New York Times, Tuesday, September 3, 2013

At some point I ran across a Times crossword by Tyler Hinman where he used a set of five homophones (OR/OAR/OER/ORE/ORR) as clues for fresh, longer phrases. That got me wondering if I could find a different set of five homophones that would lend themselves to fresh (and symmetrical) theme answers. This puzzle is the result.

Of my crosswords that have appeared in the Times so far, this one had the longest gap between acceptance and publication (almost three years).

This puzzle had been languishing in my files for several years, because I'd run a couple of others with we/wee/Wii/etc. themes. But I thought Dan's treatment was nice — and after a few years the whole idea feels fresh again.

A nice twist on the puzzle type where all the theme answers are definitions of a single word. Dan's additional element of using homonyms of the single word (WII, OUI, etc.) helps keep the idea fresh. And I laughed when reaching "Whee!" A major goal of crosswords is to entertain, and seeing that brought a smile to my face.

This theme type isn't seen much these days, since the answers tend to sound like made-up phrases. PERSONAL PRONOUN and CRY OF DELIGHT are both snappy answers, in-the-language, but FRENCH FOR YES will cause some solvers to grumble, saying that it's not as satisfying to solve such an answer. All puzzle themes must evolve or die (the simple "word that follows the first half of X, Y, Z-across" is largely dead, for example) so I think in the future, this theme will need to include all in-the-language phrases as theme answers or have some other advancement in order to be successful.

In construction, it's generally best to spread out theme answers as much as possible, since this provides for flexibility in filling. Typically rows 3 and 13 contain the first and last theme answers for this reason. Ten and 11-letter answers in these positions often make for an easier to fill grid, while eight and nine-letter answers add a layer of difficulty. Today's is prime example of this: note how the 9-letter theme answers in rows 3 and 13 create wide-open 5x5 white spaces in the NE and SW corners. Anything 5x5 or bigger can be very difficult to fill cleanly, and having something like STERS is not an optimal result. There are ways around this, breaking up CAME ONTO and OLD FILES for example, but that takes out some good long fill. A difficult trade-off.