I remember a time - back when I first committed to doing this crazy thing where we write reviews of the NYT xword daily - yes, I remember, I say, a time when a quad-stack would have sent me into paroxysms of despair. We haven't seen many of them since Martin Ashwood-Smith took his leave from constructing. I was under the impression that Mr. Shortz had outlawed them.
But here is a really top example of the genre. There are seven 15-letter answers in the grid, four in the top stack, one in the middle, and two at the bottom. That's a little more manageable than a dual quad-stack, for sure. I rank the answers in the following order:
1. THATSATALLORDER - excellent start to the puzzle at 1-across, with a complete phrase.
2. ARAISININTHESUN - also nice to have the complete title, and a fine movie as well.
3. SPAREDNOEXPENSE - it feels a bit like a partial, but that X is very nice.
4. VICTORIASSECRET - for the clue: "Where people may order push-ups" - hah!
5. MAKEAFRESHSTART - this is really fine. Just the others are better in my opinion.
6. EACHONETEACHONE - hmmm. Is this a real phrase? [Googles] - oh, yes! Actually, very interesting, as it appears to have originated among African Americans during slavery. I'm moving it up to 3. Only I'm not actually going to move everything around. Just imagine it in your mind.
7. INDEPENDENCEAVE - just because of that abbreviation. I know it wouldn't fit otherwise.
Really, though, those are seven top-notch exemplars. Really top drawer. (Somebody's been watching a certain movie this holiday season...)
So, in exchange, we do get a bunch of not such great short answers. ACAKE and ANIF right near each other, with the following names: THIEL, SOSA, OCHS, and RHETT. Mind you, I do like DOSAS, so that's in its favor. Oh, and ABCDE. That's particularly arbitrary.
But I enjoyed solving it (Cece helped), so that's all good. Good continuation to the turn. Looking forward to tomorrow!
- Colum
12:18
ReplyDeleteNice review. I especially enjoyed moving EACHONETEACHONE up to number three in my mind. :)
I, like you, have a certain twinge of dread when I see so much white space, and - like an animal - I actually started with the Acrosses instead of the Downs, but after I got MEL and TSE, I thought I'd take a look at the downs. I got OCHS, RHETT, and iNURE (I say ENURE is a variant!), and suddenly, things started to take off. And really, I'll take a twelve minute Friday.
"Stat for a photographer" is a weird clue for LENSSPEED. It's referring to the lowest f-stop available on a lens, but I'd never call that figure a "stat." "Oh, you're a photographer too? Let's compare stats... how fast are your lenses?" Blah.
Tried mme instead of SRA, but that didn't last long. And I can't believe how long I was fooled into thinking of Canadian provinces that don't exist with "New Brunswick neighbor" (MAINE). I know all the provinces up there! There aren't that many! Sheesh!
Overall, I guess it was fine.
7:35
ReplyDeleteExcellent review! Captured my sentiments exactly.
The young Mr. Agard is clearly (in my opinion) already one of the great constructors, and this tour de force only added to that legend.
When I first saw this puzzle (with the quad 15 stack) at 10pm on Thursday evening, I felt a combination of awe and fear. Much of that fear was likely flashbacks I was getting from the time I spent hours working on https://select.nytimes.com/premium/xword/Mar1105.puz
Fortunately, today's puzzle turned out to be much more accessible to me.
I often wonder about these puzzles with large stacks of letters juxtaposed next to each other. How does one go about constructing that? Do you just come up with a list of long phrases and see which ones make words when you stack them? That seems almost impossible. Or do you tinker with the phrases as it starts coming together? Regardless, I have a lot of respect for being able to pull off something like that.
21:09
ReplyDeleteI enjoy a good quad stack and agree that this is an outstanding one. It's nice to be back to my "normal" Friday time. Coincidentally, I was in a VICTORIASSECRET on 1-12-2018 a couple of hours after completing the puzzle; they were having a "Pink Sale." I also agree that ENURE is a variant. SLASHER is good, even though I don't watch that type of movie, and NACRE is a nice word. Too many proper names for my taste, but that's really a small complaint.
21:09
ReplyDeleteI enjoy a good quad stack and agree that this is an outstanding one. It's nice to be back to my "normal" Friday time. Coincidentally, I was in a VICTORIASSECRET on 1-12-2018 a couple of hours after completing the puzzle; they were having a "Pink Sale." I also agree that ENURE is a variant. SLASHER is good, even though I don't watch that type of movie, and NACRE is a nice word. Too many proper names for my taste, but that's really a small complaint.