Caleb Madison author page

GEODESIC DOMEs are so elegant. Anyone who says that math isn't cool, I yell, GEODESIC DOME! And then drop the mic.

No wonder people look at me funny.

ICE CREAM CONE is another great feature entry. It's a shame that the clue was so straightforward, though. Might have been fun to use the word "pastry" in there to misdirect, or to toss in a "penny lick" reference. Sometimes an interesting term or bit of trivia can make a good entry great.

Case in point: NOSEBLEED. It's pretty good if clued as NOSEBLEED seats, but using the medical term "epistaxis" entertains, too.

On the flip side, I like LION TAMER as an entry, but its clue dragged it down. I applaud the attempt at wordplay, in "whip-smart," but whipping animals — seriously? Please, no.

There aren't many long slots in this grid design (8+ letters), and some of them left potential on the table. OVERCOME, MICHAELS, WE'RE OPEN, COLD ROOM are fine entries, but not as good in my book as REAL TIME or even ECLECTIC.

And some of the mid-length slots were used well — see ONE LOVE, MWA HA HA, RIMSHOT, HOT RODS — but it was hard to SEE PAST the untapped potential of the spaces that could have held better than AEROSOL, ALTERED, RAN LATE, SCENTED, etc.

I loved one clue: TETRIS as a game in which you don't want to reach the top. Had me confused for a long moment. (You lose when the blocks hit the top of the screen.)

Good construction work, overall — a 68-word puzzle with some AMO CEN IDE SKAT is decent. But not enough juice to make it stand out.

I generally like the younger vibe of Caleb's puzzles. I don't always know what all his entries are or mean or even how to pronounce them, so when I do, I feel like I'm hip!

Saying I'm hip probably means I'm not.

Drat.

If I were Will, I might have given Caleb this reply to his submission:

"So much to love in this grid! TRANSGENDER / PIANO SONATA / YOGA PANTS / GINORMOUS makes for a fantastic central skeleton. Kicking it off with BEATS BY DRE, and ending with GO COMMANDO, along with COKE ZERO and CINNABON in the other corners — this is nearly a slam-dunk yes.

I might let ELOI slide, but the ugly variant EGIS crossing RETIME, along with SSR and SSE? Can you take another crack at least the south region and resubmit?"

What an odd clue in LEI as Romanian currency. It's technically correct, as the LEU is singular and LEI plural. I guess the editorial team got tired of flower necklaces? I'd much rather have a tired clue than a bizarre one like this.

Thankfully, to make up for it, there was an absolutely A+ clue in [Stone that's cast]. That's EMMA Stone cast in a movie, not a stone cast Biblically. I'm hip to that!

Right. Not at all hip. Double drat.

WORD VOMIT! Man, do I know a ton of people with this issue … and COVER BAND, with its fantastically innocent clue: [Act without originality]. That puzzled me for the longest time, but what an a-ha moment when I realized that "act" was a noun, not a verb, in the clue. Two beautiful seed entries.

Themelesses typically feature 12+ longish answers, and constructors try to spread them out as much as possible, for maximum flexibility. Usually, that means putting three in each corner, so that those four stacks don't interact with each other.

Today, Caleb goes big, interlocking six long answers in each of the NW and SE corners. It's so difficult to get six out of six great long answers in a corner like this, without resorting to crossword glue. The NW was pretty darn good — WIKI LEAKS and RARE COINS to go with WORD VOMIT? Yes please! With just ON A DOWNER feeling like a long partial, and some minor IT IS and SRS = very good results.

I wasn't as hot on the SE. POSSESSES feels a bit cheap, what with all those Ss and Es. EVER SINCE takes up room more than shines. ABERRANCE is an interesting word, but it didn't hit me as strongly as COVER BANDS. Still, some nice craftsmanship in that corner to put it together without any crossword glue (EELER generally feels fine to me).

But wait, there's more! Love that Caleb worked in a couple more long entries, MAKESAUTURN looking awesomely French (makes au turn?), and SISTER WIVES jutting into the middle. I wasn't familiar with the latter term, but it makes sense. If a bit icky.

It's too bad that the SW and NE corners felt dull, with so many short words concentrated into those spaces. But a themeless puzzle has to have some shorties, and when you place so many long entries in the other corners, the shorties have to go somewhere.

Overall, a great number of juicy entries. I sometimes feel like a moron doing Caleb's puzzles — I'm not hip enough to fully appreciate them — so I was relieved to only get that feeling from AKON, LORDE, and TALIA al Ghul today. And this Batman fan really ought to have known that last one.

It took me an embarrassingly long to figure out what the bracketed numbers in the clues meant. What could the [4] refer to in HONOLULU? The fourth letter? Maybe it was the fourth themer in some progression? Sheepish moment when I realized it was just the last four letters, LULU (a singer). Appropriate interpretation of BACK ON THE CHARTS, meaning "a singer hidden at the end of phrases."

