Herre Schouwerwou author page

★ This thing is utterly crazy. I think some people are going to hate it, but I loved it. I enjoy when constructors do something bizarre to break the rules. We've had a lot of turning puzzles — a couple of years ago Will said he was seeing too many of them — but I can't remember one quite like this.

We often have to fix up the puzzles that the NYT sends us so that they present properly on the site. Darned constructors and their rule-breaking! But for this one, we ended up starting from scratch, recreating the entire thing based off the PDF. A lot of work, but it was worth it.

(Easy for me to say — Jim did all the work!)

Oh right, I should explain what's going on. IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY hints that there's an actual roundabout in the center of the puzzle. The .pdf (subscription required) is neat, a big white dot representing said roundabout. There are also arrows pointing in the directions that the answers follow, to help solvers out.

Not that all that helped me! I usually solve Thursday puzzles in under ten minutes, but not today. Struggled mightily to figure out what was going on, even given all the visual hints within the grid.

But this is the kind of struggle that's worth it to me. Such great phrases in RALLYING CRY, POWER OUTAGE, I NEED A BREAK, SPROUT WINGS — all intersecting that central IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY. Very cool.

Normally I'd grumble about gluey fill like TOLE. That sure ain't great, but I can ignore it in service of a memorably kooky theme.

I'd love for the NYT team to survey their solvers to figure out what the ratio of lovers to haters was. Count me as a lover.

★ ANIMAL CRACKERS all broken up at the bottom of the box … "cracked," you might even say! Clever interpretation of CRACKERS, meaning that some black squares crack, or divide, an ANIMAL in two (see below, highlighted).

Even better was that Herre stuck to long-ish animals typically seen in boxes of ANIMAL CRACKERS! Would have been easy to pick short animals like HEN or FROG or ELK, but that would have felt odd. Speaking of odd, not sure why it's unappetizing to eat a hen-shaped cracker vs. a ZEBRA or an ELEPHANT. I call fowl! Er, foul.

Well, it's not that difficult to split up semi-long words so that half ends an entry, and the other half starts another. Even a long guy like GORILLA gives multiple possibilities for *GOR and ILLA*. The latter not so much, but still, with I'll ask, ill-advised, ill at ease, etc., that's a good amount of flexibility.

BUT! Even with that flexibility, it's no joke to work around five pairs of themers. PHANT* doesn't give many possibilities, and when you must obey crossword symmetry, things can get hairy. I thought Herre did extremely well in the top half of the grid, working in some beautiful OH COME ON, NO GO AREA, I HOPE NOT bonus fill — all without crossword glue! Some might complain about LON Chaney, but he was a famous actor. Fine by me.

The bottom half didn't come out as nice, what with AMO, RCMP, AJOKE, LSTS, SYS — that's almost too much for one puzzle, and certainly too much for half of a puzzle. It's a much more difficult section to fill since CRACKERS is fixed into place, whereas the top had much more flexibility (MCGREGOR could have been dozens of other things). Along with the fact that Herre had to spend many of his black squares in the middle of the puzzle, sometimes you just have to accept that there will be compromises like this.

Herre could have gone down to just four pairs of themers, but only three animals would have felt light. Although the SE wasn't very elegant, I think it was a reasonable trade-off to get the higher theme density.

Given how well the theme was obscured, my solving experience played out like a pretty smooth themeless, and then the a-ha at the end was delightful — so much so, that I was able to overlook the gluey SE. Such a fun experience overall!

"Both words can follow X" type theme, Herre using DOUBLE TAKE to indicate that X = TAKE. HEART SHAPE = TAKE HEART and TAKE SHAPE, COVER CHARGE = TAKE COVER and TAKE CHARGE, etc.

I think Will has been spacing out his remaining examples of this theme type, which is a good thing because we've seen a lot of them over the years. Considering that this one has been sitting in the queue about two years now, it stands up decently. It's tough to incorporate six themers in any 15x puzzle, so to end with just a few gluey entries ain't half bad. Nothing egregious, just some minor ERE, AMARE (if only AMAR'E Stoudemire had become a Hall-of-Famer — his alternating consonant-vowel pattern is so useful!), IS NOT, DST.

And some nice bonuses! Many constructors working with six themers would simply settle for a reasonably smooth product, no bonuses. So SUPERMOM (shout out to my wife!), LOLITA (my wife's favorite book!), SMART ALEC (my wife's husband!) and OGDEN NASH were awfully nice.

