New York Times, Saturday, August 19, 2017

This puzzle was spawned entirely by the grid.

While wandering around XWord Info I noticed there was a section titled "Most Wide Open Grids" and hey I like wide openness, so challenge accepted! I ripped off Sherry O. Blackard's awesome wide open grid from 04/14/07, knocked off the two cheater squares, and tada — all that was needed was a clean fill to set a new NYT record.

Seventeen descending 15-letter entries trials later I stumbled onto a promising fill for the NW quadrant — then only 57 almost acceptable fills of the other quadrants before I had a complete fill I could live with. Submitted it to Will and it was accepted!

Then came the wait for publication followed by another unexpected twist — Will contacted me and asked if he could use it as the final on stage puzzle for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2016. What could I say but YES (check off bucket list item) and make plans to attend and watch the finals in person. Howard Barkin's dramatic win was the cherry on the top of the whole experience.

As soon as I returned home, I started the whole process again — today's puzzle is a completely different fill of the same grid.

Mark's byline is one I both look forward to and fear the most. Few constructors tackle giant swaths of white in themelesses, and even fewer do it without using extra black squares to make things easier on them. (Adding black squares at the beginning and end of DENTAL INSURANCE would make the puzzle much easier to fill, for example.) Mark usually ends up with daunting-looking tracts of white that seem impossible to even break into, much less complete. Perfect for a Saturday puzzle — it's supposed to be the hardest of the week, after all.

Often, puzzles like these require made-up sounding RE-, UN-, -ER, etc. words — unsavory tricks that constructors can use to fill difficult areas. I love that Mark refuses to go there, trying to even include a couple of colorful long entries like PRISON RIOT. With its fantastic clue, playing on joint problems ("joint" = slang for jail), I appreciated it so much as I fought my way through the puzzle.

There was another reason I liked PRISON RIOT even more: because this puzzle is so segmented, with the three sections only connected by two answers apiece, I wanted those two answers apiece to be standouts. Sort of eases the blow when you feel like you've been dead-ended in one of the corners.

DENTAL INSURANCE surprisingly gave me a similar reaction. Usually, I'd think this is a dull entry, but 1.) what a great clue, playing on dental bridges vs. river bridges, and 2.) Mark is a dentist! Cool to get the constructor's little wink.

I didn't care for some of the long answers — OISE RIVER felt forced (usually just "Oise" or "The Oise," yeah?), FIVE LOVE sounded odd (granted, I don't watch that much tennis these days), RESIDING and ARIDNESS were a bit arid. But overall, I love this type of wide-open challenge when I can get at least a few sparkly answers like VALID ID, IF IN DOUBT …, PEAR TARTS, HAM ACTOR. Along with DENTAL INSURANCE and PRISON RIOT and their standout clues, I thought this one turned out well.