Because It's There

Got another puzzle published today in the NYT.  It got lost in the queue somehow; it was actually accepted way back in 2016.  There is always a sizeable publication lag with the New York Times, so I didn't think anything of it at first, and then I kinda forgot about it, and then about a month ago I was looking through my "Accepted" crossword folder, and I saw this puzzle's file, did the arithmetic on the modification date, and thought to myself, Wait a second... I constructed this puzzle over four years ago and it still hasn't run?  That doesn't seem right.

I emailed the editorial team about it, and they confirmed it got lost somehow, apologized, and told me it would run soon, which it did.  So, it's all good.  This is the only time that has ever happened to me.  No harm, no foul.

The puzzle itself is pretty good, in my opinion.  It has three grid-spanning entries in each direction, which locks in a lot of the fill straight-away.  In order to make this type of puzzle fun for the solver, you really have to go six-for-six on the long entries, which I think I did.*  As the constructor, you probably won't have much opportunity to work in other exciting entries (although OPEN SESAME and SCRUB NURSE aren't too shabby), so you really need to hit your spots out of the gate. 

*CATCH AS CATCH CAN, SCENE OF THE CRIME, SHIVER ME TIMBERS, BETTER GET MOVING, BACKSEAT DRIVERS, BECAUSE IT'S THERE -- not a dud in the bunch, if you ask me.

The critics seemed to like it fine.  Rex Parker called it a "typical Friday delight" (other than the somewhat obscure entry ASHLAR); Amy Reynaldo at Crossword Field gave it 3.5 stars (I'm just going to assume that's good; I'm not actually sure how that scales); Deb Amlen of WordPlay said it is "beautifully filled, with long, sparkling entries crisscrossing the grid"; and according to Jeff Chen, it is "an exemplary tic-tac-toe themeless. They don't get much better than this."

Jeff also compared it to a puzzle he once co-constructed, because he's co-constructed like 100 puzzles, so he's got one for pretty much any occasion.  At least this time he didn't tell an anecdote about how he got the idea for my puzzle before me, but decided it wasn't good enough to actually make.

(No shade toward Jeff, by the way.  I like him.  I mean, I 've never met him before, just email, but he seems like a cool guy.  He's a good constructor, and his site is a tremendous resource for the crossword puzzle community.  I do find his writeups to be on the humblebraggy side, but I think that's just his style, and I still like reading them.  I've said this before and I'll say it again: One of the best things about the crossword community is the diversity of character.  Each of the four commentators I've named above are very different, but I really appreciate all of their sites for what they are.  It's just cool to have crossword puzzle voices.  Back when I first started getting puzzles published, I'd ask my parents if they liked them, and their inevitable "yes" would be the only feedback I'd get.)

The comments from the solvers are mostly positive as well.  Some people, like Rex, thought ASHLAR is too obscure, which it probably is.  I mean, it's a real thing used by people who know a lot about masonry, but apparently it's mostly unknown to the general population.  It's almost impossible to get an accurate gauge on this type of thing in advance.  I didn't know ASHLAR before seeing it in a word list, but I'm just one person (and I'm very wary of assuming my knowledge or lack thereof maps nicely onto other people's knowledge or lack thereof).  Short of conducting a huge poll, how can you really tell what the typical solver will know and what they won't know?  You can Google it, but as ASHLAR demonstrates, the results are often ambiguous.

Others complained about Nick SABAN, crossing NETS ("Court suspensions?") and SEAL ("Close up").  Because of the clues, some thought it was LETS (even though this in no way works) and NEAR (which could work), respectively.  Considering the latter also crosses the perhaps-not-super-well-known model ALEK Wek, this could be a very thorny area if you didn't know Mr. SABAN.  And if that was you: sorry not sorry.  Nick SABAN is probably the most famous active college football coach and has been for over a decade.  He is in a bunch of commercials and had a cameo in The Blind Side.  His name in quotes gets nearly 5 million Google hits.  If you've never heard of him, fine.  There's nothing wrong with not knowing who he is.*  It's just not the puzzle's fault is all.

*I sometimes wish I didn't know who he was.  Despite being a huge sports fan, I'm very turned off by college football, because of the whole grossly underpaid workforce/grossly overpaid management thing, and Nick SABAN is kinda the face of this messed up system.  

