New York Times, Friday, June 1, 2018

7-Down was the first entry in this grid, and then I built the central stack of 11s around the long crosser. This is a common approach I have when writing these stagger-stack freestyles. Other than the central stack, I don't work with a pre-set grid design; the grid will gradually build around the stack based on what I can do with the crossings. This organic approach to grid design is one of the more compelling aspects of writing freestyles from the center outward. Here the unplanned bonuses are the two additional long downs that flank TEACHABLE MOMENT.

There are drawbacks of working the grid design as you go, however, and this grid is a good example. The corners here are too dry, especially that southeast corner. The main reason for this is the glut of 3-letter words. In general, I don't think sixteen 3s is "too many" for a freestyle, but it can become tedious for the solver when every corner of the grid is so heavily reliant on 3s. What's more, bland entries like IMITATING and TSARINAS take up such valuable grid real estate, and don't add any sparkle to offset the surplus of short stuff.

If I were writing this puzzle today, I'd like to see if upping the word count to 70 would improve this situation. Specifically, I'd like to see if adding a block at the P of ICEPALACE (and its symmetrical partner) would make for a better overall fill, or at least allow for a grid design that opens up the corners a bit. It's possible that I tried these things and hit a dead end — I counted over 90 .puz files I've written since I wrote this last year, so apologies for my fuzzy memories of this one.

It's frustrating to revisit old work that doesn't quite meet your current standards, as is the case here. I do hope, however, that there is enough here for solvers to enjoy, and thanks as always to the editing team for making the clues better.

Andrew creates a lot of indie puzzles, making "stair stack" arrangements one of his calling cards. I really like this puzzle's stair stack, CEREAL BOXES / YOU CALLED IT / SPIDEY SENSE a great triple. CEREAL BOXES is already pretty good by itself, but getting a delightful wordplay clue — [Life preservers?], playing on Life cereal — makes it even better.

Stair stacks usually have a couple of long answers running through them, but it's unusual to get a grid-spanner right down the middle. TEACHABLE MOMENT makes that stair stack even better. Weave in PINA COLADA and HOLY SPIRIT — along with PTEROSAUR and COUSIN ITT — and that's a great center of the puzzle.

I also enjoyed some of the other entries, like GO TIME and PRECALC. However, the featured center took up so much real estate that Andrew was forced to use so many short answers in the periphery of the grid.

Three-letter words ... yeah, 16 is definitely high for a themeless. It's not a problem in its own right, but having them concentrated in the four corners gave the puzzle a choppy feel. Jumping from ORD to PTL to SCH to SAS to SEN messed with my solving feng shui.

Some potential left on the table, too. ICE PALACES is a great use of a precious long slot. But ADDERLEY is okay, but not flashy. Similarly, TSARINAS, ELENORE, IMITATING. Glad to see that Andrew and I agreed on this.

Beautiful center of the puzzle. If the periphery had matched in quality, this could have been a POW! contender.