New York Times, Friday, August 20, 2021

I find constructing themeless puzzles easier to get started and harder to finish. For this one my seed entries were HOT TOPICS, which I got from watching an episode of "The View," and ARE WE ALONE, which I got after finishing Andy Weir's latest sci-fi novel The Hail Mary Project. Both were uncommon crossword fill and lent themselves to some nice clues.

All the rest of the puzzle was trying to fill a grid with lots of long entries, e.g., twelve 9-letter entries and a couple of answers with 10 letters. I especially get satisfaction when these longer answers are not often seen in crosswords. WAR EPIC and NICE CATCH are two I got pleasure filling in.

Finishing a themeless often involves making final choices that involve picking between compromises. The lower left section of the puzzle posed a "lesser of two evils" decision. RIFER is a meh entry IMO. I could have substituted NIFTY, a much better one. But that would have given me TREADER instead of E READER and YAPPERS instead of RAPPERS. Now I could clue TREADER as "One who keeps his head above water" and YAPPERS as "Talkative types", but I didn't like those "ER" entries next to each other as much as EREADER and RAPPERS, each of which lent themselves to better clues.

It is hard to know when you are done constructing a themeless, especially one with a low word count. I worked a long time trying to get rid of ELLER (a dated entry), but it would have come at too much of a cost relative to the longer words around it. So, I let it stand.

I've constructed many Friday and Saturday Times crossword and I still get a kick out of seeing a construction I've done filled with lots of chunky white spaces filled with a variety of seldom-seen entries. They often take more time than any themed puzzle to build. And then, when the sharp NY Times solvers finish it in a half hour or less, I sometimes feel like the chef who worked all day preparing a meal and having his dinner guests gobble it down. My pleasure is in the challenges of constructing more than arriving at the final product.

Have a safe rest of the summer to all my friends in the puzzle world.

NUTLETS made me laugh all over again, Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg the most hilarious pair of color commentators of all time.

Ballsy grid today, 66-worders are no joke. Themeless constructors would typically run triple-stacks in each of four corners, but certainly not incorporate so many long entries (SEE THINGS, VETO POWER, CT SCANNER, etc.) intersecting them.

Others might run most of their juicy entries in the Across direction, leaving the Downs as short filler. Not Randy, who mixed the two styles, with mixed results.

I enjoyed many of the long entries, especially STALE JOKE, NOT FOR SALE, ARE WE ALONE with its extra-terrestrial connotation, IT'S A PLANE.

Even CLINETELE was interesting, especially with the clever [Patronizing types] clue. Not only did I wrongly put in an S at the end, but the use of "patronizing" as one who is a patron (or buyer) is fabulous misdirection.

I wasn't as excited by some of the one-worders taking up those precious long slots, like HARNESSED, ULTIMATELY, PENETRATES (don't ask what Snoop would say about this). Add-a-preposition entries aren't often sizzlers either, like CLOSE IN ON. And I wasn't sure of TOADIED UP's usage, at least not without "to" following it.

Along with more trade-offs in the short fill — OTO prefix, SOOTS in the plural?, RIFER, DYERS, I LOVE partial, etc. I'd have preferred a 68- or 70-word approach that achieved more in both smoothness and snazz.

There was some color in the clues, [Water color] innocently pointing at OCEAN BLUE. As a whole though, it could have used more bling.