New York Times, Friday, February 6, 2015

I'm sort of amazed to realize it's been over 6 years since my last NY Times crossword. Apparently grad school can have that effect — I just hadn't been constructing much for a while. I'm tempted to reminisce about the now mystical past (c. 2006 when I was an intern with Will) when people gathered on the Forum, the New York Sun was still shining, and there was a plentiful supply of unlitzed pre-Shortzian puzzles. But instead I'll focus on this puzzle, which I made in the less mystical past (c. the end of 2013).

I started in the middle with THIS OLD THING and YOU'RE TOO MUCH. I'm a fan of in-the-language phrases that it's funny to imagine the puzzle saying to you if it could talk (which it can't). I think those two fit the bill, as does OH GROW UP. I felt a little rusty since this was the first grid I had made in a few years. So, looking back, I apologize for any FLECHE or DII-related unpleasantness in the fill.

On the clue front, I was happy to see that Will kept some of my longish trivia clues, including the one about Nora EPHRON knowing the identity of Deep Throat and the one about the U.S.'s first LT. GEN. being Geo. Washington (which is pronounced "Geology Washington"). As a native Floridian, I was also happy to see the two Everglades clues stick around.

Anyway, I very much hope it won't be another 6 years until my next puzzle and, to that end, am working on some grids. Hope it was a good solve for you!

Well, would you LOOK AT THAT — challenging Friday puzzle to start the weekend.

The partitions make this feel like three separate mini-puzzles, with only YOU'RE TOO MUCH and THIS OLD THING to help you squeeze through the door into the corners. I started off (over)confidently, dropping in LOOKIE HERE before backtracking to just LOOK. Even with that misstep, the NW corner unfolded first, perhaps because I had just ROCKED a baby to sleep before attempting the puzzle.

The SE corner came next, courtesy of Mao, a Magic 8 Ball, and excellent high school history and French teachers (thanks, Messrs. Kivela and Satterlee!). The DOOR in the middle of IT'S DO OR DIE briefly gave me pause, but the best MISREAD entry in that section was parsing HI THERE as HIT HERE, which would of course be clued as "Sign on nerd's back?"

My momentum stalled in the river flowing from NE to SW, with only a few tiny stones to step on. THE CAT and ORGANA were likely gimmes for some, but not for me. As Jeff will attest, my knowledge of all things Star Wars/Trek is shamefully scant (Jeff: "Who said, 'Live long and prosper?' " Me: "Benjamin Franklin?"), and my knowledge of 1960s TV series is even scanter. The Nora EPHRON clue about Deep Throat was a fun factoid, and I particularly liked TAIGA crossing with PANGAEA — two geography terms with uncommon vowel patterns.

The number of colloquialisms was on the high side for my taste. I'd put LOOK AT THAT, YOU'RE TOO MUCH, THIS OLD THING, IT'S DO OR DIE, and EASY DOES IT into this category. The zestiest of those was THIS OLD THING, though I tend to think of it as false modesty, in a Blanche Devereaux sort of way.

My favorite answer: 46A. Without FLECHE, there would be no "Fletch", (and definitely no Fletch F. Fletch), and I'm not sure that's a world I want to live in. He is actually six-five, with the Afro, six-nine.