me. Again, it's not an absolute essential, but I found the random order to be inelegant. It would be one thing if there were very little flexibility in themer choices, but that's not the case here.

It's amazing how much harder a puzzle is to fill when there's a middle themer sort of splitting the puzzle in two. In this case, IRON HORSE creates big chunks of white space in all four corners. As if that weren't hard enough, there's a revealer to deal with — Kurt does pretty well in that tough lower right corner, the gluey bits just a MES, NUEVO, and ONE A. They're all minor, in my book.

It's too bad though, that there's enough glue spread around in the form of ENNE, ANON, OSS, SOO, etc. that it registered on my radar. Not ideal. I wouldn't have minded CASHIER and ASSORTS broken in two with black squares — would have made for more three-letter words, but those two corners could have been cleaned up for a better overall effect.

Curious to find out that ZOE is a Muppet! I thought I knew them all. Fun clue.

*You might think any college-educated solver would realize the ICE age came before the STONE age, but you'd be wrong.