David P. Williams author page
3 puzzles by David P. Williams
with Jeff Chen comments
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Debuting with a 66-word themeless containing a gaping-wide middle? HELL YEAH, hardly PROSAIC, no need to MOLLYCODDLE David! GILD THE LILY is such a vivid phrase, and it even ties in to SPRAY TAN. What a brilliantly innocent clue, "bronze finish" misdirecting toward a bronze medal.
MONEY SAVERS, HOBBY HORSES, and CLOSED LOOPS aren't as exciting. In the age-old question of color vs. cleanliness, I tend to lean toward a squeaky-smooth solve, and David's center is immaculate. In this case, though, I would have preferred an upgrade on one or two of these long marquee entries, willing to pay the price of a couple of EXT-like minor flaws.
I talk a lot about the importance of clever clues, and repurposing "labor demand" into PUSH! shouted in the delivery room more than qualifies. There are other ways of making entries more interesting, too, as with SKYNET and MAYER. Fun trivia, that the NSA and "Terminator" share at least one thing in common. And what an entertaining tidbit, that T-Swizzle's "Dear John" Mayer or may not be about John MAYER.
"Pyramid blocks" are so helpful in making a low-word count grid more tractable to construct, and they often don't affect the amount of color you can inject into a solve. Today, though, there aren't many long slots (of 8+ letters), and cutting down the chunky pyramids would have helped that. Take away the black square above CABARET CARD and HOBBY HORSES, and you've now created more long slots to bend to your will. That also would open up the bottlenecks from the center region into those corners. It would make it much harder to arrive at a great middle, but it's still doable.
Such a challenge to debut with a 66-worder. Solid effort.