![]() I like that it made me work a little to figure out the theme.Regardless of whether Walton may have smuggled in the fatal dose himself or got it from someone else behind bars, corrections officials and the lawyers all agree it’s almost inevitable that smuggled drugs get into Maine’s jails and prisons and into corrections institutes across the nation.ĭrug or alcohol intoxication accounts for nearly 7 percent of inmate deaths in local jails, according to a report by the U.S. I winced a little to see TEN KS and TEN in the same grid, but sometimes these things happen.Īll in all, a fun Monday. But I know some constructors who like the craziness of how TENKS looks in a grid. I only ever see them as 10-Ks (both as a race and as a SEC annual filing) so I'm not a fan of seeing it written out. I personally tend to prefer puzzles that feel a little more modern, but a case could easily be made that puzzle ought to feel "classic," and that "modern" puzzles contain too much stuff that has no staying power. It's a tough job to satisfy every segment of the NYT solving population, so this one does a nice job for the old guard who take pride in knowing automatically what AMICI and AMAT and OBIS are. It skews a bit toward an older solving crowd, but that will make much of the NYT's solving audience happy. The fill is an interesting mix, from the 21st century GOOGLE to the oldies ELENI and ILIE Nastase and XENA the Warrior Princess. Still, Kelly manages to work in TOP THIS! and ALL DONE! and STIFFS and OLD AGE, all really nice entries. It's difficult to work in eights or nines due to grid layout, especially when there's a central theme answer. The pinwheel arrangement of themers doesn't often allow for much long fill, and today is no exception. It would have been nice to have more consistency there. I did find it a little bothersome that FINGERNAIL was the only single word out of the four, and that ON THE LEVEL (such a nice phrase!) was the only themer with three words. I did appreciate that all four themers today hide their respective item, making it somewhat opaque as to what was going on (DOORNAIL wouldn't hide the meaning of NAIL at all, for example). ![]() four themers which work exactly the same is awfully nice. Nicely done.Ĭonsistency breeds elegance in crosswords, i.e. The theme is simple enough to figure out (HAMMER, LEVEL, FILE, NAIL are all items in a TOOLBOX) that is was nice to sit back after I finished and have a little a-ha moment. I think a case can be made either way, but today I really like the fact that Kelly leaves out a revealer. There are two camps when it comes to revealers (an entry which overtly explains the theme): some love them because they make everything crystal clear, some hate them because they leave nothing to the solver to figure out. and I hope those who attended had a great time at the ACPT! It was an honor for me to have made the tournament opener. So for those o' you who think this theme is familiar? It is! :-) until I realized (gulp) it was the same theme! Or, at least, pretty darn close! I was thrilled! A cool Monday puzzle! Several months later (January 28, as a matter o' fact) I was pleased with myself for breezing through Jaime Hutchison and Vic Fleming's puzzle. Will wrote me on August 2, 2012, accepting this puzzle. 'Course, as good ol' Qoheleth says? "Nothing new under the sun!" I wrote in TOP THAT, sheesh.) Ironically, my first puzzles were later-in-the-week jobs and I really wanted to make a puzzle for people like me. (Case in point: when Jeff sent me this puzzle - and keep in mind that I Made It Myself! - I thought I'd give myself an ego boost and solve it. I love crossword puzzles! Unfortunately, I'm a lousy solver.
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