I might never have gotten this diabolical beautiful gimmick. Helpless, I described the problem to my wife, who HEARD it. I'll bet people are going crazy with this tonight.
Lee | 10.25.06 - 11:16 pm | #

Went a little crazy myself. There seemed to be a connection for a few of the pairs. DEEM WORTHY = [DEEM] FIT, and BECOME ANGRY = [BECOME] RED. But then HALLUCINATE and THINGS were inscrutable. Finally, when I got the "See" connection, I thought, how odd that four Down answers were all missing the word and it's nowhere in the puzzle. But it was staring me in the face. Very nice payoff! Hats off to Todd and Dave.
JJF | 10.25.06 - 11:41 pm | #

Me too. Did anyone get this theme in time for it to help?
Barry W | 10.26.06 - 12:24 am | #

I had almost exactly the same experience as JJF, and (like Amy) the full force of it didn't hit me until some minutes afterwards.

The crossword gods giveth, and taketh away: like many, yesterday I was undone by IVS for TVS; today I was sure when I clicked the Done button that HUASTEC couldn't possibly be right, and THINGS had nothing to do with HALLUCINATE, but it was all right. So I get to enjoy the highly unusual status of being faster than Barry Haldiman for one day.

-Tom Mc
Tom McCormick | 10.26.06 - 1:59 am | #

I had the same 'See ya later' experience as everyone else with respect to the theme-- just had to stare at it for a few minutes after filling in all the words.

Also, the SW was just a disaster area. What with INNIE/OUTIE, NULL/VOID/NOGO, various Indian/Mexican tribes, a movie I hadn't see, and not getting the theme until after finishing... it's a wonder that I eventually figured it out.
Matt | 10.26.06 - 6:47 am | #

See above.
DA | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 7:41 am | #

I was stuck early on this, and almost as a rule if I see a reference to another clue ('With 54-Down,...', for example), I skip right over them to return later. This time, not having that much to go on, I decided to jump to the other side of the puzzle in hopes of making a connection. Eventually I worked out THINGS/HALLUCINATE, and halfway through the puzzle I had the theme.

Although it took longer to get there, in the long run it paid off, as the HUASTEC and the residents of BAKU (among others) sure as heck weren't going to offer any help.
Sometimes it's worth it to take a chance and try a different approach. Next Thursday maybe I'll stand on my head and solve, so maybe the more obscure answers will fall out easier.
Howard B | 10.26.06 - 7:48 am | #

And here I fretted that outlining the theme so very specifically might be deemed insulting. Glad to know others found the gimmick to be deviously elusive!
Orange | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 7:53 am | #

Me, being not too concerned about my solving times, but being entirely obsessed with figuring out themes, had to get the theme before finishing the puzzle. In the end, knowing the theme halfway through allowed me to get THINGS and finish off the SW.
Matt (mc2) | 10.26.06 - 9:11 am | #

Great NYT today - now that's what Thursday's are all about!

Some may have recognized the NYSun theme from the book "Gridlock" - I did once I got to the poker clue. One of my fastest times ever thanks to that...and I should have remembered FUGU from "The Simspons" episode where Homer thinks he has one day to live (thanks to poorly-prepared FUGU). D'oh!

-Patrick
pauer | 10.26.06 - 9:12 am | #

I was thinking that the theme is WYSIWYG: what you "SEE" is what you get. But the reality was far more clever.
===Dan
Dan_c | 10.26.06 - 9:41 am | #

Poison... poison... tasty fish. This is what goes through my head when I see that word.
Howard B | 10.26.06 - 10:04 am | #

I got the whole puzzle done in reasonable Thursday time (for me), but had no clue on the theme. I got one pair of the connected answers and could discern no relationship between them so from then on just focused on trying to make the "See whatever" entries form words. Took me a couple minutes probably after finishing the puzzle to finally see the light on how the answers were connected. Clever!

For the LAT constructor, I've got one other puzzle by him, the Oct. 11th LAT. Similarly populated with a plethora of theme answers....
kmtracey | 10.26.06 - 10:52 am | #

I have a feeling a lot of the conversation with Will Shortz tomorrow at the Pleasantville tournament is going to center around that puzzle, and its amazing yet there-for-all-too-see trick. Sometimes the very best magic is the type you get to see up close, and so fleeting and swift that you don't realize it's magic until it's too late.

And looking at the times for this puppy, I would daresay that this one gave everyone (except those cherished souls who were able to complete this fairly and squarely in under, say, nine minutes) BAKU trouble (as opposed to beaucoups).
Bob | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 11:20 am | #

Good to know that (virtually) no one else had a clue about HUASTEC either. I was not helped by having VOWELS as my "'Wheel of Fortune' category" for a while. For some reason a lot of the answers seem to be playing off each other in weird ways: facing X's in STYX and XENA, near-homonymity in OPRAH-OPAH, NW to NE echo of REHAB and AHAB. . . even the palindromic "INNI" in INNIES and "ILLI" in MILLI seem to be singing to each other somehow. . . which means I'm probably well over my RDA of puzzle time.

Michael
Michael | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 12:04 pm | #

I knew who Stu Ungar was, but it didn't help me at all. I sucked big air on that puzzle.

Stu Ungar (1953-1998) was a brilliant poker player who won the 1980 and 1981 World Series of Poker, back when poker was still a skill known to only a few. He squandered a lot of his tournament winnings on drugs and his death, thought by some to be an overdose, was actually attributed to heart disease. He was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room with only $800 to his name. Bob Stupak, builder of the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas, took up a collection so he'd have a decent burial.
Dave | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 2:25 pm | #

Darn Smilies. He died in 1998. I'm not necessarily happy he's dead.
Dave | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 2:25 pm | #

Dave, you motivated me to find the "smileys" setting for the comments and toggle it to the "off" position.
Orange | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 2:58 pm | #

By the way, I love it when crossword themes toy with crossword conventions like this. Ashish Vengsarkar's "quote" puzzle earlier this year rocked—that was the one where [Part 1 of quote] = the letter Q = BRITISH WAITING LINE, and so on through U, O, T, and E. Dee-licious!
Orange | Homepage | 10.26.06 - 5:37 pm | #