New York Times, Saturday, June 28, 2014

Built this one a few years ago, with KAFKAESQUE as the seed entry. My original grid had some fun stuff, but a lot of terrible stuff too, and one fatal flaw in PEARL/PEARLE. So I added another block and started over from the SE corner. Once I thought of the clue for GUITARSOLO I had to fit it in somewhere, even if it meant AGAS and APRICOTJAM (which is a pretty undesirable 1-Across, but it's still a thing — my grandma makes chicken with it).

And a quick plug for my puzzle in tomorrow's Washington Post Puzzler, another themeless.

A Josh Knapp! He's one of the younger constructors whose name I love seeing on bylines. Josh has a knack for what entries sing, and has the skills to incorporate a lot of them without too much glue. Plus, he works for Jimmy Fallon; hard to argue with a guy with perhaps the best job in the world.

Josh uses a standard-ish grid today, highlighting four sets of triple-stacked 10's, one in each corner. I like that he gives us a little extra, tossing in four 8's, each of which cross through a triple-stack and head into the center. That TSINGTAO / BAD SANTA crossing was fantastic.

Man oh man what a snazzy NW corner! A GUITAR SOLO crossing JOJO, along with a clue that makes you sing that Beatles' song (WARNING, EARWORM ALERT! "Jojo was a guy from Tucson, Arizona..."*), and the crazy set of consonants in AZERBAIJAN. Wow, what a stack of great answers. I might have preferred a set of cheater squares up in the corner in an attempt to get rid of A GAS, but that one entry is a teeny-tiny price to pay for such beautiful work.

And the SE. Double-wow! Normally I'd expect to see a glue entry to hold such nice long stuff together, especially given than Q in KAFKAESQUE. Not a stinker in there; with just STA, the entire quadrant just HUMS along.

The grid did feel a bit more segmented than I like, especially since I got stuck in the NE corner. I finished everything else and then... then... then... there was a lot of staring. You'd think that this uber-dork would know ELVISH off the bat or that PRIAM was Paris's father, but I couldn't pull them out. There are multiple ways into that corner so it's more than fair, but I couldn't help wishing that the entries into it were a little bit bigger, giving me more chances to gain an entry somehow.

I talk about "puzzle flow" a lot, and this is the sort of reason I really appreciate when a puzzle has wide-open flow. It's easier for a constructor to be able to segment a grid and work on one piece at a time, whereas something with multiple interconnected areas make for giant constructing headaches. In more wide-open grids, you might finish one corner great, only to find out that the roots it shoots out make it impossible to fill the rest of the puzzle cleanly. This puzzle would lend itself to segmenting a little more than some others (like Josh's original grid!). You can probably imagine that by putting in two or three middle-section entries, you can isolate a corner somewhat easily.

I just loved the clue for CABANA. [Changing place] made me think of urban renewal, but indeed it's simply a place to change. Nice. And my favorite clue of the bunch was actually for TEAMWORK. I know balance sheets reasonably well, so I smugly cycled through LONG TERM INVESTMENTS, PROPERTY PLANTS AND EQUIPMENT, LEASEHOLD IMPROVEMENTS and other esoterica until I finally figured out it was one of those intangibles that's nonetheless at the heart of any company: TEAMWORK. Well done, way to make my stupid MBA brain eat a little humble pie.

ADDED NOTE: *Jim pointed out that the lyric is actually "Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona..." Rats! Ah well. I'll still sing the rest: "...for some California brass. Get back. Get back! Get back to where your lunch belonged." Man, that's catchy.