New York Times, Saturday, May 23, 2015

With the bar for freestyles currently so high, I feel the need to go beyond building a grid around a single seed entry. HATCHETJOB is a solid phrase for sure, but it really wouldn't be a complete puzzle unless I could stack it with two other quality entries and have their crossings up to par.

Of course, the challenge is to pull that feat off several times in one grid. On top of that, cleanly bridging between the "seed stacks" is often as tough as filling those open white spaces!

As I've come to expect from Peter, a beautiful grid chock full of zesty entries, with just a couple of glue dots to hold it together. Very impressive start to the puzzle, HATCHET JOB / YEAH IM SURE / ESKIMO KISS in a super clean corner. And TAKEI of Star Trek and "Oh Myyy…" internet fame! As if I didn't already love TAKEI for being one of the only Asians I saw on TV growing up, his transformation into Internet megastar elevates him to one of my favorite people on the planet.

ONE HR is an interesting entry. On one hand, it could be inelegant since it involves an abbreviation. But what a crazy string of letters! It stalled me out in that corner, as I was sure that it had to be something like ONE PM, which I've seen many times (and personally disliked) before. I certainly like it better than ONE AM, but is it a liability or neutral? Not sure.

I typically would give a fantastic grid like this the POW!, but something felt off to me. Upon reflection, I think it's the cluing — such missed opportunity; so much potential to clue TAKEI in a spicier manner. Same with OFFICE BOY, HATCHET JOB, ESKIMO KISS and FREE CLIMB, which all got definitional clues. Granted, FREE CLIMB is niche enough that maybe it needed something out of Webster's, but even that is fairly well inferable, yeah?

And as much as I like efforts to get STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields higher priority in education, cluing it with a fill-in-the-blank feels like it gives STEM short-shift.

Granted, there are some very nice clues. [Something to keep a watch on] is clever for WRIST. But for such a well-executed grid, I would have loved to see more clues of an equal level of excellence. It's a tough balance — clues that are too clever can cause confusion, if the answer isn't widely known. But I'd rather err on the side of throwing caution to the wind, perhaps producing some head-scratching but also some real oohs and aahs.

Interesting dilemma in themeless creation — if an entry is as fantastic as HATCHET JOB or FREE CLIMB, but it requires a dictionary definition because it's not well-known enough ... is it a fantastic entry after all?