Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Less contrived than usual

Just a quick note to say I was impressed by the puzzle in last Friday’s New York Times (which I got around to solving today).  The constructors were Mangesh Ghogre of Mumbai and Doug Peterson of the USA, for whom this is not their first collaboration.

I was attracted by the grid, which like a lot of NYT Fridays was something of a show-off piece (just 25 blacks and stacked 15s at the top and bottom).  Usually, you need some pretty contrived entries to fill a grid like this, but the quality of the fill here was excellent from top to bottom, especially in the 15s and their crosses.

Deb Amlen was not quite as impressed, but spoke quite favorably at Wordplay (spoiler warning).  If you get the puzzle in syndication, look for it three weeks from the original publication date, which would be October 11.

No comments:

Post a Comment

If you're responding to a hint request, please remember not to give more information than necessary. More direct hints are allowed after Monday.