Daniel C. Bryant author page

Ah, THERE'S the Fourth of July puzzle I was expecting! An homage to THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER today. One aspect that I really enjoyed about this puzzle was a post-solve analysis of the notes. Check out how much care Dan put into his layout of the musical STAFF. Not only does he place the notes in the correct musical intervals (SOL to MI is a third, SOL to DO is a fourth, etc.) but he gives us good approximations of the note durations (half notes, quarter notes, etc.). I like those careful touches.

Tribute puzzles can be hard to construct, because you run the risk of people thinking it's a straight forward tribute puzzle. Sometimes they tend to get boring if they're straightforward, more akin to reading a Wikipedia article instead of doing something fun. I like that Dan gives us interesting bits of trivia in addition to the obvious FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. Learning about the PRISONER EXCHANGE and the BRITISH PUB SONG was pretty fun. Who knew? Might explain some things about America today. Huh.

A few things did give me pause though, like what makes WHITNEY HOUSTON's performance better than ROSEANNE BARR's (don't answer that). Seriously though, WHITNEY HOUSTON but no JIMI HENDRIX? Sigh. I suppose there's no accounting for taste.

A lot of tough crossings today. Maybe not for experienced crossword solvers, but things like TITI/ISERE and ERST/AIT are going to be rough on some poor folks. When a puzzle has this many constraints, those types of things are going to happen. Going up to 140 words (this grid is 138) by breaking up FACTOTUM could have helped the former, but the latter is right in the midst of the second MI. Very tough. ASTI / STOA is right in that region too. I might have liked it better if two themers were eliminated (EIGHTEEN FOURTEEN doesn't do much for me, personally), and the scale notes spread out from the themers more. Just one man's opinion of course.

About Sunday puzzle word counts. Will's maximum is 140, and it's hard to adhere to. (Rich Norris at the LAT and Patti Varol at the Crosswords Club go up to 144.) So many times I wonder if ugly crossings and glue-y entries could be avoided by going above 140. But I do like how it forces constructors to work in longer fill, which usually enhances the solving experience. In today's case, as much as I like the word FACTOTUM, I'd much rather see it broken up, as the price of CRO, TITI, OTTS, ISERE in concentration was too high for me. It might have been just fine if there weren't already other compromises in the grid due to high themage — tough to say. Always difficult trade-offs in construction, especially since that opposite corner (the SW) turned out quite nice. You hate to break up a strong region like that.

Finally, a couple of beautiful clues. [Penn station?] repurposes a famous train station to clue IVY LEAGUE (it stretches the definition of "station" a bit, but in a fun way). And [Long arm] seemed so innocuous. I figured it had to be some term relating to NBA players or policemen (the long arm of the law). But it's simply a long "arm," in the sense of a firearm. Beautiful stuff.