NYT Tuesday 22 August

[rhu]

I'm curious how people feel about the theme of Tuesday's puzzle. I felt kinda cheated -- the doubled words felt like they artificially inflated the word count and the ratio of white to black squares (i.e., "WORDS" would count as both 3D and 17A even though it's only one word and five letters), and there was the odd sense that most of the theme letters ended up triple-clued but one from each word ended up unchecked.

I'd constrast that with the "famous crossings" Sunday puzzle from a few months back, where the crossing theme was similarly subtle but the entries were more interesting.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I liked the "crossing" theme, but I had never encountered that before, being the inexperienced solver that I am.

But I was far more pleased with BLACK/WHITE a few weeks back.

[tmcay.livejournal.com]

I thought the theme idea itself was interesting and worthy of acceptance. The fact that the theme would inflate word count or duplicate entries didn't really bother me. As for the unchecked letters...

The execution of the theme was generally good, but had some problems. Because of the unchecked letters, the theme entries need to be sharp and well-clued. [CROSS]FIRES is a bit awkward in plural construction and, given the unchecked R, deserves a stronger clue than {Tough positions for soldiers}. So I don't feel cheated by the theme in theory, but I noted that its execution left something to be desired.

Actually, the main thing in the puzzle I found onjectionable has nothing to do with the theme, rather the iffy fill entry LETSDRIVE.

[madcaptenor.livejournal.com]

The unchecked letters bothered me a bit, mainly because I had trouble getting [CROSS]FIRES in the end.

also, while solving it was difficult to get past all the conditioning I've had that has told me you can't have the same word appear more than once in a puzzle.