Jeffrey Wechsler author page

My fastest time ever at "Guess That Theme"! As soon as I had OBIE ___, I skipped to the next themer and plunked down the wise one himself.

I wonder if a juvenile-minded writer on George Lucas's staff slipped one by. OBI WANKEN OBI sounds so naughty.

I did pause at OB GYN … what is necessary to complete that? Oh, of course, it's OB GYN DOCTORS, because you do want to distinguish the sub-profession from OB GYN CARPENTERS and OB GYN MODERNIST PAINTERS (Georgia O'Keeffe?).

OH, BEHAVE, I was only kidding. Of course, DOCTORS was tacked on to appease Crucivera's demands for a crossacrifice. It's a shame, as that phrase was the only one that felt contrived.

Not the smoothest Monday grid, but not the gluiest, either — an average result, given the tough constraint of five longish themers. Oddly, the one bit I objected to most didn't come as a result of theme constraints. AABA, ELEC, OCOME are understandable since they cross multiple themers. They're also figure-out-able.

I can see some GAPES from newb solvers upon hitting CAPON. If you've never seen that word before, it might look plain wrong. Reworking that corner would have been my one revision request.

I'll admit, my first reaction to this theme was to wonder, why? I mulled it over, and came around to Jim's first reaction, that it is interesting to find five different ways to spell the OB sounds — all at the starts of words, to boot.

Using OBS as a revealer would have upgraded the puzzle, though. That would have eliminated the oddball OB GYN ___ offering to Crucivera, as well as made for fewer constraints and thus, a smoother grid.

Four REFERENCEs placed OBLIQUEly, i.e., diagonally through the grid. Any time I see diagonal entries, I brace myself for the onslaught of crossword glue. Four long ones forced me to take a deep breath before jumping in.

Pleasant surprise to not get as much as I expected! And I was mighty impressed by the SW corner. That's bound to be tough, considering that there are two intersecting themers and a whole lot of white space. I didn't say WHAT A BORE at all, especially since that corner came out so colorful AND clean.

No doubt, there were some rough patches, notably the south: ERTE KRONER (even as a finance guy, I blinked when it turned out not to be KRONOR), ERTE, ROUE, VERSO. None of those entries are bad, but as a whole, oof.

What interested me most about the puzzle was Jeffrey's decision to use mirror symmetry. He could easily have used regular symmetry, placing OBLIQUE REFERENCE in the center. But think about how many diagonal entries would have had to intersect that. He could have snuck ATLAS in a corner, but the other three would have had to run through OBLIQUE REFERENCE, making the gridwork almost impossible. At first, I thought it was an odd choice to use mirror symmetry, but it's a clever way to solve a difficult construction problem.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this more from a constructor's perspective than a solver's. After filling one REFERENCE in, the game was up, and what with the dabs of crossword glue and the heavy grid segmentation, it didn't provide much solving joy. But I did have a good time going back to deconstruct how Jeffrey went about the tough gridwork challenge.

I was delighted by MILLE FEUILLE — watching bakers build their "thousand layer" pastries is fascinating; a neat mix of art and science. You need an aesthetic sensibility in order to entice the consumer, but also an understanding of chemistry to make the textures and flavors come together.

Same goes for crossword construction. Novel and interesting themes take creativity. But without the ability to execute on a solid grid, the puzzle doesn't come together.

I thought Jeffrey did well with this theme. There are probably many more French cooking terms that have entered into common usage, but I couldn't immediately think of any. And I like that each one here has a literal translation. BOUILLABAISSE = "boil and lower"? Fun!

The chemical reactions had problems, though. There were so many gluey aftertastes: EBON, EDDA LATHS, AERO, LE ROI, etc. Part of the problem was that Jeffrey had to work around that central 13-letter BOUILLABAISSE, which creates so many problems — especially given that the 12-letter HORS DOUEVRES and MILLE FEUILLE also force black square placements.

But a bigger part of the problem was trying to incorporate too many long bonuses. Break up EYES OF BLUE at the O, and it's easy to clean up EBON. Break up AS WITH at the I (and then get rid of the black square in front of AFT), and you can clean up the tough SHINZO ABE / TZE crossing.

