Chest protectors? / THU 6-28-18 / Holds / Ones going down the tubes? / Macbeth and Macduff / Literally, "big wind"

Constructor: Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: ENTER (37A: Key that moves the cursor to the next line...or a hint to answering five clues in this puzzle) — The solver presses an imaginary ENTER key in the middle of each theme answer, causing the second half of the entry to appear on the next line. You can think of ENTER as an "invisible" rebus that must be placed between the two stacked answers to complete the theme entry.

Theme answers:

• TAKE CENTER STAGE (1A: Assume a leading role)
• CARPENTER ANTS (15A: Insects that nest in deadwood)
• USS ENTERPRISE (32A: In sci-fi, it had the registry number NCC-1701)
• THE ENTERTAINER (49A: Classic Scott Joplin rag)
• CHICKEN TERIYAKI ("Fowl"-tasting Japanese dish)

Word of the Day: PETRA (16A: Jordanian tourist site) —

Petra (Arabic: البتراء, Al-Batrāʾ; Ancient Greek: Πέτρα), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Petra lies on the slope of Jabal Al-Madbah in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah valley that run from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.^[3] Petra is believed to have been settled as early as 9,000 BC, and it was possibly established in the 4th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataean Kingdom. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who invested in Petra's proximity to the trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub.

Hello CrossWorld! My name is Don and I will be your guest blogger today. As you probably know, Thursday is the day of the week where the NYT puzzle gets a bit tricky and tries to throw something at us we don't expect. Today's offering from veteran constructor Jeff Chen does not disappoint in that regard. I struggled with some of the fill more than I'm used to on a Thursday, but I thought this theme was clever and innovative.

I had trouble getting a foothold in several sections of this puzzle, starting right with 1A (Assume a leading role) when neither STAR IN nor STEP UP would fit. PETRA was a gimme for me, but with 13A un-clued, I still couldn't get anywhere with the downs in that corner other than ATE, so I moved to the top middle section. Luckily, I was able to drop in FREE SPIRITS from the F in FROS, so with ESTEE's help I made it back and completed that NW corner. I saw that the theme involved the missing ENTER, but I didn't fully understand it until I worked my way down the left side and found USS [ENTER]PRISE. After that, I immediately and confidently dropped in THE [ENTER]TAINER with no crosses, but that's where the fun ended. I made my way through the rest of the grid, but I just could not manage to see either of the other two theme entries. I can't blame the puzzle, though, because I was stuck on wrong answers: KEY for CAY (fine) and SHEELA for SHEEHY (no idea what I was thinking). I got there eventually, but finished with one error: MAU / MANTRA. MAU did not sound right, but TANTRA was just not coming to me.

I thought this theme was very creative and evoked a fun image of the line break upon hitting the ENTER key. My favorite entries were the ones I struggled with: CARP[ENTER] ANTS because each word stands on its own, and CHICK[EN TER]IYAKI because it breaks the word ENTER. The theme is especially impressive considering these constraints: each theme entry must (1) have the letters ENTER embedded in it, (2) have a sufficient number of letters on each side of the word ENTER, and (3) must be "stackable" in just the right way to work in Down answers - the two entries can't be staggered or the "tab" of the page won't look right, so there is no discretion as to how to stack them. I imagine this was very challenging to construct.


That challenge may be evident in the fill, some of which suffers under those stacked theme entries. With only 50 theme squares, one would normally expect a pretty clean grid and some nice colorful long non-theme entries. But 45 of those squares have to be stacked, and that leads to a little more crosswordese than we are used to seeing from Mr. Chen. The southwest one-third of the puzzle seemed to take the brunt of the damage - DCUP, CSIS, USSR, SISI, STR, CEES, SSN, INGA, URSA, ANIL. The long answers don't fare much better, in that they're just not very exciting - if CREDENTIALS and ACCRUAL don't put you to sleep, wait until you meet ATTRACTANT.

I thought that the novelty of the theme justified the sacrifices made in the fill. Thursday is probably my favorite day to solve because I enjoy puzzles that get out of the box a little and offer something different. Sometimes, that comes at a cost, but today Mr. Chen's puzzle was challenging and novel enough to warrant the price. I will be curious to see in the comments if you agree.

Thanks for reading, and happy solving!

Signed, Don McBrien, Assistant to the Regional Manager of CrossWorld

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