New York Times, Friday, May 7, 2021

Hi solvers and onlookers, I'm so happy to see you and I hope you enjoyed this puzzle! It's a bit weird to contrast it with the puzzles I'm making now — I wrote this one last summer when I had been constructing for ~six months. From my current standpoint, I'm certainly putting more effort into exciting and fresh mid-length fill, and I hope to write more clues that editors keep. I love featuring my ANGELOU clue, and I'm hype I discovered the symmetric intersection of these two 14's.

I'm grateful to stand on the shoulders of giants with the diagonal symmetry here, and excited to bring it to the NYT after writing many diagonally symmetric puzzles for other venues, including last week's Boswords championship puzzle (available as part of the 2021 Spring Puzzle Packet, and you can watch the postgame interview with me & the three spectacular finalists on Twitch).

While this is only my third NYT puzzle, in the last year or so I've published about 50 puzzles in other venues and about 50 more on independent blogs. The latter includes my own blog — xwords by a ladee — where I post challenging themeless puzzles with both conventional and more boundary-pushing clue sets. Besides the Boswords championship, some personal recent highlights are my American Values Club themeless that ran two weeks ago and my latest USA Today puzzle, which ran on May 3 (permalinks / Sally's writeup).

Feel free to keep in touch with me on twitter @ my crossword-constructing alter ego @xandraladee … otherwise I'll see you next time I make an appearance over here!

I imagine plenty of people will think this grid is asymmetrical, but it exhibits a rare diagonal symmetry. I love it when people shift crossword norms. If you tilt your head 45 to the right, notice that the grid now looks like it has mirror symmetry. Cool!

(Note: Will Shortz has put the kibosh on two of my up-down symmetry submissions, based purely on aesthetic reasons, so I'd advise against it.)

It's not simply novel, but diagonal symmetry opens up new possibilities, like two marquee answers crossing (OUT OF LEFT FIELD and INSIDE BASEBALL) while allowing easy separation of stacks (PALO ALTO / PROUDEST / SITTERS and BACARDI / BANK LOAN / AGUILERA).

One drawback is that there's the potential for a single hard-to-fill corner, like the southwest. Most editors ixnay 6-letter partials like AS PURE, so it didn't shine as much as the rest of the puzzle.

So much cluing wordplay shined through. TOQUES are literally over (the chef's) head in restaurants. A BANK LOAN as something "of interest." "Running apparel" had me confused, but what a great a-ha moment when I realized it referred to HOSE that gets runs after snags.

Brooke is a big proponent for more diverse representation in crosswords, and I appreciated the touches that made me interested without feeling like I was being forced to learn. I don't know MARI Copeny, but it was easy enough to fill in from the crosses, and the "Little Miss Flint" reference made me curious to read up on her. A great teacher creates a situation where you want to learn, and Brooke did that so well.

There was a bit of ESSE, INAT, CFC (chlorofluorocarbon), ROES (strange in plural), but nothing egregious. CADENT made this musician pause, but it is a word in the dictionary.

I appreciate that this isn't the standard Friday offering. It wasn't only the diagonal symmetry that made it feel fresh, but some of the entries and especially the thoughtful cluing.