David Poole author page

Word ladder going from BLACK to WHITE, illustrating an incredibly slow game of OTHELLO / REVERSI. (I can just feel the irritation of the other player as I turn a piece over at a rate of one degree per second!) Neat that OTHELLO and REVERSI have matching word lengths — I had completely forgotten that latter name for the game.

I've highlighted the themers below to show how incredibly constrained the grid is. Eleven (!) entries to work around is no joke. They are all short, but this fact doesn't make the gridwork any easier.

Almost every 78-word crossword has some longer answers (otherwise, you'd go above that max of 78), and usually those longer answers are the themers. So when your theme relies on a bunch of shorties, your fill has to be long. David does well to work in some goodies like CAL STATE and BANK NOTE. EMBASSIES and GENTLEMEN are fine, although they're more filler than assets to me.

But given all these constraints and challenges, it's not surprising to see globs of crossword glue holding the puzzle together. There are just so many places where so many words --either themers or long fill — are fixed into place.

I don't personally mind a LEK (I like my foreign currencies!) or a REBAG (although Trader Joe's checkers do an incredibly good job bagging the first time) or an ENT (huge Lord of the Rings fan here). Throw in a KGS though (kg, not kgs), some EPH(esians), an ERN, a SEV (what? "several" has an abbreviation?), and an AMERCES, and it makes for a less-than-elegant solve.

I don't mind MII at all, even given my shivers at RRNs (random Roman numerals). The fact that personal WII characters are called MIIs … this amuses me probably more than it should. Neat to be on David's wavelength there.

Since word ladders have been done a lot over the years, it's important for me to get a little something extra, and the OTHELLO reminder was nice. It would have been even nicer if there was some game or process involving a much slower BLACK to WHITE morph, as OTHELLO's quick flips felt out of sync with this word ladder.

ACEs hidden IN THE HOLEs (see below for a visual representation). I like that David separated the four "holes" from any other black squares — if they had been connected to others, that would have made them look less hole-like. That was important to Ellen and me when we did our FIRE IN THE HOLE a while back.

Fun to find those ACES, AMAZING GRACE the best of the bunch for me. I almost always enjoy uncovering rebus-like strings when they're part of a colorful phrase. (ACE)TATE, VERS(ACE), LIBER(ACE), ADJ(ACE)NT TO are all fine entries, though I don't get nearly the same rush as I did upon figuring out that the odd AMAZINGGR string should actually be parsed into AMAZING GRACE.

Tough to fill a puzzle with both snazziness and cleanliness once so many crossing theme entries get fixed into place. Notice how each theme pair seriously constrains a corner. Those big SW and NE areas are especially tough to work with once you fix ADJACENT TO/ACE IN THE HOLE and AMAZING GRACE/CRETACEOUS in place. I like bonus material such as IRONWARE and DEMORNAY. DERR and ANO/BLAU … not so much.

The other corners are tough, too, since fixing those intersecting perimeter answers into place puts heavy constraints on the adjacent fill. I love BLACK SHEEP and JULES VERNE as long fill. I don't love IIN, EEKs, STA, or IS OUR crossing ESE. They're all reasonable trade-offs, but they keep the puzzle from being outstandingly-filled in my eyes.

I'm curious to see how the NYT digital team is going to represent this one. I was a little disappointed that the print version didn't change those four special black squares into black circles, or at least round off the corners. Would have been fun and different.

The guitarist LEAD BELLY riffed on today, entries containing PB in their middle. (Pb is the symbol for lead, from the Latin "plumbum.") Some strong theme entries, DEE(P B)LUE tricky to see, and PO(P B)OTTLES / TO(P B)ID also clever.

Check out those huge open spaces in the upper right and lower left. I personally wouldn't have even tried to fill those, as they're unlikely to be fillable without a good amount of glue. And spaces that big are hard enough when you don't have any constraints, but when you stick two crossing themers in, they become extremely challenging.

So I was pretty impressed by David's work in the bottom left. BRASSERIE is a fun word, and with only RRS and A GIRL as slight blights, it turned out DECENTLY. No eye-popping answers down there, but nothing egregious.

