John E. Bennett author page

Jeb and I meet up a couple of times a year, and it's fun to brainstorm with him. He showed me one built around OUT OF ORDER SIGNS, but he had flipped pairs of sign words, i.e., WANTED HELP and WAY WRONG. I didn't find that interesting, but there was something about the revealer that tickled my fancy.

Several weeks and several hundred anagrams later, voila! I liked the image of a "Fawlty Towers" imp or Bart Simpson scrambling road signs. It amuses me to think about people confusedly driving past a sign reading DECAL ODORS.

Well, amusing, until they ran off the ROAD that was CLOSED. Ahem.

I almost always do the grid skeleton work in collaborations, but this one was all Jeb. I hesitated at his layout at first, especially considering how many down answers had to work through the first two themers (in the north region of the grid), but he made it work pretty well. Always interesting to see another constructor's process — I would have shoved SPEED LIMIT all the way to the right to create better spacing. Pleasantly surprised to see that it all worked out. Just took a few back and forths to figure out best options for each region after that.

We were hoping that this would run on a Wednesday, as I want more out of a Thursday theme. If you're gonna toil away at a tough solve, the payoff better be good! Hopefully at least a few of the anagrams were amusing enough to be worth your time.

P.S. Jeb and I have a much more juvenile taste than Will. Our submitted anagrams:

DONE ROTTEN

TEPID SLIME

GREASED PET

DECAL ODORS

Jeb asked me to come on board after Will gave him "I like the concept but not the grid" feedback. My first impression: I thought it was fun to have the snakes snaking around the puzzle, but I wasn't so sure about WATCH YOUR STEP. I so badly wanted something more … snaky.

Then it hit me! Indiana Jones's IT HAD TO BE SNAKES! Counting … 15 letters = perfect!

Only, not perfect, since that's not the exact quote. Shows what I know.

The first set of revisions were painful. Eventually, I came up with a grid skeleton that seemed to work well enough. Some testing showed it was likely doable. Fast forward eleventy-thousand hours, and we got something that at least was clean. Good enough!

Except, not good enough for Will. He pointed out that it was smooth, but there was little to no juice in the bonuses. We had to use a bunch of dry stuff for the long slots, and where was the fun in that? Excellent points.

Back to the drawing board.

I noodled around with some different snake shapes, including one where a single snake started from the middle, but that led nowhere, quick.

Thankfully, Jeb came up with the idea of intersecting ALL of the snakes to the middle! That curiously made things easier, as all the theme material took up less net real estate in the grid. I worked up some possible skeletons, focusing on squeezing as much pizzazz out of the long slots as possible, and voila! It still took time, but only maybe eleventy-hundred hours this time.

(But this huge Indy fan still wants the revealer to be IT HAD TO BE SNAKES. Accuracy, schmaccuracy.)

Jeb and I live close by, so we get together and talk shop. During one session, he asked me to review some of his ideas, and I thought this one had the most potential. It seemed a little thin, but I suggested he ought to run with it.

Months later, he got back in touch, saying that Will and Joel liked the idea, but not his rounds of gridwork. After several backs and forths, they thought he might be biting off more than he could chew; that perhaps the grid was too ambitious to construct to their standards.

Those are the magic words for me, so Jeb didn't have to do much convincing to get me on board.

The first thing I did was to switch the order of the themers — Jeb had BY HOOK OR BY CROOK first, and I felt like it'd give away the game too quickly. Easy to swap them.

Then, I tried to rebuild around more theme — how cool would it be if there was something thematic running through the two themers? It took a lot of searching, but I finally came up with something I liked: the GREAT OUTDOORS. Perfect! Well, maybe not perfect, but a nice, descriptive phrase that tied LAMB and FISH together — could be clued with respect to a meadow and a fishing hole. So I spent maybe eight hours coming up with a grid around that.

Jeb's response: "Neat grid! But how is GREAT OUTDOORS related to the theme?"

Not perfect indeed.

So, back to the drawing board with a completely different grid. Ten more hours later, I finally decided that I'd have to accept a trade-off, and SST allowed for a good amount of snazzy fill. I was pretty sure Will and Joel would favor the first (GREAT OUTDOORS) grid, anyway.

Yet again, shows what I know!

★ THIS ROUNDS ON ME! Er, THE ROUNDS ON ME. Hmm. I've never actually heard anyone get up and declare either one, but the former is the way I imagine it happening.

Jeb (John E. Bennett) and I live pretty close to each other, so we meet up occasionally to talk shop. When he mentioned this one to me, I smiled — great minds think alike! I actually like his interpretation better than mine, what with 1.) the pretty circle, or "round" formed by the drinks, and 2.) the fact that all of his are alcoholic beverages.

I also appreciated his touch of GIN and STOUT, ones that can easily be clued not as the drink. As Jeb mentioned, that did hide the theme for a little bit.

