Alan DerKazarian author page

Eye-catching pattern! Hit my sweet spot of using black squares to create a visually-pleasing backdrop, while not using TOO many. Did you notice that the grid is also symmetric about the SW to NE axis? Elegant!

Some great entries, too. Loved PRIDE PARADE / UNITED FRONT and EGG MCMUFFINS / IM IMPRESSED in the longest slots — now that's the way to squeeze the most out of those all-important spaces!

Not a lot of other long slots, but they were also well-used in WATER DOG / SORE SPOT and NORMA RAE / SEMIARID … well, three out of four ain't bad. SEMIARID is pretty dry. (*rimshot*)

I love how NORMA RAE was elevated by its clue. It's not a movie that sticks in my head, but to clue it so innocently with [Field work] (it starred Sally Field) makes it shine.

Same goes for USO TOUR. Kind of old-timey feeling as an entry, but again, [Hope was once its driving force] obfuscates innocently away from (Bob) Hope.

Speaking of seven-letter entries, Alan did a nice job of using his mid-length slots. They're often tough to convert into snazzy material, but IQ TESTS is lovely, as are ROUGH IT, CUT TIME (classical music is often in 4/4 time, and CUT TIME halves it to 2/2).

EL DUQUE … I vaguely remember him because of his awesome nickname, but I don't know if he's crossworthy? Granted, he won four rings, but will he make it to the Hall of Fame? Not sure if he's someone all educated solvers ought to know.

BIT SEC … I'm somewhat tech-savvy, but this one's new for me. Not sure it's the type of debut entry one should strive for. Mb/sec is more common, yeah?

And Charles HAID … he had his day, back in the day. But not sure he's earned his crossworthiness.

Beautiful pattern of black squares, some great feature answers, mostly smooth flow to the puzzle. If Alan had been able to avoid the aforementioned clunkers (plus OTT, ALIS, AREOLAR, REARER), it would have been in POW! contention. It's so tough to make a wide-open 64-worder like this work without those types of compromises, though.

During my solve, I was wondering if Alan was in the process of furnishing a home. After seeing a DRYER and then a FRYER, I turned up a CRYER! Wait, that's not a home appliance (it should be). Turns out Alan needed a lot of *RYE* entries to fill out his literal HAM on RYE puzzle. The letter combinations (HR, AY, ME) are very friendly, but it's still impressive that he was able to work in five instances — two right on the HAM ON RYE revealer!

With so many instances, I'd usually expect to see a ton of crossword glue to hold everything together, so Alan does well to limit it to generally minor stuff. The short usual suspects like SSW and EER and OER are so prevalent that I tend to gloss over them. OME … that's harder to ignore (it's sometimes clued as something like [Place where ‘Enry ‘Iggins lives]). FUL is an awkward suffix. And END TO, a partial, is more noticeable to me, since it takes up a longer slot.

I did appreciate how many bonuses Alan gave us — SYNDROME, BAHRAIN, HAYRIDE in particular. It's not easy to do in a puzzle that has so many constraints, and it really enhanced my solve.

Also enhancing my solve was a reference to Festivus! Ah, the FEATS of Strength and the Airing of Grievances.

Typically, I find that these sorts of themes get kind of repetitive, as once you've seen one of the HAM on RYEs, the impact of the next several isn't very strong. But it was fun to wonder what the heck was going on with the FRYER DRYER CRYER stuff. I appreciate the 3x2 blocks not being shaded, which would have made the conceit pretty dull.

Finally, a curious entry, THREE AM. Is that really the predetermined time when we "spring forward"? I was all ready to comment about the arbitrary nature of the entry, but it appears that it's really a significant time after all — that's the time we "spring forward" to. Neat piece of trivia.

One of the aspects I love most about the NYT crossword is the constant desire to stretch the limits of the art form; to create something never seen before. I enjoy xws from many different sources, but what other daily xw pushes the boundaries like this? Neat idea to incorporate the game "Clue" today. It's been made into a movie, why not a crossword as well?

Interesting layout: four "rooms", three of which give clues to the fourth one, which reveals the SUSPECT, the ROOM, and the WEAPON. Each of the three "rooms" give hints in a different way, i.e. the first room contains three words which can be preceded by the word SCARLET. Ah, our old crossword friend the SCARLET TANAGER makes itself useful in a fun way, giving an insider's nod to all the times it's been (over)used in triple-stack creations due to its very friendly crossword nature of common letters and mostly alternating consonants and vowels.