One common knock on these theme types is that the themers can often be dull. Not the case for COVER CHARGE, which works so beautifully to create TAKE COVER and TAKE CHARGE. Herre does have the advantage that there are a ton of "TAKE ___" phrases out there to sift through, but COVER CHARGE is a great example of a themer that stands out within this theme trope.

HEART SHAPE … hmm. It is a thing, but HEART SHAPED sounds so much better to my ear. Too bad TAKE SHAPED isn't a thing! And BACK AWAY, DOWN HOME, AFTER EFFECT are decent, but I wouldn't go out of my way to work them into a puzzle, at least not nearly to the extent as COVER CHARGE.

Apparently, AGING is the preferred spelling in the US, and AGEING is used outside. Learn something new every day.

I'm a bit oversaturated with this theme type, so it was a disappointment to get to the revealer. But overall, a nice job of execution.

GIN + VERMOUTH + ICE = DRY MARTINI It's pretty unusual to have a themer past the revealer, so I was initially confused by uncovering OLIVER TWIST after I thought the puzzle was already over. But I like getting surprised — how many times does a puzzle give you a second a-ha moment?

I think what the clue for OLIVER TWIST is getting at is that a DRY MARTINI can be garnished by an OLIVE (‘r = or) TWIST. It took some self-convincing to believe a bartender would pronounce it as "(do you want an) olive ‘r twist?". It's such a nice feeling to get an unexpected a-ha moment though, that I gave it the thumbs-up.

With hidden words puzzles, I like consistency — it would have been great if each of GIN, VERMOUTH, and ICE had been hidden the same way. But finding VER MOUTH inside RIVER MOUTH is a nice discovery, and it's hard (impossible?) to break I CE or IC E at the end of a phrase. So I give that a pass too.

That READE/IDRIS crossing is going to be tough for some, and I sympathize. I'm a huge fan of IDRIS Elba, as he starred in "The Wire" and one of my favorite movies in recent history, "Pacific Rim." But has he made it big, to the point where he's "important enough" to expect NYT solvers to know him, even if the crossings are nebulous? I don't know about that.

I EVER sticks out as the most inelegant entry, more so because it's around that READE/IDRIS crossing. Difficulties are bound to arise when you have so much overlap between themers — the TINI of DRY MARTINI over IVERT of OLIVER TWIST in this case.

I was confused by the AMA clue, and the AJA crossing also felt a touch unfair. I like that AMA (ask me anything) was clued with a fresh feel (it's usually clued to the American Medical Association), but I don't think solvers should be expected to know the 40-year old Steely Dan album without fair crossings.

But a strong construction everywhere else, and a surprising second revealer that was almost genius.

Six P- F- phrases today. Nice choice of themers, POPPIN' FRESH my favorite, PILLOW FIGHTS and PARTY FAVORS also colorful. I almost didn't notice PINK FLOYD and PETIT FOUR hiding in the corners, but they're zingy too.

POUND FOOLISH does sound a bit like a partial to me, but I can see the argument that it's fine. I can much more buy PENNY WISE, as I can imagine someone tilting their head, saying "Penny wise ...", and walking away, clucking their tongue as they imply the remainder. (I swear, I don't do this. Much.) I like it when a crossword entry has hidden punctuation.

Interesting short fill today; some entries we don't often see in early-week puzzles:

• FARON. Anyone with a #1 country hit seems legit to me, as long as the crossings are easy and fair. Thumbs-up from me.
• EPOS. Pretty tough piece of vocab. I might have balked at that EPOS/SETH crossing, but the clue for EPOS indicates pluralization. Thumbs-up.
• SADA. Would she be "important" enough to be in a crossword, if her name wasn't so crossword-friendly with its common letters and alternating vowel consonant pattern? Tough to say.
• NEGS. Not being a photographer, it's tough to figure out if this is a common abbreviation for "negatives." In any case, it's not a pervasive abbreviation. I vote Gluey.
• IDEO. Prefixes are called out as undesirable by most editors. Gluey.
• REARMS. Tough call. Is this a MYOW (make-up-your-own-word)? The RE- addition seems iffy.

So on a case by case basis, I think Herre's fill is pretty good. As a whole, it left me with a bit of an esoteric feel.

I like high theme density — six themers is no joke — but I'm not as taken by it as Will and Joel. The feat is also muted for me since it's easy to come up with all sorts of P- F- phrases.

It would have been nice to get a little something extra, perhaps a revealer. Hmm, PERSONAL FOUL, PHOTO FINISH, PICKET FENCE, POLICE FORCE? Dang it, nothing nicely describes the concept. Ah well.

Pretty fun start to the week.

