Julie Bérubé author page

Go forth and procreate! SHEEP, you and KOALA shall make a SHEEKALA! To keep things interesting, let's toss two YETIS into the mix. Ooh la la, that's one kinky menage a quatre!

Sadly, this ain't that type of puzzle.

Or is it? I'm just sayin', two ASSes hanging out together …

Maybe I should just stop right there.

The above is a long way of saying that I wondered if all the extra animals throughout the ARK — the NEWT, BISON, SONIC the Hedgehog, ROE, SHREW, CAMEL and AKELA snuggling up tight — made the puzzle less elegant or more interesting.

Tough call. Ultimately, the veritable zoo will help the puzzle stick inside my head, and memorable is usually a good thing. However, the Biblical flood of glue required to make it all happen — AGENA, ST MALO crossing UMAMI, ELL, OVI, LIS … DIO, YECH! — will also stick in my head as an asterisk.

ON AND OFF hinting at two rebus squares next to each other. Sort of an ON / OFF switch!

Sort of.

I wish there had been a sharper a-ha moment, with the revealer slyly giving a rationale for why ON and OFF should be right next to each other. ON AND OFF could have just as easily explained: "phrases that contain one instance of ON and then one of OFF, not necessarily adjacent."

Ooh, here's a clever idea: ON AND OFF so aptly describes a rebus ON in the across direction … which changes into an OFF rebus in the down direction!

(That implementation would have been perfect for ON OFF SWITCH. Writing that down in my notebook of ideas…)

(D'oh! Already been done. Scratching it out...)

Although the revealer wasn't as spot-on as I would have liked, I did enjoy uncovering those dual rebuses in the four phrases. The four great phrases, mind you! CARBON OFFSETS gets a lot of buzz these days, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN feels classic, IMMIGRATION OFFICE solid, and PERSON OF FAITH to round it out. A ton of color from these themers; nice variety.

It was pleasing that two of them broke in the *ON / OFF* pattern, while the other two used *ON / OF / F*. Most solvers probably won't care, or even notice, but I thought it was an elegant touch of symmetry.

It's so hard to work with a big number of rebus squares. Average for a rebus is five or six, so ten is a tough ask. It's even harder when rebus squares have to work with each other. I like what Julie did with OFF TONE — neat solution for a tricky region.

It's also so hard to accept KUNST as a valid entry — talk about deep into foreign languages. But thankfully, there was only some OBJ, AERO, PERI elsewhere. If you can ignore the glaring KUNST, it's a good grid.

I think you could eliminate KUNST (and still have a good grid) by swapping SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and IMMIGRATION OFFICE. But it'd be a complete rework. Probably worth it, though ...

A better rationale for why ON should be next to OFF, and some cleanup in the grid, and this would have gotten POW! attention.

I've had solvers complain when I use the word SHIM. It's baffling to me — just like any good mechanical engineer, I used to carry aluminum SHIM stock in my back pocket in case something needed to be leveled. That rickety table? SHIMmed! Someone need something wedged open? SHIMmed!

Okay, I'm weird.

A lot packed into the TOOL BOX today. Most felt apt, but I scoffed at people having TAPE and SHIM stock in their TOOLBOXes. Everyone knows that pockets are where you put SHIM stock.

Wait. You're still reading? Amazing!

I enjoyed some of the finds, SCREW in GROUNDSCREW delightful. NAIL across ALVIN AILEY, too.

Will has asked me to avoid things like TUNA SASHIMI, where the TUNA part of the answer feels unused. I don't always agree, but in this case, I'd have preferred something like WISH I MAY.

Or, removing SHIM completely from the theme. Much to this mech E's dismay, I don't think it's nearly as well known as DRILL or NAIL or SCREW.

ESPADRILLE is an interesting word. I didn't know it, but it seems like something an educated solver ought to be able to piece together through common letter sequences.

I don't always appreciate themer interlock, but I thought it was neat to have ALVIN AILEY / STAYS AWAY and ESPADRILLE / EAT A PEACH knit together. Not often that you see it in a Monday puzzle, so that was cool.

On the whole, all the objects strewn about gave the puzzle an overly chaotic feel to me. But upon further thought, it seems appropriate to a TOOLBOX. There's a ton of stuff crammed haphazardly into mine.

Still, I might have preferred just four objects (deleting TAPE and SHIM) to make the grid more Mondayesque, getting rid of the OLA / APLEA, ORLON ESTER glue that's not friendly to newer solvers.

Fun idea, SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS split into pairs of syllables, then worked into regular words and phrases. A couple of neat findings, LISTIC hidden in HOLISTIC and CALI inside SCALIA.

With mainly short(ish) themers, Julie had a chance to incorporate some nice long fill. This is usually tough for a debut constructor to do, so I much appreciated entries like MAINSAIL, GUITARIST, ARTEMIS, even some NEXT DAY MANCINI. Spices up the grid.

I would have loved some crossword symmetry. It felt inelegant to have the syllables strewn about the grid, i.e. SCALIA and VALID not in symmetrical places. Holding to symmetry would mean LISTIC, the middle set of letters, would have to be in the middle row, in something like HOLISTICS or LISTICLES or WENT BALLISTIC. A long(ish) middle entry does make the grid design much harder, but I think it would have been worth it.

I also hitched at the division of AL-I-DO-CIOUS into AL-ID-O-CIOUS. There's no way to hide DOCIOUS into another word, which is unfortunate. I suppose you can make the argument that since it's a made-up word, you can divide the syllables however you want. But it is listed in some dictionaries now — with the AL-I-DO-CIOUS syallables. So it does seem wrong as implemented.

With seven "themers," there was bound to be a bit of crossword glue. I was pretty impressed at the start of the puzzle. It felt like a smooth solve up top, just RENTA seeming inelegant since it's always preceded by DE LA.

Unfortunately, I hit more of the SAULT, ABAB, HOS, SLO, ALIS, TSE (Tokyo Stock Exchange), PSS offenders as I went. None is that bad by itself, but in aggregate it felt like a lot. It is a tough grid design — so many areas are affected by two or more "themers," which create constraints pretty much everywhere.

Still, an interesting idea with some fun ways of hiding those special syllables.