Ari Richter author page

Friday themelesses often bring me the rawest pleasure of any puzzle of the week because I love love love clever clues. Early-week puzzles can't run many since the wordplay risks going over newer solvers' heads. Saturdays often eschew clever clues, pooh-poohing them as too easy to figure out, turning instead to obscure dictionary definitions for toughness, or entries that in themselves are so difficult (words few people use, or quasi-famous people) that they need an overt clue to give solvers any chance whatsoever. Friday is a sweet spot.

Give me a single devilishly inventive clue, and I'll forgive a lot of infelicities. Give me a half a dozen, and I'll hardly say ABOO about ATRA DEO ERN ESTE. Seriously, it takes a fantastic set of delightful clues to make me look past a pile-up like that in a 68-word puzzle, but I did today. The award winners from the nine (!) outstanding wordplay clue nominations today:

Best Clue, Children: Will Shortz has a soft spot for butts. Wait, that came out wrong. I mean, he uses a ton of "full moon" and "drop trou" references. [Crack jokes?] = POTTY HUMOR? Think about butt cracks. Such juvenile humor might be taking things too far … who am I kidding? Apparently, I'm still ten years old at heart, because I loved it.

Best Clue, Adults: As an engineer, I love assembling things. Last night, I spent 45 minutes putting together a LEGO car that my 4-year old had happily dismantled to its component atoms, insisting that dad could fix it. Just as fun (yes, I loved those 45 minutes!) was the misdirect that a QUORUM "requires some assembly" — assembly of people, that is.

Best Appropriation of a Regular Phrase, Question Mark: "Twenty-something" literally interpreted, that's a SCORE = 20.

Best Appropriation of a Regular Phrase, No Question Mark: Taking turns is a skill my kids are forever working on. Thankfully, no driving-style taking turns are involved, yet. Get off the roads when the day comes.

I put stars by outstanding clues as I go, and today, my piece of paper looked like a Van Gogh painting. Such artful use of the English language.

Something gorgeous about the flow of this grid. Most themelesses pack their punch in the four corners, so I admire the novelty of this layout, featuring so many long entries from top (BLANKET HOG) to middle (THIS SECOND, STOLEN CARS), to bottom (MASHED PEAS).

Almost looks like a racetrack, starting from BONDS, doing a figure 8 around the two loops in the NE then SW, finishing up at LYONS. Appropriate to include [Hot wheels?], an outstanding clue (repurposing the popular toy brand) that made STOLEN CARS even better.

Those big, flowing corners can make construction tough (see: SIMONES / SOG, yikes!). The extra black squares — three in the NE corner, three in the SW — make a constructor's job easier. (I'd guess about a factor of five times easier.) I don't mind the visual appearance, but some editors have let me know that they feel differently.

I appreciated that Ari still managed to work in some great material around those tough corners. NONE FOR ME is good. SCREENER too, as well as AD COUNCIL. That last one didn't wow me, but it felt fresh; something I hadn't seen in many (any?) crosswords before.

Oh, that NW corner. When people ask me to critique their grids-in-progress, I usually do a quick scan to identify potential trouble spots. Most of the time it's tough letter sequences that raise yellow flags, but big, open spaces can also do it.

I'd have advised breaking up that space, as a 6x5 region constrained by two long answers is generally going to be rough. See: UNARMS, RETOOK, ONELS, NATAL. None of those is a puzzle-killer, but it's an unfortunate way to kick off a themeless solving experience. Perhaps moving the black squares above TAHOE to the left, to create more of a 5x5 space in the NW, would have helped.

I appreciated the unique, fresh feel to the grid layout. Too many compromises required, though.