New York Times, Saturday, December 7, 2013

I started making puzzles ("puzzin'") back in college with my good friend, Ashton Anderson. After some growing pains, we had a collaboration puzzle published on a Monday back in 2009. Following that, Ashton switched his attention to themeless puzzles, while I switched mine to altogether less important things. The constructing bug bit me again back in 2012, though, and I began trying my hand at themeless construction, which led to this puzzle (and a few more in the pipeline, including some co-constructed with Ashton).

This puzzle is brought to you by EMMA STONE. A friend of mine is a big fan and encouraged me to feature her in a puzzle. I was also pleased to have PROACTIV, BUG ZAPPER, GLEE CLUB, BOOK SMART, SANDAL TAN, and JEZEBEL in there. Somehow, these answers hit a sweet spot for me. They're evocative, modern, playful, and surprising, to my ear at least. It's difficult to pin down or articulate this reaction, but it's what makes me love crosswords, and particularly themeless crosswords.

I find the crosses in the NW interesting, and I'm eager to get solvers' feedback. It's quite a pile-up of names (5 of the first 6 downs!), but given that they are all from quite different parts of culture, I thought it wouldn't distract. I hope that's the case.

I'm honored to have this puzzle in the Times, and I hope everyone enjoys the solve.

Originally this puzzle started as a Friday, but the three test-solvers found it so challenging that I bumped it up to Saturday. My favorite entries here include PROACTIV, BB GUN, HAS NO IDEA, EMMA STONE, OLD GEEZER, JEZEBEL, BOOK-SMART, SANDAL TAN, BUG ZAPPER, GLEE CLUB, USER NAME, and EASYGOING. Very handsome!

Nice work today from James. A ton of great fill, highlighted by BUG ZAPPER and its associated clue. I wonder if SANDAL TAN is going to get criticized as "not a thing", but I really liked uncovering it. And having a risque clue made it even better to me. Tee hee.

This is a 72-word puzzle, the maximum number allowed for a themeless, and some constructors / critics will probably pooh-pooh it as the easiest type of themeless to construct. But what matters to me is the solving experience, and James incorporated enough long stuff (triple-stacked corners plus longer fill coming out of those answers) that I didn't notice the high word count. A win in my book.

The NE corner is a great example of the tradeoffs that themeless constructors must make at every step along the way. What a nice stack of BUG ZAPPER / GLEE CLUB / USER NAME, all intersected by OLD GEEZER! Four very nice entries crammed into a small space makes for a great solving experience. However, that ultra-high density of goodness usually means that there will need to be ugly bits to hold it together. Some will argue that OGEES is totally fine as an architectural term. Some will even say give me my BPOE or give me death! (Okay, maybe not.) But having both of those along with NES in a single corner is tough to swallow in a themeless.

A discussion on cheater squares. Typically I don't mind cheaters at all (Rich Norris at the LAT calls them "helper squares" for good reason as they usually improve fill quality a lot), but sometimes I pause on a high-word count themeless. It's of course a subjective call, but the cheater just before PUMA (and its symmetrical pair) makes the grid look less elegant to me. I don't mind the one after PROACTIV (and its symmetrical pair) as much. Again, a subjective call. Generally I highly value smoothness of fill in a themeless, so I appreciate James's choices here — I can only imagine JEZEBEL would have been tough to work in without incorporating that central set of cheaters.

Nice work today, good tough challenge.