New York Times, Saturday, June 21, 2014

Brad:

My original intention was to do the entire top half and tag Byron, but I ended up giving him just a corner. I had to laugh that he engineered a nifty section with TAD LINCOLN, as I had tried that over and over again with no clean fill. I hadn't mentioned it to him in advance; we won't call it mind-reading exactly, since the –LN ending was one of the better choices. I recall that we had more back-and-forth choosing the fill for the bottom than we did for the whole of our puzzle of Nov. 30. 36D was a new word to me, and having Byron slot that in really tidied up that immediate area. I particular liked the Walden clues for 40A and 59A — I think the upper left might have been too hard with his original clue for 16A, but I'm keeping it mum so he has a chance to use it again.

Byron:

My memory of the construction was Brad started with the lovely NE corner, I got the TAD area working with a helpful assist from the egregi..., um, I mean innovative partial at 2D. Brad zipped off at least a couple of excellent SE corners. Then I slogged through with something OK in the SW but Brad noticed a bit of a dupe and buffed up that area to fix it. Beyond his greatness as a constructor, Brad really just shines as a co-constructor. I'm not even sure the 16A clue I wrote is harder than what's in the puzzle, just hard in a different way. Several clues are like that, especially 52A, which was clued in one option as the recentish Jake Gyllenhaal movie. I imagine that would be easier for some and harder for others. Hopefully the headaches are spread evenly and pass quickly.

Another nice themeless from the BOY WONDER duo, Brad Wilber and Byron Walden. An interesting grid layout I haven't seen before — always neat to see a new skeleton. It features a lot more seven-letter entries than normal, while leaving less room for entries of eight or more letters. This can make it tricky to fill a grid with snazzy stuff, as most of the time pizzazz comes from those 8+ letter entries. But fill like SKI TEAM and PINE NUT help to take advantage of those spaces.

Some beautiful entries today, NADERITE is not a term I knew but it's highly inferable. And TAD LINCOLN, what a nice entry. That crossing OUTLANDERS was awfully nice. And E LEARNING is a great example of an in-the-language term adding some recency to the NYT puzzle.

There are so many interconnects today. On one hand, this helps a puzzle flow for a solver, making it so easy to move into different parts of the grid via multiple entries. That NW corner is so wide open, with so many different ways to break in. However, it does make grid-filling a real challenge. With the long OUTLANDERS and TAD LINCOLN running through it, it causes all sorts of constraints. I have such a high standard for both of these guys' work that it was a bit of a surprise to see ASK AN, even with a neat clue.

And look at the SW corner, SUCH a great triple stack of STALIN ERA / HOVER OVER / E LEARNING. Beautiful, top-notch stuff. However, check out the huge spaces that allow a solver to get in there. What with OUTLANDERS already being fixed in place, it becomes super hard to find clean crossings. AVERYS is a bit inelegant, in that it's difficult for me to think of one famous AVERY, much less two. And exiting that SW corner is a bit of a rough patch, with DIONE / ROODS / ISERE. All fair entries for a Saturday NYT solver, but not ideal to have them all lumped together.

I was wowed by the SE though. With all the aforementioned constraints, that corner by all rights should contain at least a bit of junk or glue. Framed by SOURCE CODE and ANTHRACITE, they do wonderful things in that space. Even DOZER is fine by me, although I would have much preferred a clue related to "The Matrix." Dozer and Tank, two of my favorite characters in the flick. All that, plus a Z and an X? Masterful.

Some great, Saturday-ish clues today. [Handy talent?] was so confusing, until it finally dawned on me that the clue was talking about the composer Handy. And [Spots likely to smear] for ATTACK ADS, that's just brilliant. My favorite though, will not be everyone's cup of tea. The clue for SERF took me back to all those times I've watched that movie — I can't help but laugh every time I think about those two mud-flinging serfs discussing systems of government. To each their own, eh?

So perhaps a little bit more glue than I typically see from either of these guys, but that's relative to an ultra-high bar. Great Saturday workout.