(It's important to know world leaders. But I'd be sympathetic to a solver who put in SHINSO ABE.)

A solid recipe, but the execution of the bake could have been improved.

Oh no! Or should I say, O no? Seriously, with all the crossword love Yoko gets, no ONO in the grid today?

Pretty easy to find words that become other words by removing an O. But it's hard to come up with themers that amuse. I thought Jeffrey did well in that regard, nearly all of them somewhat chuckle-worthy. CURSE CORRECTION was fantastic as a censor's job, and who doesn't like a PROPER NUN?

FUR ON THE FLOOR and CURT REPORTERS weren't as funny to me, as they weren't quite as ridiculous as I like in this type of theme. Or perhaps it's the fact that this cat owner has a ton of fur on his floor ...

For such a simple letter removal theme, it would have been nicer to have no other Os in the themers at least. Why take an O out of NOUN, but not PROPER?

O wait! Oh, you. Took me a while, but I realize after reading Jeffrey's note that it's not just a simple O removal, but an OU to U switch. Ah, that makes it much better. There aren't nearly as many words that can work like this. My bad.

Solid gridwork. Threading in a GOOD FAIRY, BULLFINCH, GETS READY, HIRES A CAR … although, I squinted at GOOD FAIRY at first. Are there bad fairies? Apparently yes! And HIRES A CAR sounded off, but I ain't no Brit, guv. So overall, good bonuses.

I appreciated the smooth grid, too, just an EER to hold it all together. Strong craftsmanship, especially considering the five long themers and the extras in the fill.

Wish I had realized there was more than just an O removal when I was solving. Too bad there wasn't a revealer to make me realize that.

Oh you, Jeffrey …

HOLD DOWN THE FORT interpreted literally, F O R T hanging down within phrases. Such a strange-looking FUNE HUNTER … or is that (FORT)UNE HUNTER? Fine job of disguising those dropped FORTs, in FORTE, FORTH, EFFORTS. Not a lot of ways to work FORT into short fill, indeed — FORTY, Abe FORTAS and FORTRAN the only other short(ish) entries I could think of, right off the bat.

I did wonder if this was a good interpretation of HOLD DOWN — wouldn't "push down" or "drop down" be more appropriate? I guess if you squint and use your imagination, it sort of works …

Love the bonuses of MOB RULE, and EMERALDS with its interesting trivia clue — I had no idea Cleopatra mined them. I also enjoyed [Game animals, for some] misdirecting toward ELK or DEER. Great a-ha, when I realized it was the "sports" meaning of "game," relating to team MASCOTS.

LAND SALES is workable, but not something I'd go out of my way to include as bonus fill.

I would have liked to see a different grid layout at top and bottom. The first row of a themed crossword usually is broken into three words, which makes filling pretty easy. Breaking things up into two words does create opportunities for fun mid-length fill like MASCOTS. But ECTOPIC isn't worth it to me, as that has a lot of negative connotation (ECTOPIC pregnancies). And given the presence of so much RUS, EEN, RECTO, ESTAS, EFTS, HEB, REAIMS, I wanted more smoothness overall.

It's pretty hard to work around this many crossing themers — those FORTs dropping down make construction rough — and going down to 72 words makes it so difficult to produce a quality grid.

Some strong theme phrases, and well-hidden FORTs, though.

Fun theme idea, one-syllable words interpreted as their two-syllable counterparts. I'm a big fan of MOLE sauce (spicy chocolatey goodness!), so WHACK A MO-LE made me laugh. FOR HEAVENS SA-KE and LA-ME EXCUSE felt more tortured grammatically, but I was still amused.

I did like RUN FOR THE RO-SES (pinkish wines), but it felt inconsistent with the rest of the themers, as the only plural. I don't mind a lack of tightness if the theme is ultra-constrained, but there are a lot of ROSE phrases out there.

I know, my OCD constructor's brain is so annoying!

I like that Jeffrey made an effort to give solvers some bonuses in the fill. Fun to have WHITE RICE and THE NATURAL, as well as YESHIVAS and SUM TOTAL.

