"See the Big Picture," by Ned White

Constructor's Comments

Major Spoiler Alert:  The main challenge here was working without circled letters—per the Puzzle Society's software.  My original puzzle circled six trees:  FIR, OAK, RUBBER, ELM, SPRUCE, and TEA.  So I thought that without the circles the puzzle was fairly hard to solve.  The next challenge was to find the "mini-meta" suggested by MYOPIC at 68-Across.  Simply enough, it's the first letter of each tree—FOREST—but "hard to see" for all trees.

I loved making this puzzle.  But it happened so many months ago that I'd forgotten what the trick was and had to be rescued by my wife, Carla:  "You've got FOREST buried in there," and, of course, my only response was a facepalm.  How could I have been so myopic?

"Once or Twice," by Ned White

Constructor's Comments

I've seen themes similar to this before but not with this particular structure.  I was shooting for plenty of theme material (6 themers and the central revealer) and, oddly enough, the rest of the fill worked out pretty easily (except I'm not all that wild about MAWKISHNESS, one ugly word if ever there was one).  But the key to this theme was assuring that each "double" answer had no meaningful relationship to its "single" version.  My favorite is DOUBLE DIPPERS, which I think I learned from a Seinfeld episode.  That's it—have fun (I hope).

"Free for All XXV," by Ned White

Constructor's Comments

I originally made this puzzle (for another publication) with a fairly strong subtheme spinning off the idea and intimations of 1-Across, and it became so negative and grumpy-inducing that it left an unpleasant vibe.  So the subtheme, over several drafts, largely dissipated, thanks much to David's encouragement and guidance.  I feel happier with this version, though some of the answers aren't as marquee-ish as I'd like.  That's usually the goal of themeless constructors—to pack the puzzle with knock-'em-dead, sparkling long answers and still have clean fill for the glue.  Regardless, I hope you have fun with it.

"Hovercrafts," by Ned White

Editor's Comments

I like how Ned took a common expression—a RISING TIDE lifts all boats—and turned it into a twisty Friday theme.  In fact, expressions lend themselves so well to crossword themes that I've been known to click down to random long entries in my word list just to see if they inspire any puzzle ideas!  Anyway, all of Ned's theme entries are nice, though my favorite is the SCOW crossing a word break in MRS. O'LEARY'S COW.  It's not every day you find a such a nice disguise for a hidden word at the end of a theme entry.  And finally, Ned designed a great grid to house his theme entries.  There are lots of midlength slots, and he really took advantage of them with entries like HANG TIME, YEAH YEAH, SASHIMI, and IN A SWOON.