New York Times, Saturday, December 26, 2015

Happy Boxing Day! I hope you get to enjoy today's puzzle with your loved ones this holiday season.

I've been looking forward to this puzzle's publication, as it's probably my favorite solo to date. Along with being pretty clean and fun, one aspect that stands out to me is the breadth of knowledge covered. Hopefully a little something for everyone.

Nice 70-worder from James today. I like the challenge he gives himself — big "L" corners like in the NE and SW are no joke. It's hard enough to come up with a triple-stack when the crossing answers are short, but try doing it when some of the crossers are eight letters long. Add in the fact that those long crossers have to be snazzy (since you don't want to waste any of your long slots), and it's a real bear.

I like how clean James got this grid. TROJAN WAR / LIFE COACH / CENTER ICE is a beautiful stack, with nothing remotely gluey required. WAIT A BIT and ACCUTANE aren't quite as nice to my ear, especially since ACCUTANE is off the market now, but RHETORIC is a strong word loaded with feeling.

Similar results for the opposite corner. FAT ALBERT / IN ESSENCE / CASUAL SEX all colorful (although the last one feels a bit too edgy for the NYT crossword, IMO), but SPECIFIC and ATHLETES are more neutral than assets in my eyes.

Both corners show how tough this grid arrangement is — James did a great job getting both of them super clean and smooth, but four of the 12 slots fell into neutral territory for me. This is why most people try to separate their triple-stacks, rather than having them intersect.

I'm sure there will be RIEMANN hypothesis haters out there, but I love a good mystery and I love me some math. I can't say I understand the details, but almost anything on a list of "Millennium Prize Problems" will intrigue me. And to James's point, there's such a wide variety of answers today. Something for everyone is a great philosophy.

I also liked James's use of 6-letter entries to try to spice up the puzzle more. WAVE AT is a bit neutral, but there's something fun about I NEVER and HEY NOW! Even SO VERY is kind of nice. I liked that corner a lot.

Totally stumped by ACED — [Didn't get a return from] made me think about the IRS. Great clue. And great piece of trivia about NATO's flag: [… dark blue, symbolizing an ocean].

Simply put, the RIEMANN hypothesis is a deep mathematical conjecture which states that the nontrivial Riemann zeta function zeros, i.e., the values of s other than -2, -4, -6, ... such that ζ(s)=0 (where ζ(s) is the Riemann zeta function) all lie on the "critical line" σ=R[s]=1/2 (where R[s] denotes the real part of s).

On a somewhat unrelated topic: while CASUAL SEX may be new to NYT solvers, it's a colorful and welcome phrase. Crosswords can be somewhat staid but they also have a history of lightly flirting with the slightly risqué. Who can be surprised when such behavior eventually leads to casual sex?