There were prices to pay for this, though. WHITE RICE and THE NATURAL are made possible by not using the typical black squares which would break up the side of the puzzle — the RET of RETAIN would normally be black squares to facilitate better fill. This forces some crossword glue like A TALE, and the odd LAND AT. I don't mind add-a-preposition phrases when they sound natural, but LAND AT … hmm.

My immature brain giggled at LUDE and TOKE in the same puzzle.

My constructor's brain pointed out RECTO, TVA, ROUES, HMS. Nothing terrible, but all slightly iffy. Overall, I would have preferred a slightly cleaner puzzle with slightly fewer goodies.

Neat concept with some funny results. If 1.) this had been on a Wednesday or Tuesday, where I expect these simpler types of themes, 2.) the themers had all been singular, and 3.) the puzzle had been executed more smoothly, I would have given it the POW!

Three phrases literalized, TRICYCLE (tri CYCLE) presented as CYCLECYCLECYCLE, QUADRANT = RANTRANTRANTRANT, PENTAGON = GONGONGONGONGON. I've seen a ton of repeated word themes, i.e. JEOPARDYJEOPARDY = double jeopardy, but this is an interesting twist on the theme trope. I particularly liked GONGONGONGONGON, since GON is such an odd-looking chunk of letters by itself.

Would have been nice to get a progression from UNI to PENTA, but at least TRI, QUAD, PENTA gives a logical sequence. And Jeffrey brings up a good point about crossword symmetry. He would have had to go up to five themers, with the first being UNI+15 letters. Not many options for that, and something like (uni) FORMITARIANISTS would have been pretty dull.

It's okay with me to get just three themers instead of the usual four (or more, these days) if 1.) they're all snazzy and 2.) the grid features a ton of bonus entries. I liked some entries — ARE YOU IN, ANACONDA (always makes me think of the "Baby Got Back" lyrics), and even EVOLVE, KENKEN. Not nearly as much as I'd hope for given only three themers, though.

And RED CHINA … I know it's a historical term, but having heard this used as a SLUR for Asian folks, left me uncomfortable. (I've also heard it used against Korean and Vietnamese friends, which makes me laugh. Sort of.)

A couple of blips in APACE (odd word), MSEC (millisecond never written this way in real life), ANO, but not bad at all. I did struggle with CUTCO and ODETS, but thankfully the clue [Big brand of kitchen knives] made the CUT part of CUTCO gettable, once I did a *headdesk*.

PASTAS sure got an odd clue in [Nonmeat choices at a deli counter]? I fought mightily with that corner, as I thought it had to be TEMPEH or SOY or something with meat-like consistency. Feels like this clue could have been just as "accurate" if the answer had been WATER or COOKIES.

It's a reasonable puzzle, although I would have liked more themers or more bonus fill, especially given that Jeffrey is a seasoned constructor.

Homophones of foreign numbers making kooky phrases. The chemistry nerd in me really enjoyed TRES ELEMENTS, and I liked DREI MARTINIS (DREI = German for three) a lot, too. I've seen a lot of foreign number crosswords, but this is a new take on it. I enjoyed it.

I was so curious to see what pattern would emerge from the themers. Would it be a numerical progression? (7, 3, 6, 3, 8 … no.) One number from each of five major languages? (French, German, German, Spanish, French … no.) It looks as though Jeffrey chose based on what would work with crossword symmetry and in-the-language base phrases. That's perfectly fine, but I sure would have loved some extra element to tighten up the theme or make it feel less random.

Neat to see LIAM NEESON's full name. I had a more ambivalent feeling about the TECH SECTOR. I invest money for friends and family (passive indexing / asset allocation, nothing fancy), and TECH SECTOR is definitely in use. I think "tech stocks" is a more common term, though, what with that term being thrown around all the time on MSNBC. And the clue … [Part of the Dow] didn't seem quite right. Yes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average does have some tech companies in it, but there's no "tech sector" component to it. Why not clue TECH SECTOR to the NASDAQ, which houses a much higher percentage of tech stocks?

