Michael Shteyman author page

Mini-theme! Sort of. ELEVEN hints at VETERAN'S DAY, because … ah, it's 11/11 on the calendar. And there are ELEVEN answers of ELEVEN letters. It's not my favorite mini-theme ever — I much prefer ones that have maybe two or three long answers slyly connected, with that connection up to you to figure out. But it mostly works.

Some beautiful phrases in those featured ELEVENs, TAKE A NUMBER, PEST CONTROL, DRAFT ANIMAL, MARE NOSTRUM! The fact that "mare" is used in many moon location names, because ancient folks thought there were seas on the moon = trivia gold!

ACCOUNT FOR, TIRE BALANCE (you balance your tires, and you might get a "tire balancing," but a TIRE BALANCE?), HORROR FLICK ("horror movie" sounds so much better to me) … well, they do their job of filling out those ELEVEN-letter slots, if not adding much.

PUSSY GALORE … I used to think that was hilarious when I was younger. Not sure why not anymore. Maybe the joke feels dated now. Or *gasp* I've grown up?

(Nah.)

ELEVEN-letter entries make life tough on crossword constructors, because that length forces a ton of three-letter entries (15 squares wide - 11 letter entry - 1 black square = 3 remaining). That's not a problem in itself unless the three-letter entry count gets too high.

These shorties can mess with solving flow because 1.) the solver has to change to a new entry very frequently, making for a choppy feel, 2.) most three-letter entries have been used so much in crosswords that it's hard to come up with a fresh clue, and 3.) in order to make these fresh clues themeless-level difficult, they sometimes veer into "annoyingly difficult" territory.

Take RMN, for example. It's not a great entry in itself since Nixon wasn't known as RMN (compare to Johnson / LBJ). And when you're stuck in a puzzle, and you hit the ridiculously vague [Presidential inits.] … maddening!

Not every three-letter word will exhibit one of these problems — UFO as a subject of some conspiracies is both figure-out-able and fun — but when you have 26 (!) of them, you're bound to get some pain. I think somewhere in the teens is about as high as a constructor should go.

It's a concept I haven't seen before, and I like that. But I wanted a much bigger a-ha moment to make up for the costs I had to pay as a solver.

THROUGH THE YEARS, BUTTERNUT SQUASH, DON'T ARGUE WITH ME all share the fact that they STRETCH THE TRUTH, i.e., they contain the letters T R U T H, (quasi) spread out.

Interesting choice to run a themed puzzle on a Saturday. The theme entries are all colorful phrases, so that was good. Toss in a BASS SOLO and a PASS RUSH, and you have the start of a delightful themeless. But it's tough to work in many other memorable feature entries when you seed a grid with four 15-letter ones — they take up so much real estate.

I often debate if I'm too focused on quantity over quality in themelesses. Sometimes a fantastic 15-letter entry is all it takes for an entire puzzle to stand out in my mind. Heck, even a shorter one like BABY GOT BACK can do it for me.

But it's so tough for me to lavish praise over a themeless with just six great entries. Yes, some MOJO, LIMBO, MOHAWK, the ORPHAN trope in young adult books, that's helpful. And I did like learning what LOUCHE means. I'm going to start using it! (Probably incorrectly. Or I'll misremember it and accidentally insult someone. At least that'll be my story.)

But then when you factor in some ANET, OPEL, PASO, POLA, RCPT, STN … hmm.

Overall, it's a good starting idea to stretch letters across phrases. I can see how it wouldn't work great as a themed puzzle though, as repetitively finding the letters T R U T H — with two letters always stuck together — didn't create a great a-ha moment for me.

Will has a tough job. Not sure what I would have done with this one. Wouldn't quite work as a themed puzzle, nor does it soar as a themeless.

TRIPLE OVERTIMES = entries with three OT rebus squares apiece. There was something so pleasing about the OT x OT x OT alternation in DOT DOT DOT and HOT TO TROT. Very fun.

GOT TO THE OTHER SIDE … this one didn't hit for me, as it felt like a truncated punchline. With four featured themers, it would have been great to get a little more zip to this one.

A bunch of nice bonus fill, PUMP IRON, SALSA DIP, I THINK NOT, OTTER POPS all excellent. I liked that those last two included some of the OT squares; a nice touch. Often, the crossing answers to rebus themers can be a bit neutral to dull (OTTOS or OTROS, e.g.) so I enjoy when a rebus constructor goes the extra mile to work in snazzy crossing answers.

I finished with an error, AMOCA / OTRAS instead of AMOCO / OTROS. Peeved me at first, but I think it's probably fair — more my being careless than anything. OTRAS / OTROS is ambiguous, but AMOCO was a big company after all … and the CO = company should have been a dead giveaway. SHOOT!

Some blips in the short fill in IGOT OYE ESTS ZBAR (if I as a mechanical engineer struggles with this …), causing me some AGITA. Not unexpected given all the crossing themers.

The only place that I thought really suffered was the lower right, which Mike already called out. Not surprising given the TRIPLE OVERTIME / HOT TO TROT crossing causing so much inflexibility. ESTS / OTTOS / OTROS / AMOCO / RECT ... oof. Perhaps moving the three black squares at the end of FLASH down one row would have helped, but that could have easily created more problems.

As a basketball fan, I liked the solve. Would have been nice to get an extra layer of a-ha, but I'm not sure what that could have been.

