Puzzles are in great shape these days, at least at the Times where there have been several excellent crosswords lately including today's Saturday, May 17 construction by Mike Nothnagel (answers.)
I got off to a great start with another Fiddler on the Roof clue at 1 Across. Then the first long clue was "dreaded victimizer of Charlie Brown" and LUCILLE VAN PELT fit perfectly so I was off and running. In the wrong direction as it turns out.
Will Shortz gets credit for making the tough puzzles less about obscure knowledge and more about, to coin a movie phrase, word play. This crossword is a great example. "Turning point" isn't AXLE, but rather DIME. Then at 50 Across, "Cardinal's wear" stumped me for a long time as I tried to remember what those RED HATS were called. "Four and four, say" isn't a math problem. It's a PAIR, and a poor one at that. I love "prompt delivery" being LINE. Even better was "Intimate" which, it turns out, is a verb, accented on the first syllable with a long A. I could go on and on.
Speaking of shapes, I want to introduce a new feature on XWord Info — thumbnails. The shape of the puzzle, by which I mean the pattern of black squares, determines not just the word count but also which areas of the puzzle will be particularly challenging to fill. Some constructors shape their puzzles very consistently. Some create beauty out of the shapes alone. I wanted to create a visual representation of how different constructors are drawn to different patterns.
Mr. Nothnagel's puzzles are an olio of shapes. You can see them here. He builds something different every time depending on where his creativity takes him.
Compare those images with Randall J. Hartman. There's an order here and as the puzzles go further back in time you can see him experimenting and perfecting different forms and variations. They even fit together beautifully in places.
Here's a few more. The Peter Gordon list is fun because if you look carefully you can see his happy face puzzle. David Quarfoot employs several tough patterns. The shapes used by Brendan Emmett Quigley are particularly striking. Look at that graceful arcing line on 7/25/2004. If you scroll down the Elizabeth C. Gorski page you can easily spot her double helix DNA puzzle which is still one of my favorites.
Update: John Farmer posted a comment with this link to Frank Longo's puzzles and there are indeed some lulus there. Thanks, John. It kind of looks like John Conway's Game of Life if you're enough of a geek to remember that. Mr. Farmer is too shy to mention that he has some lovely grids too.
I've also made the thumbnails look a little better in FireFox. I haven't tried it on a Mac yet but I'm hoping someone will tell me if it's completely busted.