Joe Hansen author page

Joe paints such a pretty picture today, four FLOWERs in a GARDEN. They're placed with utter precision, six-letter flowers arranged in a perfect square, not a petal out of place.

Now I'm even more ashamed of my backyard (read: dumpster of kid toys).

I also appreciated his effort to pick (ha) FLOWERs whose last three letters form a valid word. VIOLET, AZALEA, ORCHID, DAH … well, three out of four ain't bad. There's an old constructors' joke, that if you need to use LIA, that's a Fail.

Maybe you had to be there.

Perhaps ZINNIA would have been a better choice, although working around that Z could prove challenging.

Speaking of that, Joe make some great decisions to minimize gridding troubles. For puzzles forming a shape out of circles, I've heard constructors say that it's inelegant to place a black square within the shape. I generally disagree, and I like their look today, making the flowers more ... well, florid. They also make gridwork about ten times easier.

Having just FLOWER / GARDEN and the four flowers felt thin, but I'd much rather have a smooth, sparkly grid than one jam-packed with more flowers or something. Another wise choice — even with a thin theme, it's still challenging to fill around those fixed patterns, resulting in a bit of AINTI, ACIDY, AGRI, ASA ...

I did lose steam right from the start, since FLOWER gave away the game much too quickly. I'd have loved a revealer like FLOWER ARRANGING, which could have been more fun, and could have also been placed lower in the grid (perhaps using mirror symmetry).

Overall though, the delightful visual appeal of the floral arrangements outweighed the hyssops — er, hiccups — in execution.

MINDBENDING is right! You don't even have to squint to see four fingers curled down, and a MIDDLE finger pointed straight up. I wanted to give this puzzle the POW! because it makes me laugh at how Will Shortz will respond to letters from shocked solvers. Will it be:

1. Whoops! I never noticed that.
2. Get your mind out of the gutter. It's simply a hand. Speaking of hand, talk to it.
3. A subversive grin.

Whatever the case may be (I'm hoping for number 3), this puzzle displays another point of uniqueness: no symmetry. At first glance, it looked like regular symmetry, but it quickly dawned on me that it's not just one or two blocks shifted to make the theme possible. It's complete chaos. It's like Loki made the puzzle and then flipped Asgard the bird.

Surprisingly, I didn't mind the irregularity. It's almost … bold. Not only do no theme entries match in length, but the blocks in the center don't even come close to matching up. Nor do the sets of blocks on the left and right. Or the ones on the top and bottom.

I suppose it is appropriate, since in real life, every finger is distinctive. Why not fully thumb your nose at convention?

Jim Horne and I sometimes discuss whether or not the symmetry rules that were put in place long ago should be relaxed, more a rule of thumb. Symmetry does lend elegance to a puzzle, an aesthetic quality that's so pleasing. However, once in a while, I welcome something that blows up the standards.

Not your father's crossword, that's for sure. If it had been cleaner — too much AERO ATA DOA ECCO EGAL ITGO SSA — I would have given it the POW! for its distinctiveness. Easier said than done, though. The constraints are tough enough that getting the theme to work, period — symmetry be damned — that achieving a smooth grid would make even the most experienced constructors raise that MIDDLE finger. A memorable debut.