On the topic of sports in puzzles, one commenter at WordPlay (link above) wrote:

the puzzle played as something written by a very self-satisfied male ego... Miss me with those sport coaches/players...

Deb came to my defense, which I every much appreciate (Deb is awesome), even though I couldn't care less about this type of comment.  It just doesn't bother me.  And the thing is, in this case, by being too "woke" (excuse the term, I couldn't think of a better one), the commenter, it seems to me, is actually reinforcing outdated gender norms.  As Deb points out in her response, many women follow and know a lot about sports.  It's not accurate to associate sports coaches/players with a self-satisfied male ego.

The landscape has changed (and is continuing to evolve) concerning women in sports -- and that's a good thing!  My three favorite young(ish) sports analysts are all women -- Mina Kimes, Charlotte Wilder, and Meg Rowley -- and I could probably name a dozen more off the top of my head whose work I really admire.  (Cynthia Frelund, Lindsey Adler, Ramona Shelburne, Mallory Rubin, so on and so forth.)  All these women are excellent at their sports jobs, and I guarantee you they all know who Nick SABAN is.

Okay, that's all I got for today.

This Is 40

Got another puzzle published today.  My 40th in the New York Times.  That’s a pretty good number.  (Somebody called me "prolific" in a blog comment today, which I enjoyed.)  My goal is to get to 100.  I probably won’t make it, but I should at least get to half of it.  Fifty is a nice round number too.  The problem is themelesses, my bread-and-butter (exactly half my total publications), have gotten much harder to publish.  I had one denied just a few days that, according to the rejection note, would have been accepted a few years ago.

If I was a really good Sunday constructor, on the other hand, I would be in better shape, as I’ve heard supply is relatively low for such puzzles.  (It shows too; I’ve been surprised at how basic a lot of the Sunday themes are now.  There have even been a few themeless Sundays.)  But, I’m not a really good Sunday constructor.  I had one accepted over 15 years ago and nothing since.  I think I’ve submitted four other Sundays through the years and none of them has come particularly close.  I can't quite seem to get the hang of it.  I actually like working with the bigger grid, but Sundays often contain a visual element, and such puzzles have never been my cup of tea (solving nor construction), or they rely on puns, which are always super subjective.  In the pun puzzles I’ve had the rejected, the entries I liked the most were often the ones singled out by the editorial team as being the weakest. So... c’est la vie, I guess.

As for this puzzle, it got mostly good remarks from the critics.  It didn’t get Jeff Chen’s weekly POW! rating, but it was a “definite POW! contender,” and really, what more can you ask for in life?  Crossword Fiend Amy Renaldo proclaimed: “What a fun themeless!”  And Rex Parker liked the top part of it, but not the middle part (as much), because some of the entries didn’t hit his ear squarely.  There’s not really anything I can (or should) do about that, as everything he mentions is a perfectly cromulent, standalone phrase.

For example, of ACCIDENTS HAPPEN he says, "I never hear that sentiment expressed quite that way."  But that exact phrase gets nearly 300,000,000 million Google (about five times as many as Rex’s preferred variant “accidents will happen”), and it’s also the name of a 2009 Geena Davis, which, I didn’t know existed before today.

He’s also picks a nit with HEAD TRIP, averring they’re just called “trips.”  To that I say: Obviously, he is not an Eminem fan.

I'm like a HEAD TRIP to listen to, ‘cause I'm only givin' you
Things you joke about with your friends inside your livin' room
The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of y'all
And I don't gotta be false or sugarcoat it at all

(I copied these from a lyrics site, but I could have written them from memory.  And I'm not a huge Eminem fan either.  For me, this song fell perfectly in that time in one's life, age 23 or so, when you consume pop culture without even trying, through osmosis.)

One thing I might have missed the marked on, however, is AGGRO, which is clued as “Belligerent, in British slang”.  According to several blog commenters, at least one of whom claims to actually be British, AGGRO is used almost exclusively as a noun: The poor pub owner had to deal with all the AGGRO of the drunken football hooligans.  So, the clue probably should have said “belligerence” instead of “belligerent.”  Or maybe it should have said “Aussie slang” instead of “British slang.”  I’m pretty sure I heard AGGRO used as an adjective  -- no need to be so AGGRO, mate -- during my year Down Under.  But that was a decade ago, so I might be misremembering.