Five "pick-up lines" with five different interpretations. I like the variety of applying this phrase to a hitcher, cleaning one's room, a pick-up truck (the Ford F SERIES — I had to look it up too), resuming a conversation, and picking up a phone. Neat to see such diversity.

This type of puzzle can be difficult or frustrating since the themers are opaque for such a long time (quote puzzles work like this too), so I'm glad Herre worked in a lot of colorful material to make the solve easier and more fun. I watched a ton of LAVERNE and Shirley when I was a kid, and it amused me to no end thinking about how ga-ga they went over BEEFCAKES. You heard it here first: the "sticking your knuckles in your mouth when you see a beautiful person" gesture is going to make a comeback.

Some fun vocab in the clues, too. ORATE is a neutral entry, but when you use "stemwinder" in the clue, that spices things up. "Matryoshka dolls" does the same for NESTS.

Small nit, I might have chosen ATE instead of AVE, since there was already some PEI STE EYER kind of glue already, but with a small number of gluey bits, I'm fine with the decision to add one more. It's nice to get a V to add a splash of color to the puzzle, too.

Finally, a great clue for COMA. Because I had the ending A fixed into place, I thought the state had to be IOWA. What other four-letter states end with A? WA is a state of course, and IO … Illinois? India? Geography is one of the many weak spots in my knowledge banks, so I choose to continue believing that IO is the postal code for Idaho.

Well, it should be.

Neat idea, double homonyms where one word is the name of a famous person. I was confused when I came up on CHER WEAR — I'm so oblivious to fashion that I tried to research what kind of clothing was in the CHERWEAR line — but eventually got a laugh out of the kooky themer. And my wife and I just finished most of "Parks and Recreation," so seeing POEHLER BARE was a hoot.

Interesting layout. Although it's only a 74-word puzzle, it has a themeless feel to it because of those huge NW and SE corners. So many colorful entries, i.e. CODE RED, ORIGAMI, PIGGIES all atop each other! Great bonus for a themed puzzle. I did hitch on RETAR and EMEER — I personally steer well clear of variants — but overall the NW corner was so fun that I found these gluey bits to be acceptable trade-offs.

Because CHER WEAR, POEHLER BARE, and BELLE HEIR are all near-perfect homonyms, it was jarring to uncover THOREAU FAIR. That phrase does bring up a funny image, so it succeeded for me in that way, but THOREAU and THOROUGH are pronounced so differently that it felt inelegant compared to the other themers. (Note: reports differ on how Thoreau actually pronounced his name, some saying it was actually quite close to "thorough.")

And then when I hit HERR KERR … not knowing the Galloping Gourmet, I had to work all the crossings, and expecting that the proper name would be at the start threw me off. Since all four others are two-word phrases with the name kicking them off, it would have felt so much more elegant if the fifth followed suit. Consistency is a thing of beauty.

Two beautiful clues, both nicely headlined at the top of the puzzle:

• [Conductor of note] plays upon famous music conductors often being seen in crosswords. What a twist, to refer to a notable electrical conductor, COPPER.
• [Case for a lawyer, maybe] has nothing to do with criminal law. Just an ATTACHE case he/she might being into a courtroom. Genius.

What a nice debut. I'm normally not a fan of quote puzzles, as they became overdone a while back, but this one amused me. I like a laugh or a bon mot in my crossword, so who better to quote from than the witty Ogden Nash? I was plus-minus on it all until I got to the last line and its clever use of the hyphen in BALTI-MORE. Very amusing.

In many ways, I found it hard to believe that it was a debut. It's well laid-out, does a nice job of adding in long fill, and keeps things relatively clean. Sure, there's an EER and an ESTOP, an AERO and an AGHA, but those are all pretty minor. It's not quite to the point where I felt like it was super-smooth — that usually happens if there's maybe only two gluey bits — but it's darn close. Even more impressive considering Herre chose to use the difficult "parallel downs" arrangement in MOON BOOT and ART TATUM. So often this requires a lot of paste to hold everything together.

How I loved seeing one of my favorite pianists, ART TATUM, in the puzzle! Now, I personally tend to avoid proper names in long fill, preferring colorful phrases instead, because if the solver doesn't know the person, it's kind of a waste. That's likely the case today, as I doubt many people know or appreciate ART TATUM's brilliance. (Shame on you, infidels.) I did worry a bit when I saw the ART TATUM, DORY, DARYL crossings — three tough entries crossing each other — but ultimately I think they're all gettable, if not inferable.

Fun use of the hyphen, both as a play on words, and as a crossword rule-breaker. Hoping to see more from Herre.