CHOICE WORDS

Alex Eaton-Salners is an in-house attorney for Western Digital, a technology company headquartered in San Jose, Calif. He has been a frequent crossword contributor to The Times since 2017.

Alex also enjoys making different sorts of word puzzles. He has a book of diagramless crosswords scheduled for publication next spring from Puzzlewright Press.

As sometimes happens, the starting point for this puzzle didn't end up in the final grid. While brainstorming on another puzzle idea involving the phrase UP OR OUT, I came up with the gimmick you see here. UP OR OUT describes career advancement in hierarchical partnership and tenure organizations, where workers either need to climb the ladder or leave. During the editorial process, UP OR OUT was replaced with IN OR OUT, erasing the link to the original inspiration. So, I guess that means the result was "OUT" rather than "UP" for UP OR OUT. ;-)

In some ways, this puzzle marks the end of an era for me. It was my last snail mail submission accepted by the editors (though not the last to be published as I still have a couple of earlier acceptances in the queue). Although the online portal is easier to use, I miss the ritual of printing, collating, and sending puzzles in by hand. And, unfortunately for me, I purchased a large supply of envelopes, stamps, labels, and paper clips just before the changeover.

Literally, CHOICE WORDS squeezed into a single square. We've written them below in teeny-tiny letters — hopefully, paper solvers used extremely sharp pencils today!

Great selection of common X OR Y phrases. Even better, fantastic idea to include those phrases within the grid — in the same row as the matching entry!

I'll admit, I was annoyed at having to squish HIT/MISS into the first special square, but uncovering HIT OR MISS next to it made it much more HIT than MISS. It's a feat of construction to get matching pairs of length, but it's so much more than a constructor's flourish. Without this added layer, the puzzle wouldn't have been nearly as much fun to solve.

The layout challenges did come with a few trade-offs. Because many of the themers are short, having to stick to the 140-word maximum meant that Alex had to make his fill slots longer than usual. For example, check out the big swaths of real estate between MARCHING ORDERS and WIN OR LOSE, chock full of 6-8 letter entries. That's a themeless-esque filling challenge.

Given this constraint, Alex did well, even a bit better than a typical Sunday puzzle. DES, FSU, IDEE, SEP, etc., are common enough. AST (Atlantic Standard Time) and the racially charged AH SO are harder to swallow. METRES and TONNES are passable by themselves, but using too much of one type of crossword glue reinforces the feeling of inelegance.

The juxtaposition of the X OR Y phrase next to its matching themer made this a strong concept, enjoyable to solve. It's a shame that there are so many letters to write into such a tiny box, though — I'm curious to see if there's an online solution that would make this aspect of it less frustrating.