Zachary Spitz author page

Adding to our Schrödinger list! TV SPOTS is a great way to justify a T/V duality. Some fantastic finds, too, both George Washington CARVER and Jimmy CARTER famous peanut growers. The clue is so specific, yet it fits both people so perfectly. This might be my favorite Schrödinger example of all time!

Others weren't as spot-on. Schrödingers ought to point equally well to both entries, and something like [Designs] hints more strongly at INTENTIONS. You can make a case for INVENTIONS as "designs," but it's more indirect. I filled in INTENTIONS without a second thought. Toss in [Some accommodations] being HOTELS, where's the ambiguity? It would be odd to clue HOVELS in another crossword without saying something like "decrepit."

Similar with TARNISH/VARNISH. They both do fit [Certain outer coating], but TARNISH in another crossword usually would be clued with a synonym of "dull."

Tightness is another key to generating that amazing CARVER/CARTER effect. Some libertarians are both ANTI TAX and ANTI VAX, but "things that libertarians believe" is an awfully broad category. If someone asked you to name another peanut farmer besides CARVER and CARTER, who would you say?

Even though not every themer hit the Schrödinger ideal, I still had a lot of fun because of Zach's fill and clues. CARTOONIST as [One drawing lots?] is a great misdirect, from "drawing lots" to "drawing a lot." I'm not well versed in Japanese mythology or religion, but TREE GODS pulled out some fun memories of fairy tales I used to read as a kid.

I stopped watching "Curb Your Enthusiasm" because I needed something less grating, but LEON is one of the reasons I keep going back for random episodes. JB Smoove is brilliant.

A bit too much glue bogged me down, the ALEE ESTE GTI KOO NES RCS stuff that editors call out, but it all was minor enough that the colorful fill and spot-on revealer far outweighed it all.

PO BOX giving rationale as to why PO are smashed together into rebus squares = solid concept.

I like it when rebus puzzles do a little something extra to get noticed, and this one did that — so many entries contained two POs. POLAR OPPOSITES, SPORTS REPORTER were great, but to get PORPOISE, POMPOUS, HOP ON POP, and even POMPOM was pretty cool.

Especially neat to see the two POs in PORPOISE straddle SPORTS REPORTER. Such a tight job of packing!

Made me wonder — PO is a common enough letter combination, is there any phrase that contains three of them? The only one I could come up with was HIPPOPOTAMUS POOL. I *think* it's a real thing. But I'd have enough hesitation about it that I certainly wouldn't anchor a puzzle with it.

Well executed grid. Stuffing 14 instances of a rebus square is tough, no matter how common the letters are. I like Ori and Zach's decision to use the max allowable word count (78), to deliver a grid that's super clean. I picked out the LALA and SOTO gluey bits as I solved, and LOLO felt a bit esoteric (AMAL too), but that's a nice and low tally for this level of construction difficulty.

It's hard to blow minds with rebuses these days, considering how many have been done over the years, but I appreciated the craftsmanship in packing so many POs in today.

FYI, 14 is nowhere near the record for sheer quantity of rebus squares. But if you did a histogram, I'm fairly sure it'd be on the high side of average.

Rebus, with four CORNER / OFFICEs: BOX office, POST office, OVAL office, HOME office.

Zach produced a nice and clean grid, with just some minor IMET, ENO (not sure he's really crossworthy), NCO, with some great bonuses in LIONS DEN, SAFE HARBOR, YAKITORI, AMBIANCE. Made for smooth sailing all the way through the grid.

Well, except for that NRA / MACLEOD crossing. It would have been perfectly fine with a straightforward clue for NRA, but [F.D.R. created program …] = the National … Recovery Administration? Yikes. I ended up with MCCLEOD, which seemed perfectly fine, as did NRC. I'll own up when I think the mistake is my fault, but today ... no bueno!

The grid does end up pretty segmented — the SW is only connected to the rest of the puzzle by two answers, GROOMER and RED CENT — but it seems like a reasonable trade-off in order to end up with the smooth final product. It's so difficult to work with a big swath of white space like that in the SW, even more so when you have two crossing answers (FDA APPROVAL / OVALTINE) fixed into place. The segmentation is definitely understandable — sometimes, you need to compromise a bit to create a quality overall grid.

Love that DEFOE clue, the author doing work on Friday. (That's the character Friday from "Robinson Crusoe," not the day of the week.)

Given that we've seen a ton of rebuses over the years, I like when they distinguish themselves by including some additional creative layer. I enjoyed that Zach chose four different types of office, rather than just cramming the word OFFICE into four corner boxes, but I would have liked something more.

ADDED NOTE: Reader Sean MACLEOD tells me that Mac and Mc are very common Scottish last name starts, but MCC is almost always a misspelling. Thanks for expanding my world view, Sean!

★ Ha! I love it when the Gray Lady surprises me, this time kicking off with the slangy AMAZEBALLS. Maybe it just seems naughty to me, or it's often paired with other off-color language? In any case, I'm a big fan, as people in my writing group use it frequently in our discussions.

I can understand how other solvers might not approve — or worse yet, not be able to achieve a correct solve, given the ATTU crossing — but it's hard to imagine something like IMAZEBALLS looking right. Still, I wonder if I'll hear grumblings.

