New York Times, Saturday, December 10, 2016

The answer to the age-old question of "Do you start with the answers or with the clues?" is sometimes "I start with one nasty tough clue, and then build the rest of the puzzle around that entry." This puzzle was all about a vehicle for the [Play with an imaginary friend] at 15A. Very tricky obviously, and no ? as a warning.

After a lot of fiddling and polishing multiple versions. I saw that I had IVAN next to LEND. If there had been an easy fix, I would have tried to turn LEND into LENDL. I would have needed a five letter LG??? — LGBTQ would be great, and maybe even possible, but it was quickly evident that finishing the grid would have been murder, so I dropped it. This is the disadvantage from the constructor's point of view of grids that have lots of flow. The effects of changes in one area propagate elsewhere freely. But having flow is better for solvers, so I try to maximize it where I can. Sure, you get saddled with a TESORO now and then, but on balance, I hope it ends up for a more enjoyable puzzle overall.

Love some of the long multi-word entries! EXHIBITA looks so cool and bizarre (it's "Exhibit A"), I'M TOO SEXY is unfortunately very catchy, and the kid in me absolutely giggles with glee over the SLEEPER HOLD. (I watched way too much WWE as a kid.) Along with a PARTY BUS, PED XING, EXIT POLL, and SKI LODGE, that's some strong material throughout the puzzle.

Like I mentioned yesterday, I tend to find single-word entries less interesting than multi-worders. Part of it is that years ago, Rich Norris of the LAT imparted upon me how single-word entries can make a puzzle feel more like a school test rather than entertainment. For example, AMORTIZE doesn't wow me, even though I spent way too much time studying amortization in my accounting classes. And it's hard to do much with words like KNEADERS and SNOOPERS, which feel so contrived what with their -ERS addition.

But Byron does a good job working in some single-worders that I do find fun in themselves. Something really interesting about the words CAVALIER, EBENEZER, MAROONED — they all bring up interesting images in my head. Personal taste, of course.

This isn't to say that multi-worders are always better than single-worders — STAND NEXT TO doesn't do a lot for me, for example.

Byron always does such a great job of clue writing. There's a standout in [Leader in a suit?] for EXHIBIT A, making an already great entry even better. Love the misdirection, "leader" here more meaning "leadoff" than "head honcho".

As with some of Byron's other puzzles, some entries made me stop and think. PET HATES was one of those. Pet peeves, sure, but PET HATES? It does have a good showing in Google searches, so perhaps it's a new term that's gaining ground?

Also a couple of oddballs: ETTORE Bugatti seems esoteric (I knew him from crosswords — so useful with all those common letters), ESTHETE which I always knew as AESTHETE before I started doing crosswords, SNOCKERED (schnookered?), and SCHNOZ, which to me looks so odd without a double Z in SCHNOZZ. They are all fair game, though, I think.