oddly, HEIL was the first thing i filled in over there in the NE. even more oddly, i didn't notice that this puzzle was asymmetric (or that it was in the shape of a heart) until i read the blog! i obviously wasn't paying attention. anyway, it makes me feel better, because i was thinking to myself that the fill wasn't all that impressive (although the cluing was rather good). noticing the grid art in retrospect, i can now understand the demands on the construction. but joe, why the long face? cheer up, buddy. time wounds all heels, as i learned from alex boisvert.
joon | Homepage | 07.09.09 - 10:36 pm | #

I am an amateur, but I read much of the fill to be connected to the broken heart caused by the CFO jilting his MRS, DELORES. Their PREMARITAL relations aside, he was CRUEL and UNUSUAL. She wanted ROMANCERS and was able to FERRET OUT. to her RELIEF, that his kindness on their first date was an ABERRATION. I know all of this because I read TRUE CONFESSIONS.
miguel | 07.09.09 - 10:42 pm | #

This was 2 puzzles for me. See that MOLS / REOS / MRS up there? That M and R was the second puzzle, taking the second half of my time. I didn't understand MOLS at all until your explanation, so thanks much for that. High school chem flashback, yay! GTO was also a struggle, as I'm sadly auto-impaired.

With the placement of CREVE COEUR, and some not-so-themeless fill scattered throughout, this is one artistic puzzle, sort of a visual themed hybrid. Kind of cool, and a great argument for asymmetrical grids.
Howard B | 07.09.09 - 11:21 pm | #

First thing I saw (for once!) was it was assymetrical and thought "This better be good!"
Weird, I spent 20 minutes on the plane and had almost nothing filled in... Once I got back, I put down PALESTINE and the top left filled in quickly, then the bottom left and middle. Stuck again for a while till I remembered Rosario and that allowed the bottom right to fill in. SURGE Protectors gave the top-right... Except the cursed intersection of MRS and MOLS which was left blank. Still confused as to what MRS is, though thanks to your blog I now get MOLS. Saw the as I was about to start your blog, it looks less "hearty" on paper. Got "Couer" part from knowing what "Coeur D'Alene" means only, never heard of that city. Wanted to put in HEIL on first pass, but the usual "it can't be that" routine... I'm kind of torn between loving the puzzle for its unusual pattern and disliking some of the old-school fill....
Gareth | 07.10.09 - 2:51 am | #

I sensed a bit more of a theme here. The three longest answers all start with words that can be associated with the word "heart": TRUE, CRUEL and SURGE. Not the strongest association, especially in the case of SURGE, but enough for me to believe this amounted to a theme.
Elbee | 07.10.09 - 7:43 am | #

I have an assignment for Joe Krozel: Aim for a higher Scrabble score in these intricate constructions. Today's puzzle is on Jim Horne's database's list of puzzles with the lowest Scrabble scores, and so are a few other Krozel creations. Let's juice these things up!
Orange | Homepage | 07.10.09 - 8:21 am | #

In Joe's defense, I don't think he needs a "scrabble letter count" assignment.

Puzzle databases listing scrabble scores of letters are weird. Uh...this is a crossword puzzle, not a scrabble game.

..just glancing at the first 64 words of Orange's essay today....the words are low on the scrabble score,and the writer didn't have to interlock them into a grid form.

If scrabble counts are unimportant to bloggers/writers, why should puzzle compilers be held to this preposterous scrabble standard?

that said, I liked today's puzzle. Good work, Joe.
Jerry K | 07.10.09 - 9:24 am | #

Jerry, what it's about is boring fill. Is MARQUEZ livelier fill than RETILE and REHIRE? You betcha. The "scrabble letter count" is a quick-and-easy way of flagging puzzles that do or don't have a lot of unusual letters that are generally tougher to work into the fill.
Orange | Homepage | 07.10.09 - 9:52 am | #

I'm thinking the word/name SCRABBLE isn't scrabbly enough. I would suggest calling the game DITHYRAMB, just so it gets used again, but that doesn't quite make the grade either. Ideas?
KarmaSartre | 07.10.09 - 10:43 am | #

Last night I was all set to post an "I don't get it" comment - but lost the internet connection and went to bed. This morning, after reading some more commentary, Joe's semi-themeless has grown on me. Sure the fill is a bit meh, but that's what happens with huge white spaces. (Love the 64-Word Rule, but I think the Scrabble-count complaint is unfair. It's only 86th-lowest, and I suspect more scrabbliness would have been impossible in this grid. Also - damn, you did smoke this thing if you were basically done under 4 minutes.)

Glad to read elsewhere that Joe intended for some long fill to echo the theme - but I think a quasi-theme should be more obvious, or at least symmetrical. And I was too squicked out by unpleasant fill like HEIL/CRUEL.../ABERRATIONS to enjoy the broken-heart 'story'. On the other hand, something different is always a good thing, so I'll never really complain about a Krozel creation.

