Robin Yu author page
2 puzzles by Robin Yu
with Jeff Chen comments
See the 17 answer words debuted by Robin Yu.
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| D | E | W | S | S | T | Y | S | X | S | W |
Turning puzzles have become such editorial turn-offs that Will Shortz temporarily halted them several years ago. They're today's Black Forest cake — once a classic, now a relic of a different age.
There's a reason why so many baking shows feature the German gateau in challenges, though. What better way to test one's ability than to ask bakers to put a modern spin on something so old-fashioned?
Robin interprets "spin" literally, giving us four record-like shapes showing the curved answer paths to connect phrases like WENT (OUT) THE WINDOW. How are we supposed to know that the three black squares represent OUT? From the revealer, ROLLING BLACKOUT — or more precisely, ROLLING (spinning) BLACK O-U-T.
Whenever our maestro producer, Jim Horne, has to figure out how the hell to digitally represent a constructor's artistic brainchild — that deserves high marks for novel presentation. (In print, the curved lines in the grid are looping arrows indicating direction. You can see the PDF here if you have an NYT Games Subscription).
Although it's easy to find phrases with OUT in their middles, Robin faced an additional constraint: the last letter before OUT had to match the first letter after. That's not difficult if you do some coding or RegEx, but it's much harder than a simple search like *???OUT???* (which gives you all entries containing OUT, with at least three letters on either side).
With four sets of orthogonal themers in the corners plus the central revealer, some ANON ORO UEY material is acceptable.
Robin's offering may not be the most elegant entry, but it has its modern turns. I wouldn't make a DONC bet against him in this week's Next Level Constructor competition.
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TOO LITTLE (squeeze TOO into a tiny box), TOO LATE (put that box all the way at the end). Creative way to amp up a rebus!
There are so many TOO ___ phrases out there. TOO many to count; it makes me TOO tired to think. This often leaves me feeling like the theme is (TOO long, didn't read Jeff's technical rant), but I enjoyed Robin's selection. Fun to pair TOO HOT and TOO COOL, putting them one after the other, and I have fond memories of Hammer's 2 Legit 2 Quit.
My kids will one day stop laughing at my Hammer pants. What can I say? I like baggy clothes, as tight ones are TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.
More TOO L;DR technical analysis: since this is a 16x15 grid (to allow for the even number of letters in COOLFORSCHOOL(TOO)), Robin could have gone up to 81 words. One way would have been to break up ATE AND RAN at the N. I love the color that this bonus and MONOXIDES bring to the table, but is it worth the price of PEDE headlining your puzzle?
Another factor in the decision: Robin already has a ton of short entries, pushing the boundaries at 24 3-letter words. While breaking up ATE AND RAN wouldn't increase that count, it would have added more 4-letter words, perhaps adding choppiness to the solve. Overall, I like Robin's choice, though I sure hate that PEDE is afoot.
Fun debut; I appreciate the effort to do something new with a rebus.