Michael Ashley author page

This puzzle began life as a joke. I asked a friend, have you heard about the movie sequel about the greatest mohel in Brooklyn? Anyone who knew what a mohel is has gotten a LOL moment at the answer: AMERICAN SNIPPER. (For those of you who don't know, a mohel is the person who performs the Jewish rite of circumcision.) It's such a simple, concise little gem that, when I realized it was a great puzzle idea as well, it seemed like it would be a snap to sit down for a few minutes and come up with some more theme movies.

Ha! chalk that one up to rosy-cheeked optimism. It seems that the universe of words that form new words with a doubled letter is not nearly so big as I would have thought. And that list shrinks considerably when you try to fit them into a set of movie titles that are both familiar enough to everyone and yet still make any kind of sense as a phrase. So Will rejected my first draft, but encouraged me to find some new theme entries to replace the ones he didn't care for. And that too required a pretty fair amount of research work, plus some serious back-and-forthing with Will before arriving at the final set. So a big vote of thanks here to IMDB.com for a wealth of keyword titles to sift through, and to Will and his assistant Joel, both for their input and even more so for their patience.

BTW, this is a good thing to know for any of you puzzle writers who are struggling with rejection slips: getting a Times quality crossword can take a large amount of work and perseverance. So don't give up!

Finally, I am personally quite pleased with working both a GIANT SQUID and a JOLTIN JOE into the grid. It seems to me that the giant squid is an eminently worthy animal for the puzzle pantheon. And as for JOLTIN JOE, hey, come on, he's the Yankee Clipper, and I love the Yankees, even though we came up a little short this year!

First off, I have to confess that I know next to nothing about things with motors, not cars in general nor NASCAR specifically. In fact, I am so lame that once, when a guy at the next gas pump asked me if my car was a V-8, I just stared at him blankly for a moment, slowly realizing I had no idea whatsoever. So it should come as no great surprise that the inspiring pun here, WON'T GET FUELED AGAIN, ended up laying fallow for a couple of years after I thought of it. (Note to aspiring puzzle writers: go write this stuff down! For one thing, you will eventually forget even very good gags. Even more importantly, with the occasional memory jog from your ideas notebook, your subconscious mind at work on a puzzle can be a wonderful ally.)

Anyway, I realized — finally, at last! — there are few things more American than cars and rock and roll. And if you can put them both together, well, sorry, but you've got a hit on your hands. The rest was a long slog to find songs famous enough to fill out the idea (Da Do Run Run anyone? My Sweet Ford?) I do want to add that my personal favorite here is LIVIN' LA VEHICLE LOCA, which shouldn't work — it's not even the right number of syllables! — yet somehow does.

One surprising note to add for my fellow baby boomers: I was shocked to discover that "Break on Through," the Doors's first single and iconic to my mind, in fact bombed when it came out. It couldn't even crack the top 100 on the charts. Finally, my biggest disappointment here is the omission of the lovely ballad "Drive" by the Cars. That is simply the perfect title and group for my theme, but sadly there is absolutely no way it could go in this puzzle.