Cross words about Crosswords!

My, my.  The New York Times crossword had a little gimmick today.  The Sunday puzzle is usually of 'Thursday difficulty' and often involves some sort of wordplay, but sometimes there is a bit more to it.  Today's puzzle is generating a lot of Comments on the WordPlay blog.

A sample:

Why can you not leave well enough alone without every few weeks posing puzzles that leave against the clock solvers in a web ghetto? If you want against the clock solvers, treat them the same as all other solvers or cancel the program.
The expression "too cute by half" springs to mind.
 And that was one of the shorter ones.  

A snippet from a much-longer post:
Solvers are simple folk who lust after a clever phrase, a devilish pun or an ingenious literary device which, in their totality, make a crossword puzzle, that is “a puzzle in which words are filled into a pattern of numbered squares in answer to correspondingly numbered clues and in such a way that the words read across and down.”
The gimmickry makes a puzzle a game, not a crossword and cheats those who come in search of “Wordplay”
The puzzle that I printed up from the online AcrossLite file did not have bold or dashed lines (mentioned via instructions that appeared in the grid as one solved the puzzle.)  I had to visit the WordPlay blog and hunt down a PDF version in order to proceed.  This also added a layer of inconvenience that annoyed some solvers.  


In the guise of Mean Old Lady, I added a comment after I completed my little construction project:


 Well, well, well--a day when I am not the Cross-patchiest person on the block? Is someone going for my title?

But you can never rankle the MOL with a solver-participation project! I always have paper-cutting scissors and tape,(and highlighters and white-out, glue sticks and paper clips, crayons, markers, brads, rubber bands, stickers, and more) right at hand.

Liked the puzzle just fine--no horrid clunkers like ANEAR, helpful crosses--and once I had the instructions, I had every faith that I'd find the PDF eventually. Hide-and-go-seek PLUS a craft project! (It's always good to keep me busy with innocent diversions; the devil finds work for idle hands.)

Well, I'm off to hang my new ornament on the tree.....I'm sure Santy will be amused.

By coloring in the O's and cutting, folding, and taping edges, one produces a cute little die.  It's even anatomically correct!  Oh, and the puzzle was constructed by a KID....and entitled, "On a Roll."