There were only a few gluey bits in the grid, really just EVENER ("more even," yeah?) making me wince. I would have said it was a pretty nicely put-together grid, but DIECI really stuck in my craw. First, 10 in Italian isn't something I see that often. More importantly, it muddies the theme for me. I kept thinking maybe it tied together the themers somehow? There's no rule against having an extra foreign number as fill when your theme is all about foreign numbers--I guess I fall on the other side of the fence from Jeffrey and Will--but it strikes me as extremely inelegant.

So, a fun twist on foreign numbers, but it felt like there was a lot of potential left on the table.

I like a good spoonerism (swapping beginning sounds of two consecutive words) theme now and again. I appreciate that Jeffrey used a tight set, constraining the themers to songs by THE BEATLES. It's such a shame that THE BEATLES themselves don't spoonerize into something. Now that would have been a coup!

Consistency and tightness bring elegance to crossword themes. Because thousands of word pairs can be spoonerized, it was important for Jeffrey to narrow down the pool — that's tightness, and he did well there.

Consistency ... seeing TRAY DIPPER (Day Tripper) made me want all two-word phrases for the next themers. But then we get SHES HEAVING LOAM (She's Leaving Home) and LEIGH SHOVES YOU (She Loves You), with words left unspoonerized. And then PAPER RACK BITER (Paperback Writer) gets one of its words split before spoonerization. Breaking up a word like that felt pretty odd. All in all, not very consistent.

It also felt strange that SHE was in two themers. Granted, one was shown regularly and one post-spoonerism, but that also felt inelegant.

Tough grid arrangement. It's a nice change of pace to see such a wide-open grid on a weekday — 70 words is a tough task when you're working with so many themers. It's also incredibly difficult to do this while keeping your long fill snazzy and your short fill free of gluey bits.

Jeffrey really challenges himself in the NW and SE corners. That arrangement — three adjacent long answers crossing two themers — is so difficult to execute on. I like Jeffrey's NW corner a lot — LATE PASS, AMARANTH, and PERSPIRE are all pretty good, with some very minor AMES and PST stuff. The SE demonstrates the difficulty of this arrangement, ONLY ONCE not quite feeling in the language to me, and AINT I, ICER, and DEYS needed to hold it together. Even some of us longtime solvers have a tough time keeping REYS, BEYS, and DEYS straight.

I prefer trickier (as opposed to simply harder) Thursday puzzles, but this one did give me a themeless-like workout given all its big swaths of white space.

Tribute puzzle, honoring the great ORSON WELLES, who would have been 100 years old … er, last week. What a shame to miss the actual day, May 6^th. Not sure what happened there.

Fortuitous that ORSON WELLES is the same length as his most famous movie, CITIZEN KANE. I can't say I enjoyed it when I saw it high school (what, no explosions or aliens?) but I can appreciate its place in cinematic history, as well as its masterful storytelling and acting.

I haven't seen A TOUCH OF EVIL or THE THIRD MAN, but it was fun to read up on them. And although I've never heard THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (yay, aliens!) broadcast, seeing it in the grid makes me want to listen to it. Mind-boggling to think about the fake broadcast causing wide-spread panic.

The grid is expanded to 16 columns, in order to accommodate the central THE WAR OF. From a constructor's viewpoint, it's neat that Jeffrey made the mini-triple stack work. With four separate downs that need to be acceptable — HER, AWL, RAD, RRS — it's fortuitous to find this arrangement.

From a solver's standpoint though, having the lone HARRY LIME felt odd. Having a lone name thrown into a listing of movie titles felt inelegant. Not worth the extension to a 16 column grid, or the mini-triple stack, to my taste.

I did appreciate the effort Jeffrey went to in the upper right and lower left corners. I'm not sure I buy KITTENISH as a usable word, but LOSE HEART and EROTIC ART are very nice additions to the puzzle. PORC is an oddity, but it's easily inferable from the fair crossings.

Speaking of nice additions, tribute puzzles run the risk of reading like a Wikipedia entry. I would have loved some extra layer, like R O S E B U D spelled out in the shape of a sled, or some WAR OF THE WORLDS-themed ETS strewn about the grid.