I enjoyed the solve, but I'm not sold on the total segregation of the four rooms. Small diagonal "doors" three blocks long could have been a fun way to keep the sense of a house layout while maintaining the usual crossword rule of "no isolated sections". It could also have made for a natural progression, moving from one room to the next, gathering clues as you went. It also would have been really cool to have multiple possible suspects, rooms, and/or weapons, using a Schrödinger-type puzzle. Not sure how that would have gone over though; perhaps too tricky for many.

I was amazed to see that this was Alan's first construction for the NYT (though third to be published). The quality of fill is not at all what I would expect from a beginner, with such long goodness as PTERODACTYL, DIET SODA, ABANDON SHiP, ALIEN ATTACK, etc. Yes, there are instances of the dreaded (and not really a thing) ENOTES and the old-timey ISTLE in close proximity to ARACE, but I'm willing to wager that Alan will work hard to avoid these types of entries in the future. Themeless grids are hard to fill, and this xw has effectively four themeless-style mini-puzzles. Good job of filling them with some nice entries and a minimum of ugly stuff; looking forward to more from Alan.

What an impressive concept and execution for Alan's debut Sunday NYT. A visually stunning puzzle; seeing that giant dividing line down the center of the puzzle gave me a smile. I knew something had to be going to to connect the two halves, and I couldn't wait to find out what it was.

GREAT DIVIDE makes for a perfect theme entry, and fortuitously it's the same length as BACK IN BLACK. That's pretty cool! I would have fanboy squeed if those two entries were more related, like if AC/DC had a song called the GREAT DIVIDE. I suppose that would have been asking for too much. Plus, no one wants to hear me go "SQUEE!".

When I first uncovered the trick, I thought it was pretty cool. It was hard to keep track of where the four BACK squares were though, which took away a tiny bit of solving pleasure for me. It would have been really nice if there was a way to distinguish the crossing points. Perhaps flattening the diagonal somehow at those points? A way to write in "BACK" somewhere? Not sure.

But then I realized that Alan crossed his theme answers (TURNS BACK THE CLOCK intersects HUMPBACK WHALE, WONT BACK DOWN intersects THERE AND BACK AGAIN) and I marveled at it. It's hard to intersect themers like that, and to do it in four different locations is really cool. Even more impressive that the fill didn't really suffer around those four crossing locations!

DENTAL CARIES ... glad that Alan already addressed that. Ahem. Generally there are limited long fill spaces in a grid, and it pays to take full advantage of them. Yes, there are some great entries in that region, notably MENTAL NOTE and MOTOR POOL, but DENTAL CARIES is a bit of a It Who Shall Not Be Named entry. Ah, Sunday grids are so, so, so hard to put together.

Speaking of difficult, hopefully solvers either got on the TPAIN train or really know their geography in PEEDEE. Yikes!

An ambitious Sunday debut, hope to see more mind-bending puzzles from Alan.

Every time I think I've seen all the twists and variations on rebus puzzles, another one pops ups to delight me. I really enjoy the moment when extreme frustration flips to the (pleasing) smack to the forehead, and this puzzle did that right. I was stuck trying to figure out ???? STOP, thinking I must have entered something wrong, but when I finally understood what was going on, I smiled. Well done.

Rebus puzzles are a unique construction challenge, auto-fill not being as readily available (to see if a particular grid arrangement is possible or not). It's not too tricky if there are single rebus squares dotted about the grid. The NE corner is a good example, where ??ARMED could be such entries as SWARMED, ALARMED, CHARMED, or UNARMED, and it's possible to use the brute force method of trying each option to see if good fill is achievable or not.

Not nearly as easy with stacked rebus squares. Consider the SW corner, where Alan already makes things as easy as possible (nicely done) by creating a 3x3 block to work with. Even then, since the only reasonable WAY?? entries are WAY IN, WAYNE, WAY TO, and WAY UP, there are only a limited number of combinations to try, each one creating some difficulty. As it is, Alan did pretty well, with only NIE sticking out as unappetizing. The double sets of cheater squares makes for a somewhat unappealing visual image, but it's certainly acceptable.

I was curious about his choice to include the word FAIN. At first glance, it would be easy to dismiss it as a sloppy job of construction since there are so many other options available up there, so I e-mailed Alan to ask him about his rationale. He gave me a thoughtful response, saying that 1.) he wanted the puzzle to be more challenging, and 2.) he found the word fascinating, in that it was utterly commonplace in Shakespearean days but is now largely archaic. It's neat how much tastes vary from constructor to constructor, and I was glad Alan had a reason for incorporating it.

Considering the many constraints, Alan did a nice job executing this strong concept. An enjoyable Thursday.