pH Balance

by Santo

• Play it ↗
• Difficulty: easy

This is a strange puzzle. It's large enough that it feels full-sized during the solve (it's 12x12), yet only contains two midi-sized themers (of lengths 9 and 8). The result is a somewhat boring grid with nothing tying it together.

The apt pair itself is quite good, with both halves of the chosen words relating to one another satisfyingly (ACID-BASE, HOME-HOUSE). The themers are even stacked on top of one another in the grid, making a trickier construction. It's a great pair!

The problem is that both themers are camouflaged by the normal fill. They're not long enough to stand out from the crowd and it's too easy to pass them by without realizing they're part of the theme. It's a bummer because the constructor (a first-time constructor for Open Submission Week) clearly put a lot of effort into this puzzle.

Qualms with the theme aside, this puzzle definitely demonstrates the difficulty of its construction with the amount of crosswordese. ACME, AHI, ABE, and SSE are all iffy includes, though I'm sure there weren't many good alternatives.

DAENERYS is fun fill, difficult not because of its clue but because it's so dang hard to spell. I also chuckled at the use of French as an adjective for MILIEU: "Setting, but Frencher".

Anyway, this crossword gets minus points for including a reference to ALVIN and the Chipmunks.

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