Sunday 5/25/2008

I haven't received any responses to my request for interviewees yet. Comments on Sunday's puzzles behind the cut.


New York Times

Author: Elizabeth Gorski
Title: "Spy Glass"
Theme rating: 0

It was an OK idea. I didn't like that IAN FLEMING had to be put in there to get the lengths to match up, and the randomly-placed JAMES doesn't really improve my impression of the theme. The main thrust (the six people who played James Bond) is pretty straightforward, and seems more suited to a smaller-scale puzzle. The picture formed by the seven letters in the circles isn't enough of an addition, for me, to make this puzzle feel special. The title was very nice though.

A lot of people are praising this puzzle as a masterpiece of constructional skill. It was well constructed, though there were a few bad entries; however, the theme here was not as demanding as it seems most people think it is. The main theme entries had lengths 13/10/11/13/11/10/13, plus 7 for MARTINI and 5 for JAMES, as well as the 7*2 circled letters (times two because they were "triple-checked"). In total, that's a theme-square count of 107 letters. The previous Sunday puzzle (Brendan Emmett Quigley's pinball-themed offering) had theme entry lengths of 15/14/17/11/11/11/17/14/15, for a total of 125 theme squares. There was some extra care required in this week's puzzle because the placement of the circled squares (and, to a lesser extent, the entry MARTINI) was slightly constrained, but still IMO last week's puzzle was probably more difficult to build.

I should clarify that I don't think that because theme A is less demanding than theme B that theme A is worse; I gave it a 0 rating because I just didn't feel like the gimmick really jelled. I liked the non-theme fill entries GRECO-ROMAN, GOLF COURSE, CARGO PANTS, SWIM TEAM, C.S. LEWIS. There were some clever clues here, and some good trivia too; {Name-drop, maybe?} doesn't really work for me for ERASE.

(Reviews of the CS, LAT, and WSJ to come, as well as the favorite clue and NDP lists and my picks for top puzzles of the week.)