New York Times, Saturday, October 13, 2018

This grid is actually a revision. The top right was the same, as CHEAT DAY / ROGUE ONE / ALAN ALDA was too good to let go. But ZOE KAZAN used to be in the bottom left, which created a corner filled with so many proper nouns and difficult words (e.g. ENFILADE) that I was asked to redo it. So ZOE KAZAN moved up to the middle area - I simply could not pass on those Z's - and finding a quad stack that connected with it was very time consuming. Discovering that delicious combination of LIMEADES / MAGRITTE / PLAYTEST, the last of which could pass as a seed entry, was pure luck. Overall, my notes grew to over 250 partial fills that were good enough to consider submitting, an indicator of how stubbornly I clung to my seed entries.

For the clues, I decided to forgo a self-imposed deadline for finishing them, and instead simply selected a few unclued entries at random each day to clue and only finalized something if it was really good. Only about a third of them ended up being changed whereas in the past it's been half or more, which is encouraging. For instance, I'm pleased with 26-A, 1-D, and 32-D. One category of clues that tended to be changed were tricky clues for entries that are less well-known. For example, I had "Fast break?" for CHEAT DAY, which would be quite difficult for a person who's never heard of the term; the same is true of "They're related to hobbies" for KESTRELS. To me these are fair for, say, a tournament final, but it seems that they're too hard even for a Saturday.

Technically superb puzzle. Kevin is one of the few constructors dipping into quad-stack corners, and for good reason — they're one of the toughest challenges in themeless grids. That NE corner is so well done — CHEAT DAY is a great way to anchor it, ROGUE ONE is contemporary, TEA TASTER runs through it for even more color. Some might complain about Jennifer EGAN, but "A Visit From the Goon Squad" won the Pulitzer.

We constructors love it when people with grid-friendly names become crossworthy!

Nice work in the opposite corner, too. I do love me some PLAYTESTing, Kevin and I both deep into Mystery Hunt-style puzzles. (He's roughly ninety-wajillion times as skilled as me, though.) MAGRITTE and KATY PERRY added a lot, too.

Although the technical merits are strong, I had a bit of DOLOR as a solver. That's exaggerating, but these types of wide-open grids tend to suffer from lack of snazziness. I felt like there was so much prepositional addition — TOP OUT, CRAWL IN, HOLE UP, BLEW APART, DISHED OUT. Left me with a feeling of too many precious long slots not pulling their weight.

I didn't love ADEPTS, either. Yes, it's dictionary supported, but it's so odd in the plural.

And the PIMAS / MURANO cross nearly did me in. Ultimately though, I think PIMAS is something educated solvers ought to have at least heard of.

Kevin could have made his life a lot easier by moving a black square to where the P of PIMAS is. That would have dead-ended the SE corner, making filling easier, probably making it possible to replace some of those prepositionals with more pizzazz. But I applaud his decision to go the tough road, which allows for a more open grid and thus better solving flow.

Overall, a solid, if not super-sparkly, low-word-count puzzle.