AT&T themers, ATLANTIC TIME, ATHLETIC TRAINER, and ATOMIC THEORY. Since "initialism" type puzzles have been done so much over the years, I appreciate when there's something extra. Certainly harder to find AT* T* phrases than just A* T* phrases, for example. I particularly liked ATOMIC THEORY, as it's so evocative, making me think of people all the way back to the ancient Greeks trying to figure out what makes up our world.

ATLANTIC TIME is decent. Not snazzy to my ear; more workmanlike. ATHLETIC TRAINER is a real phrase, but how many times have you heard your friends say they're going to their ATHLETIC TRAINER vs. to their trainer? (The answer to both is statistically probably "zero," but you get my point.)

I wondered for a long time if I was missing something. Michael is so prolific, having covered every day of the week over his 52 puzzles, that this one felt thin. Just three themers and a short revealer of A T AND T (I'm souring on these entries that are never written out like this in real life) … why not more?

It turns out that it's not as easy to come up with AT* T* phrases as I thought. There's ATTACK TRANSPORT … ATLANTA TOWNSHIP? Even if that were crossworthy, it duplicates ATLANTIC. ATHEISM … TEST? ATTIC ... TILE? Now I see why Michael stuck to just three.

And I did like the bonuses the extra space allowed for MIKE TYSON, LA-Z-BOY / SPITZ, ZIPLOC, even HOODOO. (I can see younger folks asking, "What the heck is a LOCAL CALL?")

I wasn't hot on the TACIT / LORAIN crossing. I always get TACIT / TACET mixed up, and LORAEN looked equally plausible. SKODA I can take, as the crossings are reasonable, although I would have liked some neat trivia in the clue to make it seem more interesting, just like with KB TOYS. Didn't know that one, but I liked how the clue steered me toward the hard-to-get KB.

Given the low theme density, it was a little surprising to see the OSS, IMET, QTR, APT NO kind of crossword glue from someone so experienced, but I did appreciate all the snappy bonus entries.

Very nice construction. Tough to achieve theme interlock, and four crossing themers often creates difficulty in filling a grid. Michael goes all the way down to 70 words, a really tough challenge when four of your themers are locked into place in a fixed skeleton.

And what a great start to the puzzle. That all-important 1-Across slot was so confusing — what could possibly end in –EDR? ROLLEDR looks so crazy awesome in the grid. Well done.

Interesting bit of trivia for ONE EARED. I wasn't sure the entry felt in the language, but I really enjoyed learning that factoid, that the praying mantis only has one ear. Apparently it's the only animal known to normally only have one ear?

With such a gridwork challenge, it's normal to see a few gluey bits. I'm not a fan of AMEBA / AMEBAS / AMEBAE, as I had only seen AMOEBA / AMOEBAS / AMOEBAE in the real world before doing crosswords. It's something I've learned to live with as a solver, but I do go out of my way as a constructor to avoid it. Not sure why it's evolved (pun intended) to not require the dreaded "variant" tag, as Merriam Webster lists AMEBA as a variant of AMEOBA.

And Trevor ARIZA — do something crossworthy already so all of us constructors can feel fine using you in puzzles! How about trying for my record, which will be "the first 110-year old to play for an NBA team." Steph Curry, your great-great-great-grandsons (and daughters maybe even!) better get ready for competition.

Not sure if I'm missing some layer of cleverness on the theme? I do enjoy the interlock with DES MOINES IOWA serving as a backbone to the puzzle — shout out to Iowans! — but I would have liked some more connection between those four capitals (besides that they locked together nicely).

Finally, a delightful clue for MONTHS. [Their days are numbered], indeed.

Whew! Once in a while a puzzle comes along to break all sorts of conventions, and one way or another, it stimulates creativity through both strong positive and negative reactions. Who knows if today's will be looked upon ten years from now as the one that spawned an entire movement using heavy bars? Jim and I (mostly Jim) fixed up the puzzle to reflect the print version, as the Across Lite file seemed not nearly as elegant as print. Hopefully the time Jim and I (okay, 99.9% Jim) spent gives you a nice post-solve experience. And make sure to try the special HTML 5 online solving tool Jim programmed! Or if you're on an iPad or iPhone, you might try out Puzzazz's app.

I enjoyed the idea behind this one, seeded by oil and water not mixing. Perfect for George, who's a professor of chemistry! I had a very rough time with the central entry, because I dropped in LIKE OIL AND WATER with just a few letters and refused to believe it could be anything else. "LIKE WATER AND OIL" actually googlizes better than "LIKE OIL AND WATER" so perhaps this was just my issue (I was glad to hear that George and Michael actually started with OIL AND WATER, which makes me feel less crazy). Also possibly just my issue: the way the top and bottom interlocked, it felt like the oil and the water halves actually *were* mixing (in the central row). Hmm.

Very tough to pull off this construction. Not only do you have the unusual quasi-non-mixing of the top and bottom halves of the puzzle, but there's the rebus factor. George and Michael do well in some of those entries, the lovely HOT WATER BAG and ET VOILA, notably. Rebus entries work best for me when they allow the constructor to work in something unusual, something not typically seen in normal puzzles. But with dense rebus puzzles (or rebus puzzles with high additional constraints), some entries suffered. LOW WATER sounds a bit funny to my ear, and eau de toilette is so much more elegant than TOILET WATER and its slight ick factor.

Lots of good long fill in this one, and the highlight of the puzzle for me: the wonderful clue on MAITRE D'. I was stuck on "two-seater" as a type of car, and was so frustrated I couldn't work my way into that section. But when MAITRE D' (which already looks awesomely weird as an entry) appeared, what a sense of relief + the pleasure of experiencing a great clue. Well done.