New York Times, Saturday, April 18, 2020

I'd been eyeing this grid design for a while before finally making an attempt at filling it. It was a long process, particularly with the open middle, and this puzzle was the eventual final output. The plural RADIUMS is the obvious, vomitous blight in the middle of the grid, but I thought the rest of the fill was exciting and colorful enough to offset that.

The inflexibility of the middle necessitated some interesting entries with rarer letter combinations leading into the corners, including CRY HAVOC and John WYCLIFFE (no not Wyclef Jean, though the rapper was apparently named after the theologian.) Overall, given the constraints, I'm happy with the variety of entries I was able to include, especially in the longer intersecting stacks.

The editing team kept a good portion of my clues, though DRAPER was not kept clued as the "Mad Men" character. However, I thought the clue for DELILAH was a brilliant improvement. Hope you enjoy the puzzle and stay safe! Χριστός ανέστη! (a day early)

Oh, that center. Ooh. Ooooh! If you add a googol Os to that "ooh," that'd be more accurate. I've worked with many big centers while developing themelesses, but nothing like this. It wouldn't even occur to me to try, so impossible does it seem. I might attempt it once, and then quickly place a black square at the very center, or maybe scatter two around, like at the A of CYBERATTACK and the R of LOTTERY PICK.

Stunning. I rarely open up a themeless and stare, slack-jawed.

My usual second reaction to something like this is to clench every muscle in my body in preparation for a slew of uglies. Short gloop. Mid-length oddities. Long curiosities. Everything under the Barnum and Bailey sun.

Not today. The middle is more Blaine than Bailey. There are strong feature entries, like LOTTERY PICK (term for a high NBA draft choice), CYBERATTACK, RAT TRAP, STAR STUDENT, SPY CAMS. And there's no short crossword glue — how could there be where there are so few short slots, period?

RADIUMS is ugly in the plural, but it gets a pass as the sole funky bit in the massive white hole that is the center. I laughed at Ryan's appropriate use of the word "vomitous," too.

Solid corners, too. CRY HAVOC, THE FORCE (think: "Star Wars"), SNO BALLS, the women's soccer powerhouse TEAM USA, and that wannabe COOL MOM we all roll our eyes at, ha ha ha ... hey, wait. One of my kids called me a "cool dad" the other day. Huh.

Some may miss the cleverness behind [Shrunken head?]. LAV is short for "lavatory," so there needs to be some "for short" or "Abbr." tag in the clue. Great use of "shrunken" to do that job, while introducing wit by using a fun phrase.

I'd still have given Ryan the POW! for this masterpiece if it had turned out 80% as strong. I might have to award him 1.25 POW!s today!