I always worry when I see diagonal answers, since it's so tough to construct around them. But I like what Jeb did in the top left corner a lot. It is true that he had a lot of flexibility, being able to use any six-letter alcoholic beverage, but he made SHERRY work so nicely. DEATHS did give me a pause, since it's a bit of a no-no to include downers like this, but needing virtually no crossword glue to hold a section like this together is great work.

The bottom left exhibits a few of the usual traits I'd expect out of a section with diagonal answers — not surprising, given how open the corner is compared to the top left. I did like TRAIN CAR, HOT MEALS, even GIMBAL (sue me, I'm an engineer). I didn't like NNE/ACAP/PCT/ERST holding it together.

A different type of compromise in the bottom right. The short stuff is all fine, but the longer stuff ... RETESTS is a bit iffy, and EAGEREST feels more than a bit iffy. Working around these diagonal answers, if it ain't one thing, it's another.

Given the degree of difficulty here though, I enjoyed the final result despite my initial hesitations, especially that pretty ring of drinks, and the theme felt uplifting. I like it when a puzzle leaves me with good spirits.

(rim shot)

Shout out to my Seattle friend, Jeb! (John E. Bennett = JEB) Jeb and his wife had Jill and me over for brunch a while ago. Super fun to talk shop with nice people.

Jeb uses six big circles (it looks much better in the print version) to form "balls." There's a SOUR ball, a HAIR ball, FOOT ball, BASE ball, MEAT ball, and a POOL ball. This sort of layout is very tricky, as each one of the balls causes so many constraints. When you throw in a revealer — JUST HAVING A BALL — it becomes that much more difficult.

This kind of puzzle is even trickier, since none of the "theme answers" are very long. This means that some of the fill has to be long instead. I love FOOLS ERRAND, very colorful, and OBSESSIVE / NEWSPAPER aren't bad. PARONOMASIA … it took me every single crossing to fill in, so frustrating in that sense, but I decided I really like the word and will find ways of using it.

Filling around everything mentioned above is so hard to do cleanly. Each one of the six ball areas has minor dings. The top left is actually quite nice, with just OFT a blip. Continung to the next region, CHROMO feels a bit outdated. Then OH FOO … on one hand it sounds so made up. On the other hand, I'm going to find ways of using it too, because it sounds so funny.

The other three balls show us the British RASE, the outdated SSTS, and the kind of gross EGESTS. All in all though, for the high level of difficulty, it's not bad.

I'm not sure I liked JUST in front of HAVING A BALL — felt like something tagged on to make the central answer 15 letters, which is SO much easier than working with a central 11. Ah well.

So, some compromises due to such high theme density and constraints, and some head-scratching entries which forced me to do some thinking. I like it when a puzzle challenges me to think.

Another debut! I like seeing new constructors added to the ever-growing ranks. Neat that each new person brings a different perspective, a different set of inputs that goes into his or her puzzle. So to have two in a week is a treat.

Today's puzzle centers around WHAT'S IN THE BOXES, with six "boxes" all containing four-letter words which can precede "box." (PILLBOX, for example.) A good twist on the "word that can precede or follow" type theme. It's really nice that John kept everything consistent, each of the six "boxes" starting at the top left, reading from left to right and then top to bottom. I got a little tripped up at first because I was expecting them all to run clockwise, but that's likely just me and my preconceived notions of how things ought to be.

John also did a very nice job of choosing his theme answers. I wasn't sure what a SALT box was, but it came easily enough. I looked it up, and it didn't particularly seem like something I really ought to have known (a house style in New England, named after boxes used in the old days to store salt), but it was fun to learn.

There are many four-letter words that can precede BOX, so John did a great job of picking ones that could easily be filled around. Crossing constraints like with these 2x2 boxes are bound to give difficulty, but the only spot of any crunchiness was around the SW corner, with IS NO. The ?SN? pattern is a toughie, to be avoided at all costs — besides ISN'T, there's not much that fills it in a clean way. Otherwise, smooth sailing, excellent work.

The pluralization of the revealer felt a tad off to me, as WHAT'S IN THE BOX feels stronger (a more in-the-language entry related to a kid groveling at cool Uncle Jeff when he brings over a present). Or perhaps if the clue had been related only to the customs officer? Even then, I have a hard time imagining a customs official saying that instead of OPEN THE BOXES RIGHT NOW DAMMIT. Perhaps a inspector at a seaport might be the closest fit in my mind.

Putting that qualm aside, it's a well-executed puzzle. To incorporate 1.) six "boxes," plus 2.) a grid-spanning revealer and 3.) four long pieces of fill is not easy. Many constructors would be fine with the first two components, so I'm glad to see the third piece, which adds a lot of spice to the grid. Excellent job on the layout, especially for his first puzzle.

Really nice debut!