In the upper right, I love BRUCE LEE. Always gives me a rush to see one of my idols in a grid. There's a price to pay though, with the esoteric ECARTE and not just a suffix, but a plural suffix in ETTES. And to have one of your precious long slots taken up by OVEREATER feels to me like quite a missed opportunity.

These two corners perfectly illustrate the constructor's dilemma — do you go clean, with mostly neutral answers, or do you go big, with some bits you wouldn't want to write home about?

A ton of great clues; much appreciated on a Thursday:

• Many people have a pet cause. The ASCPA is an apt one!
• [Cause of inflation?] got me because I'm always thinking about (money) inflation as I help people with retirement planning. Great way to spice up an entry we see all the time.
• [Like M, L, XL, but not S] confused me, until I realized M, L, XL are all ROMAN numerals.

Nice rebus idea, with a couple hiccups in the execution. It'd be interesting to see what this would have looked like with a 78-word grid instead of 76. I wouldn't mind breaking up two neutral entries in the hopes of creating opportunities for one or two more sizzling ones.

CHUCK BERRY stars in today's grid, both as an entry and an instruction, to chuck BERRY out of four theme answers. These types of puzzles can be a little hit or miss since the results neither makes sense nor get kooky interpretations. It's a nice change of pace though, especially when something like HUCKLEFINN can't get much of a wacky clue.

A 72-word themed puzzle is tricky to pull off. Doing that with a central 11-letter entry is even more audacious. Giant white spaces loom in each of the four corners, each one a difficult task to fill colorfully and smoothly. I really like what David's accomplished with the left side of the grid. Neither the NW nor the SW corners have ultra-snazzy entries, but they also don't have much glue required. And entries like TOUCH UP, BIKINI, TYPESETS are pretty darn good. Not themeless-quality material in my book, but sometimes smoothness beats snazziness.

And the right side of the grid turned out pretty well, too. The old ELOI are lurking up in the NE, and after I looked a few things up, I thought the SE turned out well too. I didn't realize that ANODYNE was now a general term for pain-reliever, and my total lack of fashion sense made BOLEROS a head-scratcher, but they were both interesting to learn.

Where I might have made different decisions: in the north and south. I never heard SONE at all in my time as a mechanical engineer (although I didn't get too deep into acoustics), and this region has many different options. The south is harder since the beautiful RED HOT make the area less flexible, so that's a more subjective area in my book. Does HONEY / OTOES produce a better result, for example? That does include OTOES and CEE — is that pair better or worse than OTROS and UKR? I think so, but my Ukranian friends would likely disagree. Subjective decision there.

Wide-open puzzle with a themeless count, making for a tough but interesting solve. I was so happy to realize I actually knew a theme answer, Prince's "Raspberry Parade." D'oh!

Letter substitution theme today, words ending in A changed to ER with wacky results. Some of them really amused me, TUBER PLAYER eliciting a laugh and FRANK ZAPPER being gold (if the FRANK ZAPPER were sold on infomercials, my grandma would buy at least one). CONGER LINES could have fallen flat, but a fun clue rescues it. "Eel Trovatore," a pun on "Il Trovatore," still makes me giggle.

Five themers are no joke, especially when they're all long. At 11/11/15/11/11, this puzzle is packed to the gills. Gareth and David do a nice job with the fill, even incorporating two long pieces of fill. FOAM PEANUT is nice, and WHAT A LAUGH is snappy. My personal preference is to fill puzzles with uplifting entries, hopefully sending the solver off on a high, so it would have been perfect if WHAT A LAUGH had somehow been clued as a reaction to something actually funny. I suppose the sarcastic approach is more accurate though.

For such high theme density, it's amazing that really only one spot stuck out to me, the OESTE and ITA area in the middle. Unfortunately, they're sort of linked by ICK — not the greatest subconscious influence on solvers. I might not have even noticed those two entries if they had been spread out. For example, I glossed over ERST and MOR because they were all by themselves, almost unnoticeable pieces of glue.

Sometimes I wonder if the trend toward more and more theme density is a good thing. CHARLIE THE TUNA didn't do much for me, and without it, there could have been a lot more long fill in the puzzle without the need for any glue. As always, trade-offs.