My definition of a perfect puzzle is one that you skim through and realize you don't know a single answer, and then one occurs to you, and then one by one they fall into place and finally you have a completed puzzle without having to look up a single answer. Thursday's puzzle by John Farmer fit that definition for me.
The three 15-letter answers all had the same clue: "End of some addresses." This kind of theme appeals to me generally and the three answers this time were all good. Better yet, they proceeded going top to bottom from prosaic to not obvious but gettable to nicely clever. Here's a constructor who thinks about the theatre, about the journey the solver goes through. Bravo.
My favorite answer was AXLE. This is a fairly common crossword answer but this was an uncommon clue. Imagine you're the puzzle constructor. What clue best fits that answer? Previous authors have mostly gone the staid route, saving their creativity for the important theme clues, so they use clues like "Wheel shaft" or "Wagon part." Mr. Farmer did them all one better with "Device for rotating one's tires?"
What are the ends of some addresses? CITY STATE AND ZIP was first. The second was EMAIL DOMAIN NAME. The best was GOD BLESS AMERICA.
