Joel Elkins author page
1 puzzle by Joel Elkins
with Jeff Chen comments
See the 4 answer words debuted by Joel Elkins.
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| N | A | V | E | G | U | N | F | O | M | E | N | T | ||
| T | H | A | T | M | O | R | E | T | R | E | N | T | E | |
| A | U | D | I | O | L | I | G | H | T | B | E | R | S | |
| K | N | E | L | T | S | E | A | H | A | R | E | S | ||
| E | A | R | I | D | I | S | T | L | A | A | A | |||
| O | V | E | N | S | B | L | T | S | ||||||
| C | H | E | C | K | P | O | I | N | T | S | ||||
| A | T | O | M | A | R | R | O | W | ||||||
| R | O | N | A | S | P | B | E | D | E | T | C | |||
| A | T | T | I | T | U | D | E | D | I | R | E | R | ||
| W | A | R | T | N | D | A | L | L | E | L | E | N | A | |
| A | L | I | B | I | S | Y | O | U | D | O | N | T | Y | |
| K | E | T | O | N | E | S | O | S | S | O | L | O | ||
| R | E | Y | E | S | E | K | E | E | W | E | N |
Congrats on the debut, Joel!
TSA rebus, with CHECKPOINTS helping to describe the idea. Some really nice phrases hiding TSA: THAT'S AMORE, LIGHTSABERS, WARTS AND ALL, YOU DON'T SAY. All four are ones I'd happily seed a themeless corner with — very well done. I also liked the crossing answers. MORT SAHL, SET SAIL aren't super exciting to me, but Joel and Acme could have easily resorted to neutral material like GETS AT.
My favorite rebuses are ones where there's a strong rationale why letters should be crammed into one box. CHECKPOINTS doesn't totally do that. "Points" does hint at a single box, but it would have been so nice to get something referencing how cramped and crammed those TSA checkpoints always are.
That central area is so choked-off from the rest of the puzzle. It makes constructing easier, since you can section off smaller areas and work on them independently, but it makes for not very good grid flow as a solver. Today however, it gave me an idea — how cool would it have been if those TSA CHECKPOINTS had been at the four squares choking off the middle! Something like the I of MOTIVE, the O of CONTRITE, etc.
Those big NE and SW corners are so tough to fill, even without constraints. Throw in a pair of crossing answers and they become even tougher. I have no doubt that the black squares at the very NE / SW corners helped a lot. Still, while I like entries like IF THAT and GENERALS, the plural TESSAS, tough French word TRENTE, and the odd AMEBA spelling made me hitch. Same goes with the really neat ARAWAK at the price of TOTALER (feels made up with that -ER), deep chemistry KETONE, and the partial-ish AT NINE.
Similar trade-offs occur with the NW and SE corners. They're not nearly as hard to fill given their lesser white space, but they're still not easy. Love KAHUNA. EVADER, not so much (especially since there's already a TOTALER).
But overall, those beautiful phrases hiding TSA made for an entertaining solve.