Very good craftsmanship in construction, a ton of sizzling long entries without much crossword glue. I did hitch when filling in ATTU at 1-Down — tough bit of trivia that I'm not sure all educated solvers should be expected to know — but just getting a little of CKS (checks?) and ANON shows careful consideration in the grid. Much appreciated; lent a feeling of elegance.

I felt like there were a couple of long slots leaving potential on the table — DATE SUGAR and IN ONE SENSE aren't as strong as DRAG RACING and IMMOLATES, for me, e.g. — but given that Zach started off with 16 long slots, a few neutral entries still means that we get assets well into the double-digits. Great stuff.

And that bottom stack, hatchi matchi! PLUTOMANIA wasn't familiar, but what a neat word to learn. Along with SEX SCANDAL atop TWEETSTORM = such fodder for active imaginations. I'm usually one for more positive, uplifting entries in crosswords, but that corner is so evocative. Love it.

I didn't get the SIGMA CHI clue — apparently, there's a song called "Sweethearts of SIGMA CHI"? I love a wickedly clever clue, but this one went way over my head. SIGMA CHI is still a pretty good entry, but the clue lessened its impact for me.

The only entry I hesitated on was SO BAD. It felt like a long partial to me, but perhaps that's what the kids say these days? Or is it SO BAD to try to disguise an ugly partial?

I dug this fresh themeless. I imagine there will be some AMAZEBALLS haters, but to me, the jam-packed ton of colorful entries and careful workmanship wins it my POW!

★ UNITED NATIONS used as rationale to smash two countries together. I've seen this theme type before — my wife and I even did a puzzle like this years ago, also using country pairs — but the added touches of 1.) UNITED NATIONS as a revealer and 2.) country pairs *generally* near to each other were great.

I particularly liked SWITZERLANDORRA. Not only does it roll off the tongue as a portmanteau, but the two countries are nearly adjacent (separated by France). It would have been perfect if there had been abutting countries sharing this type of letter overlap, but that would be too perfect.

If only country namers had been crossword fans …

I also liked how easy PAKISTANZANIA was to say. This one wasn't quite as good, though, since the two countries are from different continents. But I liked tying them together through the Indian Ocean.

NICARAGUATEMALA … it's great that they're so geographically close, but the portmanteau was much harder to pronounce. But it still works, especially given that [Central American bloc?] works so well.

I appreciated Zachary and Diane's efforts to work extras into the fill. I expect at least a pair of long bonus entries in a four-themer puzzle, and to get more than that is great. Love SIGN HERE and LENTANDO (I played in orchestras for 20+ years). LAST NAME is pretty good. STONERS was funny with its [High achievers?] wordplay. GAZE INTO was more neutral for me — add-a-preposition is rarely exciting — but tying it to a crystal ball was fun.

Short fill was strong, too. Some early-week solvers might have a tough time with AKIO Morita and AKIRA Kurosawa, but both are crossworthy. AKIO Morita might be more on the cusp, but thankfully all the crossings are straightforward.

The only dabs of crossword glue were the minor ENC and the less minor OLIO. Nice work, especially considering they went all the way down to 72 words, making it possible to include nice mid-length fill like DOMINOS, WOE IS ME, HOLIDAY, GENTILE.

So neat to hear about crosswords engrossing an entire family — ARE YOU LISTENING, TESS AND JAKE CHEN? I was already leaning toward giving this one the POW!, and that put it over the edge.

I used to worry when I saw a new name on a byline — sometimes that meant we'd get a pretty rough grid. Even if the theme was fantastic, I find it difficult to fully applaud a crossword if the surrounding fill is too rocky.

Thankfully, things seem to be changing, and Zach's debut is right along these lines. It's not an earth-shattering grid — a 76-worder without much long fill — but wow, was it smooth. Where it really shined was in the NE and SW areas, both larger than average chunks of white space. Sure, some people object to HST and OTOE in the upper right (they're seen much, much more in crosswords than in real life), but I don't mind them. To work in that X and J so smoothly — without much crossword glue at all — is really nice work.

Similar results in the SW. R AND D will rankle some, as it's never seen as anything but R&D in real life, but I don't mind it much. And love the shout-out to TARO cake, which is delicious when freshly made.

The theme is "exclamations of delight wackily interpreted," i.e. "It's breathtaking!" for ASTHMA ATTACK. I've seen the first three often enough in this usage that they didn't feel very interesting, but the fourth — "It's remarkable!" for DRY ERASE BOARD piqued my interest. It unfortunately feels like an outlier, since it does something very different by twisting "remarkable" into "re-markable," but to me it's far and away the most delightful. I wish Zach had built the entire theme around this idea, going "full punny" on us. Bring it on!

TYE and LOD are tough entries to fill in, but they were given fair crossings … so that I didn't need to re-mark them as I solved.

(rimshot)

Very nice grid execution. And for those of us "The Office" fans out there, how awesome was that clue for JOB TITLE? Dwight K. Schrute, Assistant to the Regional Manager. Not Assistant Regional Manager, mind you.