And especially on a Friday! When was the last time a Friday puzzle wasn't a straight themeless (holiday themes don't count)? And has Shortz ever run an asymmetrical themeless? Was gonna comment on other puzzles but that's more than enough for now...
Dan F | 07.10.09 - 11:13 am | #

What's QUAYCOMPONENT punning on in the WSJ puzzle? And does anyone say "How's by you?" And even if they did, what is "Howe's Bayou," if that's what they're punning on?
Forgive my ignorance. . .

Pancho
Pancho | 07.10.09 - 11:16 am | #

Pancho, some people do say "How's by you?" I feel like it's something my grandparents or their friends said. I think the theme answer is just, "[Hey,] how's [the] bayou [suit you]?" but I don't know. As for the other, I believe it's "key component," QUAY having both key and kway pronunciations.

Dan, I agree on quasi-thematic stuff needing to be more obvious. Some of these answers struck me as not much more thematic than a batch of answers an individual solver views as thematic but that the constructor didn't intend at all.
Orange | Homepage | 07.10.09 - 11:38 am | #

don't forget "kay," which is how i prefer to pronounce it. i didn't understand that one either until brendan explained it to me.

my take on the theme/lack thereof is that there is no theme. there's certainly no clear and necessary relationship between the long answers; any connection to be made is solely up to the solver's interpretation. and i think joe said as much. but that's fine by me. i'm not expecting friday to have a theme anyway, so it's enough that the grid has a cool shape and there's one (split) answer that ties into it. it's certainly not the peter gordon "smiley" puzzle with long answers GRIN AND BEAR IT, PUT ON A HAPPY FACE, and SAY CHEESE, but that's why that was a thursday and this is a friday.
joon | 07.10.09 - 12:58 pm | #

I agree that Scrabble and crossword puzzles are different animals, but all things being equal, both value the use of less-common letters. A puzzle's Scrabble score doesn't tell you if it's a quality crossword (in Scrabble, a high score is all that matters), but it can be a good shorthand way to tell you about one aspect of a puzzle. Take it with a grain of salt. It's not everything. But it's something, and it's useful.
john farmer | 07.10.09 - 1:30 pm | #

AUTOTUNE. Cher. "Believe." "Do you believe...?"

No.
john farmer | 07.10.09 - 1:42 pm | #

John, I really don't believe I've ever listened to that song. Honest.
Orange | Homepage | 07.10.09 - 1:55 pm | #

Howard: I'm glad I'm in good company. I had YES for MRS as the "Check Box Option", and spend a good long time trying to figure out how YOLS could be "Compound Fractions."

I also lost a bunch of time double-checking all the crosses on what I read as PRO NETO ("Frequently exhibiting, by nature"). Never saw it as PRONE TO until I was all done.

And I would've really been nowhere on this puzzle, except the clues on the 15s were very gettable.
JBeck | 07.10.09 - 3:13 pm | #

Hey, a friend of mine noticed something today—that the problematic HEIL in the NYT puzzle could so easily have been changed to HEIR, crossing SORE. I wonder why this wasn't done.
Orange | Homepage | 07.10.09 - 9:52 pm | #

About the subtracting of letters in theme entries, the best way to help solvers spot them is to be consistent. The easiest place to see them is all in the front like in today's LAT puz, followed by all in the back, a mix of front and back, then willy-nilly throughout. The willy-nilly method will almost certainly need circles or a helper entry to clue people in (STOUT or STS, for instance). Having a title can really help, but without one it's probably best to remove letters the same way with every entry, whether you use a helper or not.
pauer | 07.10.09 - 10:10 pm | #

Wow, I am very glad I came to this comment page. I am happy that I wasn't the only one stumped on MRS and MOLS. I, too, couldn't figure a way that YES would work with anything. That whole corner pretty much stumped me, not being able to figure out DOLORES and REO. I finally gave up on those few words, having the rest of that area.

The thing that bothered me most, though, was that I knew the design had to be something special because it wasn't symmetric, but couldn't figure out what it was. I thought it was some sort of cannon! (but having no idea what that had to do with the puzzle.) It wasn't until I read these comments and looked at the puzzle again. Even then, I had to squish and blur my eyes and look at it like a Magic Eye art piece to see the broken heart.

Well, now I get it. Thanks everyone. I did really like CRUELANDUNUSUAL and PREMARITAL.
Ari | 07.11.09 - 7:55 am | #

I always heard "How's by you" among older people at synagogue as it seems to be Yiddishe for "How are you doing" if one cared to be familiar with whom they were talking.
Bill from NJ | Homepage | 07.11.09 - 3:39 pm | #