Today's Sunday puzzle (answers) is by John Farmer who has become one of my favorite constructors. He has a unique style. I asked him how he thinks about crosswords, and here's what he said:
I got into the crossword habit relatively late, in my 40s, and most everything I learned was from reading comments of Hex and the Cru on the NYT forum, back when it was the only game in town. Like most things I like, I tried my hand at making puzzles and eventually figured out how to make them good enough to be accepted. Not always, but often enough. The tricky part of being a constructor is finding new ideas. I enjoy puzzles that are like nothing else I've seen before (e.g., the "inside the box" puzzle, a baseball-themed puzzle that ran in the Sun), but those themes don't come every day. Sometimes very simple themes work the best. And if the theme muse happens not to visit, I may take a few words I've been kicking around and use them for a themeless. In any case, every puzzle should be fresh in its own way.
Make sure you follow that "inside the box" link above if you don't remember it. The rest of his NYT puzzles are listed here. This one is elegant and this QWERTY keyboard puzzle is especially clever.
Today's puzzle was also delightful. I got the theme right away and since the theme entries were listed in order, I could scribble them all down. PLUTO was, of course, relegated to a themeless clue. Poor wretched planetoid. FRUSTA ("truncated cones, in math") is a great word. There were a few nice mathy entries today.
"Like some twins" is a delicious clue for EVIL. "State quarters" is DORM, of course. And if you're tracking the roos, buck suffix is AROO and switch ending is EROO.
The Vancouver Canucks have a history of stupid logos. The latest is shown above. It's better than either the skate racing downhill or the hockey stick in a rectangle that preceded it. The Canucks missed the playoffs this year, probably out of fashion embarrassment.
Update: be sure to read Mr. Farmer's thoughts in the comments section below.
Update 2: check out the JNotes on this puzzle for a description of how the print version makes this puzzle even more elegant by using shaded squares — a technique not available in Across Lite.