Overall, the public seemed to like this puzzle just fine.  Blog comments were mostly positive, and the reception to it on Twitter was… I don’t know, because I haven’t been on Twitter for a long time.  I also deleted my Facebook account.  I’m way less connected than I would like to be, but I’m also way less anxious and distracted, so it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.  I’m not going to go on Twitter again until after the election, and if Biden loses, I probably won’t go back on until 2025… assuming there is a 2025.

NYT Spelling Bee: Retired

It was a fun while it lasted (two weeks).  I might still put up a recap once in a while, but probably not.  I wasn't really feeling the daily Spelling Bee recaps.  I tried it; it didn't stick; so on to the next thing.  And that next thing is a "healthier" lifestyle that includes a large-scale reduction in screen time.  To that end...

NYT Spelling Bee: HAYNECK

Grid:

My Genius list:

Real pangram: HACKNEY

Fake pangram: HAYNECK

A cross between a hayseed and a redneck.

Difficulty: Challenging

HACKNEY went in straightaway, but I got stuck on the level before Genius for much longer than usual.  Finally, I saw ENHANCE which pushed me over the edge.  I couldn't find many long words (only three above five letters).  I'm not sure if others don't exist or if I just missed them. 

Olio: HACKNEY, qua adjective, is one of those words that means the same thing if you add -ED to its end.  My four-year-old is big on these.  He says things like The door is opened instead of The door is open.

NYT Spelling Bee: GUARDVAN

Grid:

My Genius list:

Real pangram: VANGUARD

Fake pangram: GUARDVAN

A usually unmarked van on patrol.

(This is a cop-out fake pangram, but I couldn't come with anything better.  That V does not go well with these letters.  In fact, I didn't find a single valid word other than VANGUARD that uses the V.  I wonder if there even is one.)

Difficulty: Easy

VANGUARD fell instantly, and then I steadily filled in the rest, until the two variants of GRANDDAD pushed me to Genius level.  I was a little slowly than usual, but that's mainly because I was wrestling my youngest son while I was playing.  He's little enough so that I can keep him at bay with one arm, and play Spelling Bee with the other -- multitasking.

Olio: A tweet from puzzle editor Sam Ezersky:

DURAG has become a topic of discussion concerning inclusivity in word games, because it has yet to appear in the NYT crossword puzzle, even though it seems to be the favored spelling among people who might actually wear a DURAG... and most everybody else.  (It gets almost five times as many Google hits as its counterpart DORAG, which has appeared in nearly two dozen NYT crossword puzzles.)

I didn't even see DURAG in this puzzle.  However, I've added it to my personal word list.  I'm still debating whether or not I should delete DORAG or keep it.  I'll probably delete it.  I typically eschew the usage of less-common variants in my grid.

For what it's worth, Blogger puts a squiggly red line under both DURAG and DORAG, but I think it's anti-inclusivity -- literally.  It also does this for inclusivity.

NYT Spelling Bee: DAMPFUL

Grid:

My Genius list:

Real pangram: MUDFLAP

Fake pangram: DAMPFUL

An longer way to say damp.

Difficulty: Very easy

I flew through this one, reaching Genius level in no more than five minutes.  I feel like I've seen this pangram in previous puzzle, which probably helped.

Olio: I realized I didn't know how to spell APPALL.  I tried APPAUL, APALL, and APPAL, before I finally hit on the correct spelling.  That's weird, considering it's a normal six-letter word.  If you gave me a test on those, I bet I'd get close to 100%.

NY Spelling Bee: LARKDAMN

Grid:

My Genius list:

Real pangram: LANDMARK

Fake pangram: LARKDAMN

Any of several plants having heads with ray flowers, so named because they often act as an allergen for Old World songbirds.

Difficulty: Medium

I did most of this on paper again (trying to not stare at a screen so much when my kids are around), so my timing was off a bit, but I think this was mostly medium.  I got halfway to Genius level very quickly on the the strength of the pangram and a bunch of four-letterers.  After a brief breather, I then powered home hitting a bunch of cool longer words (ARMADA, MADMAN, RAMADA).  This one was fun.

Olio: MAMA but no DADA?