Dang, I love me some aliens.

Great selection of themers today, phrases containing NYC to celebrate THE BIG APPLE. DESTINY CALLS is so colorful and vivid, making for a great entry. COMPANY CAR and FELONY CHARGE sing, too. (Sing Sing, in the latter's case.)

I would have been so tempted to stick in KENNY CLARKE, the great jazz drummer known as "Klook," but TONY CURTIS plays to a much bigger audience. Sigh.

As an 11-letter entry, THE BIG APPLE smack dab in the middle of the grid sure makes things hard. Interesting layout today; I like how Jeffrey smooshed pairs of themers together to separate them as much as possible from that troublesome THE BIG APPLE. This can be tough feat to do, but Jeffrey wisely chooses theme pairs with easy letter combinations, making the north and south regions nice and smooth.

It does leave big swaths of white space in the SW and NE, roughly 4x6 chunks which are rarely easy to fill, especially when fill needs to be Monday-smooth. Jeffrey does an impressive job in the NE, featuring Jerry STILLER and JON SEDA, the latter thankfully done with easy crosses.

The SW does have the fun ALL EARS and FLY ROD but overall doesn't come off quite as nicely, needing some glue to hold it together. I might have considered breaking up ALMONDS with a black square at the O, which would have given more flexibility in filling. (My wife, who loathes ALMONDS to the point where she accused me of poisoning her with an almond cookie, would approve.)

Then again, that would create even more 3-letter words, and the current count (25) is already on the high side. So many trade-offs in construction.

It sometimes just takes a single clue or entry to make me want to high-five someone, and BIDS did that for me. As a huge bridge fan, this very bridge-specific clue made me wistful for the time when bridge ruled American culture. It's tough to make a puzzle cover a huge range of topics, from bridge to WAFFLES to TONY CURTIS to BALI, and that effort is much appreciated. Something for everyone.

As soon as I uncovered the first set of L O O P circles, I raced to the center to fill in LOOPS THE LOOPS. Well, that didn't fit. LOOPING THE LOOP? LOOPY LOOPY LOOP?

So much for my utter genius.

I liked the aesthetics, L O O P circling in eight locations, and those eight locations circling as a whole. Nice consistency too; L O O P always going clockwise, and the starting position shifting over one spot in each set of new circles. Elegant.

These types of puzzles can be tricky, because so much care must be taken to fill cleanly around those quartets of circles. I like how Jeffrey worked many long entries through the circles: POOL PUMP, CANOODLE, LAB ROOMS, DIET PLAN. They're not all superstar quality, but they're all nice.

Impressive that the short fill was relatively clean, given the high level of constraints. Really only the north and south sections stuck out, what with the CPL / ILO and REN / TEN OF combinations. Often, these little spaces utilizing three-letter words are harder than ones using four-letter words. Surprising, yeah? You'd think a smaller section would always be easier to fill. But there's a larger inventory of "good" four-letter words than three-letter words (by a factor of 2-3x). I try to stay away from these little squirrely areas chock full of 3s.

Given that the NE and SW are daunting chunks of open white (HERAT and AREOLE, I see you), it might have been useful to equalize space a bit. Expanding the south area at the expense of the SW could have made filling easier in both regions.

I'm not familiar with aerobatics, so I wasn't sure if the visual was "accurate." My mind sees something like the pic to the right, with a lead-up, a loop, and a pull-out to horizontal. I liked Jeffrey's imaginative description of a stunt pilot doing an insane looping-within-looping maneuver, but I'm not sure if LOOP DE LOOP DE LOOP really describes that. The puzzle's visual is more like a "4-D" roller coaster to me.

In the end, I was able put that aside and have a fun solving experience.

I thought I was so smart. As soon as I uncovered HITTING STREAK, I raced down to 62-Across to enter one of the greatest hitters of all time … TED WILLIAMS. As it turns out, TED WILLIAMS was not only a left fielder (not a CENTER FIELDer), but he wasn't a YANKEE.

It's amazing that anyone actually listens to me.

