Kathy Bloomer author page

BS METER yesterday, and today kicks off with ASSHAT? I FEEL OKAY about this, but I wonder if the old schoolers will demand that Will eat his shortz.

My wife does approximately fifty-eight puzzles a day, spurred on by the explosion of -LE games. Wordle, sure, but there's also Heardle (not to be confused with Hurdle), Worldle, Nerdle, and yes, even Crosswordle.

Sadly, she doesn't do actual crosswords much anymore. Who has time, when there's an Absurdle number of alternatives?

WORDLE OF MOUTH lent a fresh feel to this concept — critical, since adding LE isn't difficult to accomplish and has been done many times. I enjoyed so many of Kathy's themers that it overcame my "add two common letters" fatigue. SKIPS A BEATLE reminded me of poor Stu Sutcliffe. Would you rather be him or suffer the LOTTERY PICKLE of losing your winning ticket?

One of Will's criteria for "kooky themers" puzzles is that you shouldn't have to clue both halves of the entry separately. PALACE COUPLE is a perfect example of what to do right, as [King and queen] is a natural way to describe the resulting phrase. Similar case with CLASS TRIPLE — instead of writing [Three identical kids inside an elementary school homeroom?], playing on The Three Rs lends elegance.

I met up with Kathy before the pandemic, and we even made a puzzle together. I admire her dogged spirit. Perseverance is so critical to finding success in today's ultra-competitive construction landscape.

A proper debut! How well-mannered, using colorful phrases with a FORK, SPOON, KNIFE, wrapped up by a call to COME TO THE TABLE. I liked how the TABLE was set following all the rules, the fork going on the (racing to read Wikipedia) FORK to the left of the knife, and the KNIFE and SPOON set to the right of the FORK. Just like at my dinner table!

Okay fine, I never use a KNIFE. That's what the side of the FORK (and your teeth) are for. Don't get me started on the uselessness of spoons. Drink straight from the dang bowl, and you have fewer utensils to wash.

I have hundreds of these genius ideas that save oodles of hours.

(My wife begs to differ)

I usually don't like seeing long theme answers run vertically — horizontal ones are so much easier to read — but today I would have liked an exception. Pretty much every table setting diagram I reviewed (in my hopes of pretending that I'm no barbarian) are set with the utensils pointing up.

Oh, and how cool would it have been if there had been a circular "plate" made of black squares right in the center of the puzzle! That would have made for a very difficult grid, but I think it would have been doable.

Okay, this grid is already hard enough to fill cleanly. For example, check out the west region, almost always a trouble spot with long themers. I think the black squares ought to have been rejiggered to avoid the troublesome ?G?U sequence. When your only options are IGLU (ugly variant) and OGPU, it's time to restart with a modified grid skeleton. There would still likely be some trickiness in that west region, but I'm sure it could have been done with a much more minor ding.

Overall, I appreciated the proper ordering of the place settings, as well as the great phrases. More testing on the grid skeleton before filling would have helped, though.