New York Times, Friday, March 5, 2021

I wanted to make a grid around AKIRA KUROSAWA because he's so often seen in puzzles on a first-name basis, understandably, but he deserves more than that. I'm not sure if the entry is a first, but it's certainly rare. I clued it via a lesser-known but marvelous film of his; I can only hope that some people will go watch "Stray Dog" after solving this puzzle. I also had a little Shakespearean strain throughout the clues as an homage to Kurosawa, who is in many ways the Bard's modern equivalent.

I'm pretty stoked to have my Times debut on a Friday, which is my personal favorite solving day. I've been making puzzles for several years now, but very sporadically and mostly for my friends. I enjoy constructing crosswords, especially freestyles because it's an interesting exercise to take an algorithmic framework — in this case, strings of letters in a grid — and imbue it with some of the more inscrutable aspects of culture — slang and humor, for instance. The dichotomy pleases me.

When I'm off the grid, as it were, I'm a classical flutist. I also have a podcast, Impolite to Listen, where I chat casually with my friend about classical music and its attendant matters. I find that the motions of the mind are similar between constructing crosswords and making music. Is there some truth there? I don't know — I am not my mind's accountant.

Jim Horne and I had a fun time discussing this one. Both of us are jazz musicians (he a real one, me a fake one hearkening back to my playing days two decades ago), so we both dropped in FAKE BOOK without having to improvise. It might take more time to understand than LOOKBOOK, but it'll probably resonate when I tell you that a FAKEBOOK lists out melody and chord progressions so you can sort of "fake it." Neat to get this debut entry from a musician!

Jim argued that AKIRA KUROSAWA might qualify as one of the most influential movie directors of all time. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I tried to watch "The Seven Samurai" but made it seven minutes before putting on "The Magnificent Seven" yet again. It's impressive that KUROSAWA was named Asian of the Century, although I contend that if Bruce Lee had been one of the seven samurai I'd have watched a lot longer.

Editors tend to prize multi-word entries, since they tend to run more colorful than one-worders. FLAGELLA is a fascinating word, though, and when you give ECONOMISTS a clue that tells it like it is, that's fantastic. I keep in touch with one of my econ profs from business school, who freely admits that those who can't do, go into econ.

Quite a bit of impressive cluing. Riffing on "trace element" for STENCIL is so clever! And the standout: [Plant that may yield oil]. Talk about spicing up a one-word entry; such a clever misdirect away from an oil REFINERY!

Fine debut grid, the smattering of AUS LIS NES PSA YRS easily pushed to the side by the sheer quantity of brilliant clues. I generally like more multi-word entries than this one has, but the devilishly clever wordplay helped make up for it.