New York Times, Friday, January 29, 2016

If you couldn't already tell, I'm kind of a comic book nerd. (More specifically, I'm a graphic novel fan; I prefer the freedom of reading a complete story told in one volume better than having to read the same story via monthly comics. My impatience knows no bounds!) So, unsurprisingly, I started this puzzle with GENERAL ZOD--somewhat fresh from his appearance in 2013's "Man of Steel," and soon to make a cameo in the upcoming flick "Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice" (...but you didn't hear that from me).

My initial interest in ZOD was simply for the geek factor, but, from a cruciverbal standpoint, I also valued the entry for its (mostly) alternating vowel/consonant pattern, common letters, and the single Z. True to character, ZOD seemed to fit well among the wide-open spaces.

Trying to improve upon my past themelesses and those from my predecessors, I aimed for: (1) few three-letter entries, (2) long entries all around, and (3) a central spanner in addition to that sprawling center section. I'm also a sucker for connectivity, which might explain my puzzles' relative ease.

At any rate, I like how this puzzle turned out and hope solvers cotton to it as well. =)

P.S. Did anyone else notice the eerie number of dichotomies in this puzzle? GENERAL ZOD crossing SUN TANNING (Kryptonians love themselves a yellow sun), BEARCATS and TOY POODLES, KCAL and CALTECH (with two different meanings for CAL), and CALTECH bordering DEVRY, among others. All connections are purely coincidental, but you're free to think otherwise. =)

Nice, clean construction with some standout entries. IT IS DECIDEDLY SO felt so difficult to piece together, what with that odd -LYSO ending — a great feeling of accomplishment when I finally figured it out.

I was impressed with David's work in puzzle layout. Giant swaths of wide-open white squares often means that the puzzle gets segmented into pieces, but David did very well in keeping his two corners and the middle diagonal well-connected with high solving flow. Even if you didn't know GENERAL ZOD and had the same trouble as me in grokking IT IS DECIDEDLY SO, there's still a ton of ways to bridge that gap at the top — doing it with the fantastic entries SUNTANNING, ONE PLEASE, DR PEPPER, and BEARCATS is so well done.

I'm a comics dork — my nephew considers me to be a quasi-superhero because of my ability to answer any superhero trivia (pro tip: I make some of it up) — but GENERAL ZOD is pretty deep even for me. I don't mind it as an answer, as he played a crucial role in"Superman II", but he didn't give me quite the surge of emotions as LEX LUTHOR or KRYPTONITE might.

ZOD crossing CELADON … I think CELADON is something that NYT solvers would want to know (important technique in ceramics), but that intersection feels like it sets up some solvers to fail. No doubt that the diagonal swath is intensely hard to fill with color and cleanliness, but this felt like a weak spot to me. I did really like BANANA BOAT, CALTECH, CAKE PAN, and overall it's a very nice swath of mid-to-longish entries, but oof.

Some clues lost me, so I'll explain:

• How is a [Networking aid] a server? When it's a computer server. I was stuck on the "making contacts" sense of networking.
• John TYLER was the shortest-serving vice-president? That's wrong, as it's William Henry Harrison who died just a month into office! Ah. Wait. TYLER was his VP. Never mind!
• What kind of CAKE PAN contains batteries? None, but many are batter-y. (Groan.)
• IM UP is a [Shout when there's no cause for (an) alarm], i.e. the alarm clock is unnecessary.