I would have preferred a more obvious presentation of the theme, maybe circles or shaded squares highlighting the singers. I've gone ahead and done that (below) since I lost track of everything during my solve.

I wonder if others will also feel like the themers didn't stand out sharply enough. When a long across answer like MENU OPTIONS sits in a position that would typically be a themer, everything gets muddy. For instance, I found myself wondering who IONS at the end of MENU OPTIONS or SUITS at the end of PANT SUITS might be. Laying out all the themers in the across direction could have helped that.

More crossword glue than I expect from someone with Caleb's expertise. Everything was going pretty well until I bogged down in the west section. DOA over EUR over OTB is passable. Running through AGOUTI … okay. But toss in IME, OSE, MAPPER, and it felt like a patch of quicksand, tough for me to escape from.

It is incredibly tough to fill that section given the ultra-high theme density — look at the grid below again to see just how constrained it is — but to me, that's a sign that you should figure out how to avoid shoehorning so much in. It would have been one thing if every themer was essential, but I would have been fine with 50% fewer themers.

That PAZ / AZUL / LAHR set of crossings, too — should educated solvers be expected to know Bert LAHR? Probably. But AZUR / RAHR might seem reasonable, and I would be sympathetic. I think a constructor's number one goal should be to design something a lot of solvers will ultimately triumph over, and I don't know if this section qualifies.

Overall, I liked a lot of the finds — MADONNA at the end of PRIMADONNA was especially good — but I have a very high bar for Caleb.

Listing of code names for MAC OPERATING SYSTEMS. Although Caleb only gives us a subset (Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra are the three most recent ones), it's nice that he grabbed the subset that are types of big cat. Not quite the full subset, in that Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard aren't in there, but since there's plain old LION and LEOPARD, we'll call it good.

I liked some of the theme phrases more than others. LEOPARD PRINT is a great one, TIGER LILY disguises TIGER a little, and I enjoyed seeing the full JAGUAR XKE instead of the usual XKE used as crossword glue. That -RXKE ending is so awesomely weird looking.

PUMA SNEAKERS, on the other hand, felt like a phrase made up to fit the theme. And I'm sure there are diehard CHEETAH GIRL fans, but I wonder if they've achieved staying power, or if they've faded into obscurity?

For those not familiar with the GENIUS BAR, it's that place in the back of Apple stores where people under the age of 20 charge you hundreds of dollars to tell you your computer is broken. Zing! No seriously, they do a good job. (If an expensive one.) I didn't like having this as a piece of fill, as it muddied things up. It's not theme … but it sure smelled like it. Also, crossing I BAR felt iffy as a duplication.

Some nice bonuses, TEAM JACOB referring to the "Twilight" series. I kind of want to know if TEAM JACOB or Team Edward won … but not enough to slog through the mire of the books. (Don't kill me, Twihards!)

LARP (live action role-playing game) was fun, too. Jogging through a Seattle park past a guy hiding behind a tree dressed in full medieval armor wielding a wooden sword … I picked up my pace.

Not a fan of the HEMO, SOCIO, ESTE, OLEO, plural AMINOS, etc. kind of glue. Just shows how hard it is to put together a Sunday 140-word puzzle, given Caleb's high level of skill.

Caleb pushed the envelope as the editor of the now defunct Buzzfeed crossword, so I was hoping for something a little more when I saw his byline.

Fun concept, X AND Y phrases given a phonetic twist to form kooky X'IN Y results. Some great themers in this one, WRITIN' WRONG easily my favorite (as it explains all my typoes).

Amazing amount of interlock today. I highlighted the theme answers to demonstrate. Yes, most of them are pretty easy to cross since every theme answer includes "IN," but check out how he's crossed THREE theme entries apiece in the NW and SE. Not only is it hard to figure out how to cross all those answers, but it makes filling much more challenging due to the high number of fixed constraints.

Caleb does well to add a big block of cheater squares in the NW and SE to help compensate for the filling difficulties. The SE comes out amazingly clean for a section that by all rights should require more glue. The NW is pretty good too, although seeing PHILO / WOOER / ROTI all in one region is not optimal. It's beautiful work overall.

Will brings up an interesting point. I had a tough time with this puzzle due to the heavy focus on up-to-date references for which I'm far outside the target audience. I did know MAN PURSE and SNAPCHAT, two great answers. And while I love learning one or two new nuggets (VINES, who knew?) and am good with three or four, more than that feels like drinking from a fire hose. I'd personally prefer these freshies to be spread out over multiple puzzles so that each one has more of a mass audience appeal. I can appreciate Will's general philosophy of wanting the puzzle constructor's personality to come through, though.

My out-of-touch-with-recent-pop-culture tendencies aside, it's a great piece of work. Ultra-high theme density (12!) achieved by high interlock, with both snazzy and clean fill.

P.S. It's not a purse! It's EUROPEAN!