New York Times, Saturday, May 15, 2021

I made this puzzle at the same time I was making the finals puzzle for Boswords 2020. I wanted to minimize 3s since I thought that would be fun for a finals puzzle in a tournament — fewer toeholds, etc. Hence, this one has no 3s! It's a fun layout to work with, and I'm glad about how clean it came out, though I would like it better with a bit more pizzazz.

For the first time since 2015, this leaves me with no puzzles on file — work has taken over my life lately, but that "zero" number has me motivated to try and get back into constructing. Until next time!

Maniacally difficult layout to work with. Three-letter entries are so key to most themeless puzzles because without them, you're almost forced into quad stacks, like the northwest corner. Triple-stacked 8s are easy enough to create, but quad-stacked 8s are rough, often requiring trade-offs of a few dabs of crossword glue and/or less colorful answers. Amazing result in that opening corner — it's so difficult to get all four long answers to sing, and DRAG SHOW / RICE WINE / OPEN A TAB / SILENT BS are good to excellent.

ACELA could be tough for non-East coasters, and GENET might not be the first (or tenth) playwright people think of, but the crossings are fair. A resounding success, that corner.

Similar results in the opposite corner. I've seen I REALIZE and HOT SPOTS in enough crosswords now that they're not as fresh, but they're still solid. And this huge "Princess Bride" fanatic loved INIGO Montoya, who would have been fun to see dueling with BIZET playing in the background.

Given the level of technical difficulty, those two corners are triumphs.

I finished with an incorrect square at VELA crossing KEN OLIN, as VEGA and KENOGIN felt more likely to be correct, at least to my pandemic-triggered-sleep-deprived brain. I'd sympathize with people who struggled with the VELA / RAGNAROK crossing, too, although "Thor: RAGNAROK" was a recent box office success. More recent than "thirtysomething," anyway.

I wasn't familiar with the boxing slang, TOMATO CAN, but what a fun term to learn. Especially fun when paired with HIT THE DIRT.

Jim Horne and I had an amusing exchange around AMEND vs. EMEND when he mentioned how odd AMEND was compared to the "correct" EMEND. This red-blooded ‘Murican pointed out the Amendments to the Constitution, gol darn it! Google's Ngram viewer backs me up, so take that, Canadia!

Is it bedtime yet?

Aside from the one region, I considered unfair (sour grapes and all), a solid puzzle. Sam's comment about not quite enough color resonated, though, always a peril of an audacious 66-word layout like this. It's also a lot easier to bring the heat with longer entries like ALL SYSTEMS GO and NOT UP TO SNUFF than it is with 9- or 10-letter entries.