Daniel Bodily author page

Dan RUNs UP A TAB today, four themers turning up through the letters T A B. Several years ago, Will Shortz announced that he would drastically cut down the number of "turning puzzles" he'd accept, but ones with something a little extra still have a shot.

Elegant touch to choose themers whose post-TAB ends are real words. These are easy to find programmatically with a handful of coding lines and a few seconds of processing time, but it helps the concept shine.

Would it have been more or less impactful if the first part had been a real entry, too (like PAST in PASTA BARS, not like FIEST in FIESTA BOWL)? Coding is once again our friend, turning up themers like BETA BLOCKERS, LAMENTABLY, etc. There are merits to Dan's approach. Having the kooky FIEST alerts solvers to Thursday trickery, whereas experienced solvers might think that PAST looks fine in the grid, and they just don't grok the clue, so they move on. Making them all like that might have been neat, replacing PAST ABARS and WENT ABROAD with things like ATLANT ABRAVES or GOTT ABOUNCE.

Turning themers can be tough to grid around. Doubly-turning themers are more than twice as hard, since those middle regions become incredibly inflexible. Dan is such a pro, flashily working TOY PIANOS through that first region. Totally worth the price of AON, especially since "kinderklaviers" flipped me from an indignant "I have to know German?!" to an elated "of course I can figure this out!"

I'm fairly tired of turning puzzles, but I appreciate that Will has spaced them out so much, and I enjoyed Dan's smooth solve, full of color.

When Dan approached me with his awesome BET / WEE / NTH / ELI / NES finding, I was enthralled … and skeptical. Laying out a grid that clearly shouted THESE SETS OF BLACK SQUARES ARE LINES, while working in so many short themers, felt like a recipe for gridding disaster. Add in the fact that I didn't see as many fantastic themer discoveries as I thought we needed, and we decided to shelve this one.

A few months later, I thought I had a neat idea: we could feature four of these findings in a 15x15, where the lines made out of black squares completely cut off grid sections from each other. Solvers would literally have to read between the lines to create grid connectivity!

That flopped.

We couldn't figure out how to make the black square lines look like lines, not curves. We'd ask friends to identify the lines, and they'd ask if this was supposed to be some sort of optical illusion. Then they'd point to the grid's outer edges. Or to the worry lines in my face.

Several months later, I ran some code, trying to find additional great answers that broke up in surprising ways. Dan ran some. I ran some more. And it seemed like we were sniffing at the edges of a Sunday!

Or our own butts.

Again, figuring out how to make lines of black squares that actually looked like lines — and were possible to grid around — felt like Cruciverba (thanks for the correction, Bobbie!), the goddess of crosswords, was melting our wings for flying too close to the sun.

TL;DR: twelve Herculean labors later, we presented great Cruciverba with a puzzle featuring black-square-lines and cloaked answers. Phew!

Now to put on this comfy-looking cloak she rewarded us with …

We are sure to be flooded with questions from solvers about how to "correctly" input the answers, much like with a recent poker puzzle. Thankfully, there's only one baffling square today, which will be marked correct using either S or SHADE. Not D, though!

Why won't D be marked as a correct answer, even though it is the correct answer to IN A SCRABBLE GAME / WHAT TILE IS WORTH / TWO POINTS?

D-NIED.

That missing D gets a D minus. (So does that joke.)

I haven't played Scrabble since the Great Scrabble Debacle of 2009, in which my aggravatingly defensive play caused Jill to make me eat my words. Scrabble tiles are not at all tasty, if you're curious.

Thankfully, Dan's bonus material kept up my interest, the mirror layout making a ton of fantastic long Downs possible toward the top of the grid. LOST PETS, A CAPPELLA, ZEBRAFISH, MEGATRON (one of the best nicknames in all of sports) = four zingers out of four.

Not to mention, Dan even worked a few goodies into the constrained bottom of the grid. When you have TWO POINTS and A B C (D) E fixed in place, there's not much freedom left. I hardly SAY NO to BREWPUB, and KISMET is such an evocative single-word entry.

I recently read Oliver Roeder's Seven Games, and one chapter focuses on his quest to become one of the top Scrabble players in the country … by memorizing such words as AGLU, CORF, HOWK, and QOPH. Needless to say, this isn't my (Scrabble) bag. I did appreciate the attempt to do something boundary-pushing with a SHADEd square, though.

Dan is a pleasure to work with. Not only can he more than hold his own technically, but he's not afraid to ask the tough questions and pause or restart a build if something feels off. Most importantly, he tries to keep the question "what would make solvers happiest?" above his own needs.

In the spirit of Lincoln's ability to love his enemies and work with opponents, I wanted to highlight something Nate Cardin said a few weeks ago that both impressed and inspired me. So many people today so vehemently berate the other side, convinced that this will force the damn morons to come to their senses. It often does the opposite, causing further and deeper entrenchment.

I'm hopeful that his message might help a few people — myself included — to move toward a more open-minded and generous-of-spirit mentality, where thoughtful discussion and polite debate might produce positive change.

A person who can do everything from theme-storm to code at a high level to put solvers' needs above his own? All the while making the process fun? Dan is a dream to work with.

Plus, he pushes through my obsessiveness with a smile. Let's say tolerates. Call it a non-frown. Okay, he doesn't toss me out on my bum.

I used to be a huge fan of "The Simpsons," so when he proposed this general concept, I enjoyed the throwback to Bette Midler's It's time to TAKE OUT THE TRASH.

Usually, I'm the one doing all the coding in a collaboration, so it was a great change of pace that Dan has programming chops. With two nerds on the case, algorithmically testing out different synonyms for trash didn't at all make me feel down in the dumps.

I know, that was rotten.