FIRST LADIES

I wrote this as an, uh, coping mechanism after certain late 2016 events. It's so important for kids to have role models they can see themselves in, and celebrating women who reach the top of fields historically dominated by men is a huge part of that. Shoutout to all my friends who will be those women for tomorrow's girls interested in STEM.

The crucial concept of BREAKing THE GLASS CEILING was very much in the news around the election, and hearing and thinking about it got me to thinking about how to literalize it in a crossword grid (this phenomenon happens to everyone, right?). A bit of brainstorming got me to the idea you see today, though I was pretty sure it'd be impossible to execute. There aren't that many ???GLASSes out there, and surely it'd be tough to find a set which could be broken in the manner I needed. I got lucky and it just barely worked out — I didn't leave too many good glasses on the (proverbial) table!

Lack of glass flexibility also led to a lack of flexibility in choosing women to include. I was bummed that I could only think of one GLASS which could be broken by a C, because CURIE and CLINTON were both at the top of my list. I went with CURIE mostly for field diversity, since a lot of others that were fitting in ended up being in politics. I was also sad that I couldn't think of any that could be broken by W, because I wanted to use either Edith WHARTON or Oprah WINFREY. Ditto Aretha FRANKLIN for F; the only "option" I found for F was WA(F)TER GLASS, and neither WAFTER nor WATER GLASS itself is strong at all.

This lack of flexibility, unfortunately, left me with a set of all white women, which I wanted to avoid, if possible — a puzzle celebrating diversity of extraordinary achievement feels incomplete that way. But overall, I was just happy to get a workable set of well-known glasses and women (and, in particular, women well-known as the breakers of their glass ceilings).

Wrangling the grid also wasn't trivial. It was easy to arrange the three glasses at the top of the grid since those ceilings naturally exist. Including all the black squares necessary to construct the remaining three ceilings constrained the grid a lot, and in particular led to the choked-off, relatively open sections that the theme entries are mostly contained in. And those sections themselves were pretty constrained, as happens with crossing theme entries, leading to some trade-offs in the fill — most notably in the CURIE / WIN(C)E GLASS region. I hope never to see the entry I SEE A again (though shoutout to my mom, who claims to have played "Bohemian Rhapsody" a lot when she was pregnant with me — explains a lot).

As for the rest of the puzzle, I think the fill is pretty solid in other regions, with (hopefully) enough interesting non-thematic stuff to keep solvers entertained. Writing ? clues is my favorite part of constructing, so I'm glad Will didn't quite excise all of them (luckily for everyone else, he did excise most of them). I think I'll add "first person to put the word SEXILE in the NYT crossword" to my dating app profiles — appreciating that feels like it'd have a really high correlation with getting along with me. Read into that what you will.

Sam helps BREAK THE GLASS CEILING today, six women cracking into their respective fields. The circled letters contain types of GLASS — it's not a PINT that's a 16-ounce container, but a PINT (GLASS). It's not STAINED that's a building material, but STAINED GLASS. Nice how each of the women breaks through these different GLASSes. I enjoyed these groundbreaking — er, ceilingbreaking — women getting featured in a puzzle with a nice trick.

Fun that the first letters of the women's names helped form a new word in those GLASSes. PINT to P(O)INT, STAINED to ST(R)AINED, etc. Didn't totally get the rationale for that, but there were some interesting finds.

I also dug Sam's fill. I love the DIY KIT, OH GEEZ, YOU IDIOT, SEXILE mid-length entries. FLEXAGON is another one I love (written about by the great Martin Gardner). Some may hate it because they don't know what it is, but haters gonna hate.

I wasn't a fan of the grid segmentation. As Sam mentioned, it helps create six distinct "ceilings," and makes each of the "rooms" easier to construct — but it was such a choppy solve. Felt like solving 10ish mini-puzzles; no flow at all.

The north and south are the worst offenders, what with a single entry connecting them to the rest of the grid. Opening those even just a little, like moving the block between IRE and EASTON one space to the right, would have helped tremendously. But that would have made construction much more difficult, no doubt.

A couple of gluey bits, but less than usual in a Sunday puzzle: I SEE A is indeed a bad partial, and OSA is an entry Will and Joel are trying to phase out. But very smooth overall, especially considering all the constraints.

All in all, I liked the concept and celebration. If only the grid had been even a little less partitioned, it would have gotten serious POW! consideration.