Amy Johnson author page

Scrabble puzzle! I almost always find it interesting to get an in-depth look into someone else's favorite hobby, hearing about the crazy details that no one but a fanatic would get. For all my word-related ruminations, you'd think I'd be a decent Scrabble player. But I only do well enough to play a horribly annoying defensive game, not caring how much I score as long as I block off the board well enough to keep my margin of losing to a minimum. We engineers are a fun bunch, aren't we?

We've had at least one Scrabble-related crossword before, but this is the first one I can remember to focus on high-scoring starting words, ones you'd need a BLANK TILE to play. Never in a googolplex years would that have occurred to me, and that's what makes this puzzle quirky and interesting in my eyes. Apparently there are only one J, K, X and Z tile apiece. There have to be many more words that would fit into this theme, so I asked Amy why these four? Fun to hear that they're simply ones that she likes. Man, I'll never understand Scrabble types.

Nice construction today, a tough one considering the need to work in two J's, two X's, and two Z's. Along with a layout that feature so many seven-letter across entries, it gets tough. Those constraints force Amy to use longer-than-average fill in general, and she accomplishes this by using a lot of six-letter words. XANADU, ZOOM IN, COHORT, that's the way to use those slots well.

There are some areas with a little more glue than I like to see. In particular, the NW and SE corners are so sectioned off from the rest of the puzzle that having an STD and an AMER in there felt unnecessary. Same goes for the other corners, where it's not necessary to have an SSTS or OTRA. I know that all must sound uber-picky, but I feel like it's important to minimize glue entries wherever possible, even if there aren't that many to begin with. Not everyone agrees with me, but I put a high priority on solving smoothness.

It's always nice to see Scrabbly letters in a puzzle (JQXZ), assuming they don't cause too many compromises, so a puzzle which by nature is Scrabbly is pretty cool. Quite an enjoyable solve for me.

★ A great debut from Amy. I've said before how difficult it is to make a Monday puzzle, and this one fires on all cylinders. I really appreciate Monday puzzles which I could give to non-crossword friends to get them hooked on the NYT xw, and this is one of them. We have some fun puzzles coming up this week, but this one deserves the POW. Here are the reasons why Amy's works so well for me:

Interesting, consistent, specific theme. There is a huge range of solving abilities in the NYT xw universe, everyone from total novices to the speedsters (Dan, Anne, Tyler, Plot, ZigZag, Shazbot, Commander Chewie) who don't even look at the theme, so finding something that works for everyone is near impossible. Amy gives us a theme that beginners can grasp (songs all ending in a word that's a shade of blue, plus another song as a "revealer") and advanced solvers can appreciate, given the catchiness of the three songs. As for specificity, there may be other well-known songs which also fit the theme, but I couldn't think of any right off the bat.

Long fill. Often the best source of added snazz is 8+ letter fill. Amy has some nice stuff here, GETTYSBURG and ARE WE ALONE (although I would have preferred to see a clue like "Secretive whisper" to get more specific about its usage). But she also incorporates some shorter good stuff: ST PETER, WOE IS ME, RUB IT IN, and HAR HAR. Nice.

Surrounding fill. This is the category that makes Mondays so difficult to create. A late week puzzle often must use an esoteric or crosswordese entry to hold the grid together. In my own late-week puzzles I've often had to let the likes of an OEO pass because of tough grid constraints. That's usually fine for a late-week solver, but it can badly trip up the novice solver. Amy has filled her grid professionally, with just a couple of the lesser uglies: ENNE, PHYS, ESE, STDS, GSA. GIDE is an outlier for a Monday, but the crosses are all common words and the Nobelist Andre Gide is gridworthy. I also appreciate Amy's use of a set of black "cheater squares" at the very NW and SE. As Patrick Berry has said, he'll always choose to incorporate cheater squares if that means the surrounding fill is of higher quality.

Cluing. It's tough to come up with fun and tricky cluing on a Monday, because that usually makes it too difficult for the novice solver. There's nothing spectacular here, but nothing too tricky for its own good. A slight ding is the sheer length of the clue for SINGING THE BLUES. It would have been nice to concatenate that somehow, maybe "Soulful activity describing the ends of 16-, 27-, 49-across"?

Looking forward to more work from Amy. P.S. There sadly is no ZigZag, Shazbot, or Commander Chewie in universe of NYT xw solvers. But there should be.

ADDED NOTE: Erik Agard shall hereafter be known as ZigZag. BTW, check out his indy crossword site, Glutton for Pun if you have a chance. Good stuff.