Dan Flanagan author page
1 puzzle by Dan Flanagan
with Jeff Chen comments
| S | P | A | T | S | P | E | N | T | Q | T | I | P | ||
| O | R | C | A | S | A | R | A | H | U | R | S | A | ||
| C | O | M | M | O | N | T | I | M | E | I | O | T | A | |
| K | N | E | E | L | E | N | E | A | C | T | O | R | ||
| S | E | S | S | I | O | N | D | U | N | K | ||||
| V | E | T | E | R | A | N | S | D | A | Y | ||||
| F | O | D | D | E | R | P | O | E | A | E | R | O | ||
| A | M | I | E | S | P | I | P | S | N | E | A | K | ||
| N | A | R | C | O | R | C | T | O | D | D | L | E | ||
| G | R | E | A | T | V | I | S | I | O | N | ||||
| T | R | A | M | C | E | N | T | R | A | L | ||||
| P | U | S | H | Y | E | C | O | E | R | O | D | E | ||
| O | P | E | L | E | V | E | N | S | T | E | V | E | N | |
| O | T | T | O | S | A | D | I | E | M | E | L | T | ||
| L | O | I | N | E | L | E | C | T | E | R | E | S |
4/4, 11/11, 20/20, 50/50 progression today. For the non-musicians out there, 4/4 is the most common time signature in music, meaning there are four beats in a measure, with the quarter note as the base unit. Even after playing in symphonies for 20 years, I didn't realize that COMMON TIME is actually what it's called. It is super common ...
I liked the diverse set of answers, from music to calendar to eyesight to odds. Dan could easily have used two calendar dates — aside from CINCO DE MAYO, there's also NEW YEARS DAY — so bravo for pulling each one from a different walk of life.
I'm not a fan of "definitional" entries (where the themers feel like they're lifted from a dictionary), so GREAT VISION was my least favorite of the four. EVEN STEVEN was so much more fun to uncover in the puzzle, for example, since it's a snappy phrase in common use. I can't think of a better 20/20 themer, though — HINDSIGHT (as in HINDSIGHT is 20/20) is a nice entry, but it doesn't quite fit a simple [20/20] clue.
QUICKSAND is already a great bonus, but its clue makes it even better. Sinking feeling, indeed ... love that wordplay! Also nice to get DECATHLON, NAME DROP, PRIMEVAL, even PATENT and SONNET. That's a lot of good stuff. (My second career was in pharma, so I should have known right off the top that PATENTs last 20 years, but I couldn't remember if they were 17 years (they used to be) or 20.)
Dan did a nice job of spreading out his themers and long bonuses, but he did need some crossword glue to hold everything together. COMMON TIME / NAME DROP / PATENT forced ENE, which is fine by itself. But then we get ESE, oddly plural LENTS, ERES, AERO, OPEL (not common in the US). All in all, it's over my personal threshold to qualify as an elegantly crafted puzzle. I can understand Dan's decisions, though — constructors all have different opinions on how much crossword glue is too much.
The eternal trade-off between bonus fill and crossword glue ...
Overall, I appreciated the novel idea. Great that Dan managed to present the themers in numerical order, too.