Mike Knobler author page
2 puzzles by Mike Knobler
with Jeff Chen comments
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| R | E | X | W | D | S | U | E | Y | D | R | Y |
BENEATH CONTEMPT physically beneath SCORN, UNDER THE WEATHER physically under MONSOON, BELOW THE SURFACE physically below FACET. I admire the consistency, three clear "under" meanings as the first words of the themers, three clear synonyms for the last words.
This theme type is in the top ten concepts people query me about, so it's hard to get excited about. I did one back in 2016 and decided that was enough, so I'm more angsty about this genre than others. If it's your first or second time seeing it, you might be much more wowed.
Dang, how did I get to be so jaded? It's a fine theme; does the job.
Stacked themers are rarely easy to work around, as I vividly remember from that 2016 puzzle. Don't be scornful of short words like SCORN — they can easily pose problems, especially if you have to fix them into a certain position. For example, no constructor ever said, "I'd love to kick off my puzzle with CST and ACHT!" You can modify the black square patterns to make that north region easier, but doing so can create issues in the middle and then the south, creating a MONSOON flood of cascading problems.
Having to deploy so many black squares in the middle leaves you with few to play with on the perimeter. I think the top two corners can be filled more cleanly, as is — if you need both ARE NOT and I AM SO, it might be time to try different long downs, no matter how snazzy JANE FONDA and TUMMYACHE are. Having more black square flexibility sure would have been nice, though.
Most of the junky fill came in the stacked sections — ACHT, NSEC, WSW, UEY — so these gloopy bits are certainly understandable. That could be worth the experience if it's one of the first times you're experiencing this type of theme. And the tightness is certainly admirable. I can't think of another possible theme answer, and that lends a touch of elegance.
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| S | T | Y | X | S | E | W | E | D | P | E | E | R |
Rot!
What?
No, not what. Wot? Rot. ROT!
ROT-X is a common encoding scheme = rotate by X places in the alphabet. Today we get words that become other words when subjected to ROT-1. HAL -> IBM is a famous one. (in the voice of the Church Lady) Well, how con-veeeeeen-ient!
I liked the NEXT PLEASE revealer hinting at ROT-1 SECRET CODE. Nice pairing there.
Just in case you missed them, here are the starred answers:
DUD -> EVE
ETSY -> FUTZ
SNEER -> TOFFS
TANKS -> UBOLT
OHMS -> PINT
HAL -> IBM
I was sure there would be longer examples, so I wrote some quick code to check. Not so! The longest example I could find was STEEDS -> TUFFET. Huh! I was all set to say that it would have been great to get "themers" that were longer than five letters. Shows what I know!
Pretty good gridwork, especially for a debut. Not a lot of pizzazz in the grid, but SIDE EFFECT and BLOODY MARY do the trick. And it's a rare debut where I can only pick out a few gluey bits — OMOO was the only one that stuck out, but ALC, CTA OLEO weren't bad.
Well, STELE and ENURE weren't great (the INURE spelling seems more common). Hmm.
Overall, I would have liked a sharper a-ha moment, perhaps searching for pairs of entries that have that coinky-dink feeling of HAL / IBM. I found SLY / TMZ with a quick glance. Would have been fun to open it up, using ROT-1 through ROT-26 to find more of these sly pairs.
But a nice debut concept nonetheless, NEXT PLEASE doing such a nice job of making things clear.