Robert Seminara author page
2 puzzles by Robert Seminara
with Jeff Chen comments
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Strong phrases hiding today's theme, ROFL. Hard not to like a puzzle featuring ROLLING PINS being swung while on LAUGHING GAS. Dare I say, Stooge-esque? (That should definitely be a real word.) I like when a puzzle amuses me, and this one did just that.
Rob brings up an interesting point regarding ON vs. ON THE. I actually had a different issue at first, hitching upon seeing ON THE grouped into one phrase, rather than split out into two (using a total of five themers). Heresy! Inconsistent! Blog rants! But then I realized the cleverness of this method, covering all his bases, letting the solver interpret the O as either ON or ON THE; their choice. And with the awesome phrase ON THE DOWN LOW, I realized that 1.) it's perfect and 2.) so aren't me.
Normally I don't mind cheater squares one bit, but today the pair gave me a pause. That black square below MCGRAW chokes off the east section so much, leaving only one way in. Same goes for the square above RASHES with the west. Perhaps this wouldn't have been so noticeable if the rest of the puzzle had a bit of a segmented feeling — the NW and SE seem like closets in a house layout, and the NE and SW could be little panic rooms. Take a look at the grid to the left — removing that one set of black squares does so much to let the grid breathe.
And boy, wouldn't it have been nice to have ROFL be at the very end of the puzzle so as to better hide the theme? Or even if there were a symmetrical entry to ROFL. Hmm, now if we could just think of something good … obviously not NYT appropriate, but I can rarely resist wikipedia pages featuring lolcats.
Just a tad too much AGA, SEN / ENS, CMI, OCT / ESTER glue for me today, but overall, a fun theme concept with strong theme phrases.
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