Alex Eylar author page
3 puzzles by Alex Eylar
with Jeff Chen comments
See the 7 answer words debuted by Alex Eylar.
Alex Eylar is a writer from California, born of musicians, raised with a love of Lego, failed backwards into the movie business after college, and now assembles black-and-white grids for money while chasing the Hollywood dream.
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| S | L | A | T | E | L | I | E | A | L | O | H | A | ||
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| P | U | T | O | U | T | A | T | M | F | E | E | |||
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| E | L | O | P | E | S | I | C | Y | ||||||
| A | P | L | U | S | M | A | G | I | S | W | A | T | ||
| T | H | E | P | L | O | T | T | H | I | C | K | E | N | S |
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| O | N | T | O | U | R | L | A | R | E | D | O | |||
| O | D | I | U | M | J | U | N | G | L | E | G | Y | M | |
| S | E | N | S | E | I | E | D | K | A | U | A | I | ||
| T | R | E | E | S | F | Y | I | S | L | E | P | T |
I love the creativity in this theme. As a writer, I hear THE PLOT THICKENS all the time, yet I've never thought about it as a plot of land literally thickening — from bare DIRT to some GRASS to a BUSH to a full JUNGLE. I wasn't able to figure out what was going on until I hit the revealer, and even then, I had to think about it. I enjoy when a Monday puzzle makes me work a little.
I did wonder if it was a "proper" order of growth. I'm not enough of a botanist to know if all the themers coexist in one region? BUSH made me think of African or Australia climates, whereas JUNGLE felt different.
Some research shows that there are indeed areas where all four are found. So my initial reaction was likely due to my cultural bias (read: being a dumb American).
I would have loved some smoothing in the gridwork. Monday ought to be super-newb-friendly, and I have doubts about RIATA, MTIDA, UANDI. I'd expect an educated solver to know what a lasso or a lariat is, Mount Olympus, and perhaps I LUV U too. But any of these toughies in the grid might trigger that "I have to know trivia to do crosswords?!" reaction we want to avoid.
Moving the black square above UANDI could have helped — the U?N?? pattern doesn't have nearly as much flexibility as ?U?N?? (TURNER, PUNNED, LUGNUT, GUNNER, etc.)
Overall though, I appreciated the originality of the theme, as well as the great bonuses in CARPOOLER and WENT ROGUE.
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| V | E | R | O | N | A | H | O | E | D | O | W | N | ||
| A | R | O | U | N | D | L | O | W | L | I | F | E | S | |
| L | O | N | G | S | F | O | R | M | O | T | E | L | ||
| O | U | C | H | F | R | O | S | T | S | I | Z | E | ||
| N | A | H | B | E | A | K | E | R | S | E | E | R | ||
| C | E | M | E | N | T | S | H | O | E | S | ||||
| F | A | L | S | E | B | O | T | T | O | M | ||||
| R | E | T | R | A | C | T | I | O | N | S | ||||
| G | O | T | M | E | N | C | K | E | N | E | A | U | ||
| A | C | E | S | R | A | K | E | D | A | M | I | N | ||
| S | E | A | L | E | L | O | Y | C | L | O | D | S | ||
| C | A | P | I | T | A | L | N | M | O | O | N | I | E | |
| A | N | O | M | A | L | Y | O | R | O | I | D | E | ||
| N | O | T | E | L | L | D | E | F | C | O | N |
Few constructors would have the guts to tackle something like the middle of this grid. (I've tried and gone down in flames.) Jaw-droppingly huge! My mouth hung open even further when I uncovered the super-snazzy CEMENT SHOES and FALSE BOTTOM. Whoa! Huge swaths never contain stuff this good.
HORSE HOCKEY wasn't immediately familiar to me, but I vaguely remember Col. Sherman Potter saying it? Maybe I'll try it out in real life and see what people say.
I don't mind a little SOO glue to hold a giant section together. But FENSTER and BELEM are bizarre entries I'm more used to seeing in a region like this (and used to being annoyed by). Overall though, I thought they were worth the price of working in such great CEMENT SHOES / FALSE BOTTOM answers.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …
Note how smartly Alex segmented his four corners so that they didn't have much interaction with the middle. It's clever — there's enough interconnect that it didn't completely mess with my solving flow, but it still gave Alex enough flexibility to fill each corner with further goodness. I think just as long as there are at least two entries connecting one subsection to the rest of the puzzle, the solving flow is passable. Important to not strand the solver.
The corners aren't nearly as big as the middle, but they're not cakewalks to construct, either. I thought Alex did best in the NE, with LOWLIFES, HOEDOWN, SOFTIE, TWEEZE, and a very minor EER to pay.
Pretty decent results everywhere else, too. OCEANO and OROIDE are heavy costs for ANOMALY and MNEMONIC, but overall, a good set of trade-offs.
I'm not a fan of choking down gloopy entries like BELEM, but I realize that they're usually necessary for puzzles like this. I like seeing this type once in a while, so I'm okay with it.
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| I | C | O | N | A | B | U | T | A | R | L | E | S | ||
| T | A | U | T | O | L | O | G | Y | F | O | I | L | S | |
| S | I | N | P | E | A | L | B | A | B | B | L | E | ||
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| P | O | N | I | E | D | Z | O | D | C | I | S | |||
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| N | E | O | N | S | L | I | M | I | E | R | ||||
| A | M | B | I | G | U | I | T | Y | S | S | N | |||
| B | A | R | B | E | T | E | R | I | C | B | A | M | ||
| O | R | A | L | S | T | A | U | T | O | L | O | G | Y | |
| R | I | V | E | T | A | M | P | S | A | Y | E | S | ||
| T | O | O | T | S | N | O | S | Y | P | S | S | T |
Fun stuff! I love the concept of self-referential clues. I seem to remember a crossword years back that featured SELF REFERENTIAL, with a clue to the effect of [Like this entry]. Still makes my head spin!
For those of you non-programmers (read: infidels), RECURSION is a common principle in coding. Man oh man, the first time I learned about a function that calls ITSELF = *mind blown*. Seemed like that should break a law of physics. But no, just as long as you write in a condition so that the function stops itself at some point, it can be so elegant. (Jim tells me that it's rarely used in real code though, as it's not as effcient as iterative solutions.)
At first, I wondered why TAUTOLOGY was listed twice. Couldn't you just have one instance of it, and have it clued to itself (in the same vein of SELF REFERENTIAL)? But one definition of TAUTOLOGY is "needless repetition," so this is a perfect reason to add this puzzle to our list of puzzles with duplicated answers.
I was thrown off by A WILD GOOSE CHASE since I was stuck on the SELF REFERENTIAL concept. (Also, because the "A" felt weird. Okay, it did make it a crossword-friendly 15 letters, but still…) I did like how it referred to 66-Across, though — that's the non-existent 66-Across!
And AMBIGUITY rounded out the theme, referring to ??-Across. Ambiguous, indeed!
Nice gridwork, especially for a debut. It's rare for me to fly through a novice grid so smoothly. Even upon second glance, I couldn't find much to point out besides the odd EGESTS. (Maybe ZOD? Big Superman fan, but General ZOD seems esoteric.) Along with some nice bonuses in COUNT ON IT, CABIN BOYS, BUM DEAL, SAFARI with a great clue about seeing "the big game," I thought Alex walked the delicate line between colorfulness and smoothness extremely well.
Overall, I liked the mix of ideas in the theme, although I would have loved it if all the themers had been purely self-referential. Fun stuff! [See 1-Across]