New York Times, Saturday, December 12, 2020

For our second Times collaboration, we sought a themeless grid with a novel architecture. Sid had the idea of a marquee central stack with each subsequent Across entry flush against the left or right side of the grid in an alternating fashion. It turned out that this constraint required an even number of rows, so we pushed to a 16-tall grid with six central Acrosses. The center forced wide-open corners in the top left and bottom right. We're proud of it!

We've had the great fortune to construct for many venues both together and solo! Notably, we've been known to collaborate on Sid's puzzle blog. Some other recent highlights: Sid has written puzzles for three crossword tournaments this year, including the Championship Puzzle for the Boswords 2020 Fall Themeless League … and Brooke is excited to be joining the Boswords team for their Spring 2021 Themeless League — find both the Fall 2020 puzzle packet and Spring 2021 info at boswords.org! Today's puzzle rounds out an exciting week for Brooke, which included her 22nd puzzle in the USA Today and her first puzzle with the Inkubator (puzzles by trans women, cis women, and women-aligned constructors). She also has her own puzzle blog (note from Sid: Brooke's experimentations with grid symmetry have changed the indie crossword scene, and ripple effects are starting to be seen in mainstream puzzles, too).

A closing message from Brooke: It was a little less than a year ago that I decided a goal for 2020 would be to construct (let alone submit!) a single crossword puzzle. If you're interested in constructing but are on the fence, I encourage you to go for it! You can get involved with the community through the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory or the Crossword Discord Server.

There's a great "something for everyone" vibe to this puzzle, drawing from such diverse topics as literature (MUCKRAKING — dang it, that's MEATPACKER) to meteorology (SQUALL LINE) to geography (MAUNA KEA) to finance (BEQUEATH). And that's just the opening corner! It'd be interesting to see what entries came from which contributor, but there's a wide breadth of knowledge represented in any case.

I've never seen a center quite like today's R-L-R-L alternation. That's a neat layout, allowing for four excellent long entries while trying to minimize their overlap. Smart! DNA PROFILE / THAT WAS CLOSE / HOME RUN TROTS, great stuff! I don't know that most solvers will notice or care, but it spurred me on to check out their individual sites.

I rarely have to put down a Saturday puzzle these days, thanks to all the practice my compulsive solving neurosis gives me. I got stuck in the SE corner, though, a frustrating ordeal. Even though I've studied Python (programming), I couldn't pull out TUPLE (which goes to show you how hard I've been studying).

As a former jazz musician, maybe I should have known STOP TIME. Needless to say, I was that trombone player who hid in the corner and played as quietly as a flute.

Even when I did uncover PLEASE RISE, it didn't feel as strong as ALL RISE. TAMENESS is at best a tame answer, and PEACES is probably related to "peace out"? I either felt old or stupid. Maybe both.

I can hear the kids these days peaceing me right now.

This isn't my favorite type of Saturday, with a lot of the difficulty stemming from unfamiliar entries like SQUALL LINE and ET ALIBI, but I appreciated the inventive layout featuring fantastic marquee entries.

Jeff doesn't appreciate SQUALL LINE or ET ALIBI, but I like them both.

SQUALL LINE I happen to know. ET ALIBI is unfamiliar, but it's the kind of clue I love. The clue is [Latin for "and elsewhere."] The answer isn't immediately obvious (Latin isn't my prima lingua) but it has to start with ET (remember ET ALIA, ET AL?) and ALIBI is the perfect excuse. It literally means you can't be guilty because you were "somewhere else!" Once ET ALIBI comes to mind, you know it must be correct.