New York Times, Saturday, December 17, 2016

I'm not good at themeless and seldom venture out of the standard grid layouts. As friendly as this grid setup was, I still had a tough time finding nice answers for these bridging slots: 33A / 39A (ECOFREAK / SERRANOS) and 21D / 27D (RSSFEED / SALAMIS) — I had filled and locked the two triple-stacked 10s earlier on.

And C.C. hits for the cycle! I admire people who can do it all, and C.C. is developing into one of those folks.

I liked entries like TWITTERBOT, DOUBLE TALK, ALL THE RAGE, and GLASSY-EYED — C.C. is so good with her bonus fill on themed puzzles, that it's no surprise she can feature some real winners in a themeless. ORDER NOW and ANY IDEAS helped flesh out the puzzle, as did ECOFREAK.

I did pause at ECOFREAK, especially without a "disparaging" qualifier. While it is a colorful word, it does seem a little offensive. Perhaps it's my Seattle environs, filled with dirty hippie ecofreaks.

I mean, super-passionate people trying to save the environment! Ahem. Please don't blow pot smoke in my face.

Usually, the most wide-open space in a themeless will be the trickiest to fill. Here, my eye was drawn immediately to the LENDS / SELL section (and the symmetrical SAMP / PLEAT). They might seem innocuous, but those two triangles of space have to work in concert with their adjoining triple-stacks — not easy. At the top, I thought it was a little inelegant to get Brett RATNER and Ben BRADLEE next to each other. I do think both are crossworthy, but they make for an ungainly pair for solvers who don't know the hard-to-spell names.

But that was the only spot I thought was a bit inelegant. Yes, SAMP is a toughie, as is RSS FEED (Rich Site Summary), but all the crossings are fair (although reader Gerry Wildenberg points out that JSS and JAM IN work equally well — I hadn't thought of that!). I do wonder if RSS FEED is an asset to the puzzle — not only is RSS a seemingly Random Set of Stuff, but I stopped using RSS FEEDs a few years ago when Google Reader shut down. Hmm.

There weren't as many great feature entries as I usually want in a themeless, especially one using a fairly standard pattern of black squares — HEALTH PLAN, SO FAR AS, MEDICATE, PROMISED, and TEANECK were more neutral than assets for me — but C.C. sure did a nice job of filling smoothly around the ones she did have.