Yaakov Bendavid author page

I like puzzles with kooky interpretations of real-life phrases. My favorite was STORE IN A DRY PLACE, "store" getting a neat change from a verb to a noun. NO MONEY DOWN was also funny, the idea of advertising free pillow stuffing pretty amusing.

Two small quibbles:

1. I could have done with SOME added to ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. It just doesn't feel complete to me without the SOME, and to kick off the puzzle with this one doesn't feel very strong.
2. INTEL INSIDE and NO MONEY DOWN feel out of place to me. The rest of the themers feel so much tighter — all things you'd see in or around a packaging box. Mixing a specific and a general marketing slogan into the theme made it feel unfocused and not as specific as I would have liked.

For a 138-word puzzle, Yaakov executes nicely. I'd usually expect a dozen or so pieces of minor crossword glue given this challenging feat, but I only noticed around half of that (KPS, LALA, YET TO, TER, etc.). And there was a good amount of longer fill that spiced up the puzzle — BON MOT, TIME OUT, DEADPAN, LOW POINT, SPUTNIK, etc.

I also enjoyed the challenge of the SW and the NE corners, spaces as big as you'd usually see in a themeless. Not surprisingly, these were the last two areas to fall for me, and I appreciated the battle. MANS MAN / SABOTAGE / PROMOTER / BANDOLERO is a great quartet of answers, and to hold them together with just STOL (short takeoff and landing) is awfully nice.

Usually I don't like it when constructors try to dip below the 140-word maximum because of the prices the solver has to pay, but I liked it today.

Themers today are phrases with their F's changed to D's, thus giving "passing grades." At just 134 words and six themers, this is another one in Will's experiment of mashing up a Sunday-size puzzle with a themeless. It's hard enough to create a Sunday-size puzzle with 140 words, and SO much harder to reduce to even 138 words. Get down to 136, and you have to be a grid ninja in order to pull it off. 134... there are few Sunday puzzles in Will's tenure that have achieved this level. Super hard to do.

The theme itself is pretty entertaining — "wacky" phrases are often going to be hit or miss depending on one's sense of humor. DAIRY GODMOTHER amused me (especially with Yaakov's original clue!), as did SCIENCE DICTION, but the rest I was plus/minus on. It seemed to me with a simple letter swap, there could be many more humorous options. And TWO DIVES FOR A TEN felt like it was an outlier, in that this poor themer still failed, with its F. I would have preferred all F's changed to D's, but I don't think it's a huge deal; there's no law against it. I'm sure some people will get their knickers in a bunch about this supposed travesty though. Mrrrrrow! (That's supposed to be the sound of a hissy-fit)

More notable to me today was the longer fill. Great use of the longest slots, BED OF ROSES being particularly nice. Even the unexpected COMO ESTA (apparently it's used in more formal situations, whereas COMO ESTAS is more informal) was really nice to uncover. Add in LOVE NEST, BLONDE ALE, and ORANGE OIL and you have some great stuff.

I wonder if sticking to 136 or even 138 words would have been better though, as some of the longer slots had so much more potential. LEFT SIDES feels pretty arbitrary, LOOSE TEA doesn't seem nearly as nice to me as LOOSELEAF TEA, and JILTERS could have been so much more. Makes me wonder what could have been if LOOSE TEA had been broken at the S, or JILTERS was broken in half (and their respective sections refilled).

Finally, my favorite clue gives an insider's nod to crosswords: "Iglu and yoghurt, e.g." for VARIANTS. Here's to you, EMEER and TIPI!

I appreciate the experimentation; it's an important way to try pushing the boundaries. I think I still want either more themers or more clever wordplay-type clues in my Sunday puzzles, but the variety allows me to better clarify and understand my own tastes.