Brian J. MacDonald author page
1 puzzle by Brian J. MacDonald
with Jeff Chen comments
| B | O | A | R | S | G | R | O | O | M | A | C | T | ||
| A | T | P | A | R | L | U | M | P | Y | L | E | A | ||
| M | O | N | T | A | N | A | N | E | S | T | L | O | X | |
| B | E | E | F | T | M | E | N | R | O | S | S | I | ||
| I | S | A | I | D | S | O | S | E | A | M | ||||
| N | E | B | R | A | S | K | A | T | I | M | E | |||
| C | A | S | K | S | M | E | E | T | L | A | W | |||
| I | B | M | S | S | T | A | T | E | G | E | N | E | ||
| T | E | E | O | H | M | S | H | O | S | E | R | |||
| I | L | L | I | N | O | I | S | S | E | A | T | |||
| L | O | P | E | T | V | H | O | S | T | S | ||||
| L | O | T | S | A | S | A | R | I | T | A | R | A | ||
| E | R | E | P | O | S | T | A | L | C | O | D | E | S | |
| O | Z | S | E | L | R | O | Y | S | W | A | Y | S | ||
| N | O | T | R | A | S | P | S | A | N | T | S | Y |
Debut! Play on the STATE POSTAL CODES and phonetics, i.e. empty nest = MT nest = MONTANA NEST. I particularly liked aisle seat = IL seat = ILLINOIS seat, as this one was new to me (I've heard the other two before in similar wordplay contexts).
I was impressed with the amount of bonus fill Brian worked in — SMELL TEST touching RAT FINKS, and I would happily GO TO TOWN on ALL SMILES. Excellent use of those four long slots. Even ON PAPER and MY TREAT = good uses of the mid-length slots. Pretty unusual to see such goodness in a debut puzzle.
I wasn't as enamored with the crossword glue prices to pay, though. Starting right off the bat with SRA / AT PAR (even as an investor and MBA I barely know this term) wasn't perfect, and then there were dribs and drabs of TMEN, SKEE (partial), OLA (weird suffix), SSRS, CSA (esoteric initialisms), strewn about. And I don't mind the trade-off of getting a Z for the price of OZS / ERE, but with the other crossword glue already in place, perhaps it would have been better to do without that rare letter.
I wonder if a few cheater squares would have helped. Putting a black square at the S or SARI would have eliminated SSRS (SRS seems better to me), for example.
I would have also liked a fourth kooky themer — perhaps something like PRIMETIME MAINE or GREEN WITH NEVADA? — even if it came at the cost of not having the STATE / POSTAL CODES revealer. It was pretty easy to figure out the trick, so the revealer felt a bit like it wasn't giving me enough credit as a solver. And especially considering that Thursday puzzles are supposed to be hard, swapping out the revealer for a fourth example would have been nice.
But overall, fun debut with some nice bonus fill.