THURSDAY PUZZLE — I finished Matt Ginsberg’s puzzle and had an unusual reaction to it: I thought I was losing my mind. Or that maybe there was some meta puzzle in here that I just wasn’t seeing. Because isn’t PESACH in the spring? Well, we’re not going to hold that against anybody; Happy Passover, everyone! Pass the matzo down this way, please.
I admired the visual aspect of the PARTING of the RED SEA in the center of the grid, which gives us a neat dividing line between MOSES and the ISRAELI who is apparently benefiting from said PARTING and PHARAOH in EGYPT. Since we’re celebrating early, it’s worth noting that the way Mr. Ginsberg reads the Old Testament, MOSES and his fellow Israelites celebrated by playing BEER PONG and PHARAOH gets his by coming down with a bad case of PTOMAINE poisoning. I had trouble finding backup for that in my copy of the Old Testament but, again, I’m not going to hold that against him. We’re all about artistic license here at Wordplay.
A theme like this needs careful grid design, and it tends to constrain the constructor when it comes to fill. That would explain some of the hairier stuff, like the bone prefix OSTE, the partial A MAN and awkward words like INAPT. But I did like SKI POLES (and the very clever clue “Winter plantings?”), OBI WAN, HEDONIST, ODD ONE, BEER PONG and PTOMAINE (some people feel that negative words like those that have to do with diseases shouldn’t be in crosswords, but I liked this one for the Scrabbly beginning).
I’m wondering if this puzzle was meant for spring publication, given the very devious clue “Belated observation of 4/14/12″ for BERG. That would be 1912, by the way, and the observation was the iceberg that took down the Titanic.
Let’s hear from our constructor:
Constructor’s Notes:
This is a relatively straightforward puzzle, but it reminds me how curious the whole process from construction to publication is. So, for example, this puzzle took 132 days from the time I submitted until it appeared, which seemed fast. Best ever for me is an incredibly quick 27 days; longest is 1,377 days — just over 3 3/4 years! I have no idea why some puzzles go quickly and others don’t; it just seems to be part of the process.
As always, many of the clues changed. I originally had [Con-dense?] for 46-Across, which I liked, and it took me forever to understand the clue for 9-Down, and I live there! As I often tell people, I can’t do my own puzzles when they come out in The Times, and this one was no exception. Dr. Fill, however, had no such problem, solving it correctly in about 15 seconds. It had trouble in the southwest, but eventually managed to patch things up and get a perfect solve. I’ve put a video of the program solving the puzzle here, where you’ll see Dr. Fill mess up the southwest and then fix it before spending the rest of its “ACPT minute” checking its work.
I hope everyone enjoys both the video and the puzzle itself.
I absolutely did, Mr. Ginsberg, once I realized that we had skipped winter completely and moved on to spring.
Let’s watch the scene that this puzzle commemorates from the epic film “The Ten Commandments”:
Your thoughts?