Addison Snell author page

Addison takes Dwight Gooden's Dr. K title today, featuring four usages of the letter K from different fields. I appreciated the range, from baseball to money to printing to the periodic table.

Curious that BLACK INK is marked with a K. I enjoyed learning why that is — I didn't realize how few colors begin with K, and there's a neat bit of trivia in that other colors were historically "keyed" to black.

Will Shortz doesn't often accept themes depending on single-word entries. THOUSAND and POTASSIUM aren't nearly as evocative as STRIKE-OUT, although chemists could make a case for POTASSIUM being more interesting than BLACK INK. Its reaction with water is tough to beat!

What other Ks are there? This mechanical engineer would have loved STRESS INTENSITY FACTOR but would have settled for KELVIN SCALE. I've heard K in drug slang, though a KETAMINE reference is probably too edgy for the NYT.

Solid effort to take advantage of the low thematic density, featuring some great long Downs. BUZZ SAWS contains that double Z, and crossing it with SWIZZLE made it even more a highlight. Work in TWANGY, and I don't mind some minor gluey bits like OTRO, APSO, and STYE.

I would have loved some extra layer, like a 4K revealer, or grid art in the shape of a K, or eleven Ks in the grid. (Obviously because K is the 11^th letter of the alphabet, said the obsessive cryptographer.) Even the fact that K doesn't start any of the themers would have been great to point out explicitly! I completely whiffed on that elegant touch.

I enjoyed the cluing touches, though, especially curiosities like the EDGE of a coin as an unlikely landing place and the punniness of a CRAB getting you into a pinch.

I love codes. In our household, we don't wrap presents, but rather hide them and give clues to their whereabouts. My poor kids have no idea that they're learning while having fun, decoding alphanumerics (A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.), up-down ciphers, Pigpen, and even CRYPTOGRAMS.

Sadly, they haven't cracked my homemade ENIGMA MACHINE yet, so their 2019 Christmas presents are still under the floorboards.

There have been several cryptogram crosswords, like one that laid out the deciphering key in an easy to read display (unlike today's Note, ugh!). Another one employed the Caesar Shift, and yet another featured words that become other words after shifting.

And the piece de resistance: one that encrypted ALAN TURING into another enigmatic figure, HR HALDEMAN. The fact that the letter patterns happen to work out — letters 1 and 3 are the same, and letters 4 and 9 are the same — is the stuff of legends.

There's a lot to admire about today's implementation. Like the ALAN TURING / HR HALDEMAN puzzle, Addison had to adhere to consistent letter substitutions. There are a ton of Es in the decrypted quote:

CODES / AREAP / UZZLE / AGAME / JUSTL / IKEAN / YOTHE / RGAME

So each E must map to the same letter of the encryption key — the fourth letter in the first encrypted word has to be the same as the third letter in the second encrypted word, etc.

Some letters are freebies, like the J of JUSTL, since it doesn't repeat within the quote, but so many repeating letters force a huge amount of inflexibility. Cool that Addison found a set of eight five-letter words that work.

It would have been way more impressive if the quote had been broken down into ten-letter entries, especially if some of them provided more snazz than CLUNK or PINGS. I don't know if that's possible, but now I'm curious ... down the rabbit hole goes Jeff …

I forget most Sunday puzzles five minutes after solving, but I enjoyed chewing on this one afterward.

Existential identify crisis! Who am I? I am what I am. I AM THAT I AM!

I had a humorous moment, visualizing JEAN VAL JEAN stealing green eggs and ham with Sam-I-Am.

Creative use of mirror symmetry, neat to see in a debut. Crucivera shines inspiration so infrequently, and then she reminds you that she is one of the cruelest of the Old Gods. 11, 13, and GLORIA GAYNOR is … 12. That's a Greek tragedy in the making.

Thankfully, you can break up GLORIA / GAYNOR 6 / 6, and left-right symmetry saves the day. It does make it more difficult for the themers to stand out like beacons since GLORIA is shorter than MAIN LOT, and the multi-word LIP SYNC seems like it should be more of a themer than GAYNOR.

Speaking of LIP SYNC, I loved the effort to elevate the puzzle through the clever clues. Many Wednesday solvers can grapple with [Not really sing, say], even without a telltale question mark. That makes an already strong filler entry in LIP SYNC that much better.

And kicking off the puzzle with [Starter home?] in the northwest corner — that's a Kickstarter of a clue for EDEN.

It's unusual to debut short entries and even more rare to debut ones that other constructors might want to reuse. (I've heard some constructors bragging about debuting short entries … that happen to be a partial. No no no, Crucivera curses you!) PPE — personal protective equipment — is so timely.

I've never known a JORG, but it's so similar to George that I hardly paused.

I had difficulty succinctly expressing the theme, so it's good that XWord Info has a Jim Horne. Both of us appreciated these famous declaractions of self.