What a great crossword!
Yesterday was the fourth puzzle by Ken Bessette. Today's Wednesday, July 2 puzzle (answers) is the fourth by Daniel Kantor. I talked a bit about this Renaissance Man last month.
Did you write in _ M _ _ O R for 42 Across? I didn't think so. It's only a Wednesday after all, but someday someone will thank me for that tip.
Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) would be 104 if he were still kicking. His Green Eggs and Ham is, as I'm sure you know, written in a combination of trochaic and iambic tetrameter. (Personally I prefer his more common and more engaging anapestic tetrameter — think Yertle the Turtle — but that's a story for another day. I can use words like these in a crossword blog, right?)
Anyway, I loved the puzzle. The fill was fun and the theme was clever. Not only that, it was a puzzle that talks up to its audience. There's a basic rule in great theatre or great literature. You assume the audience can follow the story. You don't make the classic mistake of explaining the joke. In this case, the three component theme answers don't give the full solution; they give secondary definitions of the solution, pointers to the data, if you will. How nice.
Here's a story about the power of well chosen words. In 1954, Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat. It was easy for children to read because it contained only 236 different words. It became a classic. After its publication, Seuss's editor Bennett Cerf wagered $50 that the doctor couldn't write a book with only 50 different words. The winning result was Green Eggs and Ham. Not only did it come in at exactly 50, but 49 of those words are monosyllabic. The sole exception is "anywhere." Now you know.
Dan "winner of the C Division" Feyer likes crossword books and he reviews several at Ryan and Brian's nifty blog.
