The spark of inspiration for this one came from watching "The Queen's Gambit" and realizing that it's a 15-letter phrase that ends with the name of one of the X-Men. (I submitted this puzzle to the L.A. Times back in August, when "The Queen's Gambit" was a bit more en vogue.) Despite this puzzle's theme, I'm not big into superheroes, but I try to make a variety of puzzles that appeal to diverse audiences. Knowing that this theme could be a little niche, I did my best to choose only well known and "classic" X-Men, which didn't leave me with a ton of options to start with, and even fewer when I eliminated those mutants with no in-the-language phrases of 15 or fewer letters (such as Wolverine). I got lucky to find some good symmetry and even luckier that my four themers comprised two women and two men.
I knew when I started building this puzzle that it would need a revealer to clue in solvers to the theme, as many probably haven't thought about the X-Men in some time (and others assuredly have never heard of some of these superheroes). Puzzle titles often serve as revealers, but the L.A. Times' daily puzzles are untitled, so that wasn't an option. Instead, I snuck XMEN into the southeast corner of the grid, as the final Across entry. It would've been easier on my fill if I had placed it elsewhere, but revealers typically go as far toward the end of the puzzle as possible (it's more of a spoiler than a revealer to put them toward the front), and solvers traditionally solve from northwest to southeast.
It's little things like this that can help make your puzzle stand out. Editors have certain expectations and conventions, and if you want to break those conventions, you need a very good reason to do so. Simply saying, "well, I wasn't clever enough to find a way to put the revealer in the southeast corner" won't cut it. Between the existence/location of the revealer and the relative tightness of the theme (four themers with a classic X-Men member located at the end of the phrase), I thought this one had a decent chance at publication.
Having said that, the theme certainly will not appeal to everyone. It never does. So hopefully the cluing and the fill pass muster. I won't see the final cluing until publication, so I can't speak much to that, but I can discuss the grid and fill. I don't know much about grids or what makes one "prettier" than another. If nothing else, at least this one has no cheater squares and only 34 blocks in total. So, as my fifth-grade baseball coach rated my pitching ability, I deem this grid "adequate."
Regarding this fill, I'm happy with the end result, but there are a couple rough spots in this puzzle. The toughest section to fill was the southwest, which probably isn't a surprise given the presence of the Q in THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT. Maybe I should've put a block directly above the Q to make it easier to work with. Instead, I was left with a relatively meager number of - - - Q - - words. I'm pleased with PLAQUE but it indirectly forced me to use SULA, which could be tough for some solvers. (I had originally gone with SOLA/OHNO but Patti switched it to SULA/UHNO, which I think is an improvement since SOLA is either a weak partial clued along the lines of [Do, re, mi, fa, ___, ti, do] or an obscure stage direction.) I also don't like UEY at all but I couldn't find a better alternative. At least the crosses are fair, so solvers hopefully won't be flummoxed.
In the southeast, having both a themer and the revealer in that section limited my options. With 58-down forced to be - M - X, I was left with IMAX or AMEX as the only viable possibilities. That type of restriction often wreaks havoc on the fill but I felt I escaped the southeast pretty cleanly. I don't love ASL but I think it's perfectly acceptable. (I clued it as [Chat room inquiry], which references the "Age/Sex/Location" shorthand from the 1990s, but I doubt that clue survives the editing process.)
Patti only made two changes to my grid fill, as far as I know. I mentioned one above; the other was in the northeast, where I had SORTA/TASE get changed to LORCA/CASE because of the negative implications of TASE. I don't personally have any objections to TASE but I don't mind removing it as long as the quality of the puzzle doesn't suffer. CASE is clearly a great option, better than TASE. LORCA gives the puzzle more diversity and a more literary flair, but it also adds another proper noun. I try to keep proper nouns to a minimum because they're typically "you know it or you don't" words that can't be sussed out. But in any event, I think LORCA/CASE is just as good as SORTA/TASE, so no complaints from me.
Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to drop me a comment with any thoughts or questions about this puzzle or constructing in general.