Tribute puzzle today, lauding one of the greatest accomplishments in all of sports, a record likely never to be broken, the historic HITTING STREAK of the great TED WILLIAMS. Gah! JOE DIMAGGIO had such a place in the forefront of American culture back then, not only being one of the premier sports stars of his time, but gaining even more notoriety with his tumultuous relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Definitely a crossworthy guy.

A tough grid today, forced by the plethora of short themers. A 11/7/6/13/6/7/11 pattern … that string of seven numbers looks just crazy, doesn't it? Four black squares must get deployed right off the bat to split up HITTING / STREAK and YANKEE / CLIPPER, and spending your black squares early usually makes things difficult. Often, that sort of segmentation leads to excessive three-letter words or necessitates unsightly glue bits to hold sections together. I also find that having so many little themers makes things feel choppy, having to jump around from one themer to the next to the next.

It's technically possible to do a 11/13/13/13/11 arrangement, which would help the flow of the solve (a rough skeleton sketched out to the right). But that'd call for some ugly chunks of black squares on the side — not really visually appealing, is it? Hardly ever easy; always the trade-offs.

As with most straight-up tribute puzzles, I finished wanting a little more. It would have been incredible if JOE DIMAGGIO had somehow crossed MARILYN MONROE, yeah? Or maybe FIFTY SIX GAMES had appropriately come at 56-Across? How about featuring his other great nickname, JOLTIN JOE? I like a tribute puzzle every once in a while, especially if it's around a timely anniversary, but the best ones usually have that je ne sais quoi that make them stand out.

Finally, some really nice pieces of fill in the NE and SW. Those themeless-like stacks can be really rough to fill when one themer runs through them — it's way more than twice as difficult when two themers constrain them. With STREAK and FIFTY SIX GAMES handcuffing that corner, getting SUSPENSE / ON HIATUS / SHOCKER with very little price to pay is a treat.

"All the time?" is a fantastic clue for the central theme answer (a set of rebus entries going from SUN to SAT). A central entry plus two vertical grid-spanners may not seem like a lot of theme material, but incorporating vertical answers across the central entry adds to the density. Jeffrey could have made all seven of his crossing entries short stuff like LEMON and FRIDA, but he ups the ante by giving us the juicy SUN YAT SEN, ARE WE DONE, THUCYDIDES, and EASY VIRTUE. I hadn't heard of that last one, but pretty much anything from Noel Coward ought to be gridworthy. Beautiful work in the center of his grid, quite a feat. Well done!

One aspect of this construction that jumped out at me was the high number of 3-letter words. Will tries to keep them down to roughly 20(ish) or under, because too many of them become distracting to some solvers. Here, we have 30 three-letter words, and that's not counting LE(MON) or (FRI)DA. As a result, the solve felt a bit choppy to me. This sort of grid arrangement (lots of short entries, lots of long entries) does have the potential for long snazzy fill, but not a lot of the longer entries felt fresh and sparkly (to me, at least). I did like VARIATION and its science-related clue, but SIDE AISLE and UNDREAMED OF felt a touch off to my ear.

One aspect I appreciated here is the liberal use of cheater squares (black squares which don't affect the total word count). Jeffrey incorporates three pairs of them, and I'm sure this gave a better result than without. Yes, the extra black squares do cut down on the open feel of a puzzle, but I'd personally much rather take a cleaner fill with cheaters. In particular, note the black square at the end of SALIVATE and its match just before DEAD BODY (nice save with the clue for an otherwise creepy-ish entry, BTW). Those 9x3 stack sections are tough to fill cleanly, and placing just a single set of cheaters opens up the possibilities greatly, because the universe of 8-letter words is about 10% bigger than that of the 9-letter universe. I'd bet we would have had at least one other OSO or MEDE type entry without that particular pair of cheaters.

Rebus puzzles are getting tougher to innovate, given that there have been over 300 of them in the NYT now. I appreciate Jeffrey's fresh take on this one, all the rebi in a neat calendar row. Clever idea and a great clue for that entry.

It took me ages to figure out what was going on here. PRESTO CHANGE O = "change PRESTO by anagramming those six letters." TSOPER in WHAT'S OPERA DOC, for instance.