David Rockow author page
2 puzzles by David Rockow
with Jeff Chen comments
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In her retirement, my mom has taken an affinity to Taiwanese black bears. This would be all well and good, but she's what's known as a "roundabout storyteller." There have been many nights filled with tales of how the "moon bear" got its distinctive markings, leading to how her dear friend attempted to trek to Hualien but then got a call from Mr. Tsai at the zoo, and then the foundation insisted on accompanying Ms. Chau, who she went to school with …
And you wonder where I get it from. BEAR WITH ME, as usual.
Great phrase to play on, and a couple of excellent findings. Hard to believe that JAMES BROWN makes his NYT crossword debut today! MEN IN BLACK is one of my favorite sci-fi classics, and my daughter is obsessed with POLAROID CAMERAs.
Although I enjoyed MOMENT IN THE SUN as a colorful phrase, I paused ... is a SUN BEAR a thing? It absolutely is, though. For the love of all that is holy, please don't tell my mom.
Three MEs to the left, one to the right. Three types of BEAR that I immediately recognized, one that I didn't. Three full bears and one hidden in POLAROID. Was there a way to even things out?
Best I could come up with was using an EXPANDABLE MESH stent to open up some balance. Then I got a call from Jim Horne, or was it my dentist who asked if I could come in a hour earlier to talk about my cousin, Mr. Yu …
Ahem. Fresh, interesting theme that wasn't perfectly balanced but used reasonable trade-offs. I also appreciated getting some refreshing LEMON LIME in my SEVEN SEAS to help offset some of the MOUE-inducing SMEE.
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BIRDS of a feather FLOCK onto a single FEATHER. Longtime readers will know that my thoughts went straight to the precious phoenix feather at the core of Harry Potter — and Voldemort's! — wand. That may seem irrelevant to Muggles, but note how FEATHER is at the heart of today's puzzle!
I better dust off my protego spell.
There's some neat gridwork around the center. Seven birds flying through FEATHER is an eye-catching visual. I appreciated that David used a couple of long ones in FALCON / CONDOR — it would have been all too easy to default to ones like HEN, EMU, DOVE.
Beautiful use of black squares to separate FEATHER into halves. Once you place KESTREL, you can work on the left and right sides independently. It's still a challenge, though. You have a huge list of birds to draw from, but filling the center, period, is as challenging as summoning your patronus.
It was a relief to not see the crosswordese ERN, ERNE, or TERN, too. NENE isn't ideal, but among a stately group of KESTREL WREN HAWKs, it's not one of the unforgivable curses.
I wish there had been more theme material, especially since COOL AS A CUCUMBER and HORSE WITH NO NAME aren't related. Nice effort to clue PEACE CORPS and URBAN AREAS related to BIRDS, but those seemed only indirectly related, at best. BIRDS OF A / FEATHER / FLOCK / TOGETHER doesn't achieve crossword symmetry, but I wouldn't mind a stray FLOCK for the price of having the full adage included.
Although the theme was a bit of a beak-scratcher — a single feather shared by seven birds? — I enjoyed the visual of the FLOCK densely packed together.