them's crossing words

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So Extra

by Joe Deeney

An xtreme xword in the shape of an X. What's not to like?

There's nothing beyond this theme other than the shape of the grid and a number of words containing the letter X. There's almost a second layer, where nearly every X falls on the upper-left to bottom-right diagonal. TXT is the odd one out. The arrangement of the X's feels so deliberate that I actually slotted the entire diagonal with X's in anticipation of the theme, only to later realize that the gaps are intentional (PORIVER, REDO, EMUS, TXT).

I can understand that exclusively fitting X's along the diagonal is tough stuff (hence the not-so-good fill with the current composition) and I wonder if it was the constructor's original plan. I could see the realities of the word list making it nearly impossible, maybe requiring some sacrifices to the grid shape. Either way, I wish the word arrangement was less consistent to avoid suggesting a pattern.

As for the fill, well, it definitely suffered from the theme. PORIVER, EMUS, WACOTEXAS, ALDO? Not exactly my favorite picks, especially so in a 9x9 grid. I really struggled with this puzzle because the fill is borderline arbitrary.

I also didn't particularly jive with the clues. "CTRL + Y on a PC" strikes me as one of the more esoteric keyboard shortcuts. I was almost tempted to slot YANK since that's the equivalent Emacs command, but let's be real, there's zero chance of that happening. TXT likewise tickles my nerd brain, "README file extension, often". The funny thing is I only ever see two types of READMEs, README (no extension) that implies plain text, and README.md that uses Markdown. I can't remember the last time I saw a README.txt.

How about "City and state where the Dr Pepper Museum is located"? Now, this one threw me for a serious loop. I was convinced that "City and state" meant that the answer was both a city and a state, e.g. New York, New York. Not that both the city and state are included in the answer (WACOTEXAS). Oof. But hey, hats off to WACOTEXAS whose apparent greatest identifying feature is a Dr Pepper museum.

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