New York Times, Friday, August 3, 2018

This is the last themeless I constructed before heading off to college in the fall of 2015. I spent a good part of that summer scoring all the 3-6 letter entries in my various word lists, and so I was excited to test out the fruits of my labor in a themeless grid. Having a scored word list made my life a lot easier—I was suddenly able to squeeze in more zing than ever before while still keeping the short fill smooth. All the cruddy entries I'd been rejecting manually for years no longer showed up as possibilities, because their scores were finally low enough that they didn't make the cut.

Nowadays, I've gotten so used to having a scored word list that I've forgotten what it's like to construct without one. The one thing I wish is that Jeff Chen's XWord Info word list had been around at the time since scoring your word list from scratch nowadays is like reinventing the wheel. Jeff deserves a huge shout-out for making a quality scored list available to everyone in the community!

Solid 72-word themeless. David did such a nice job of using his long slots — AIR QUOTES, POISON PEN, CORKAGE FEE, PRISON RIOT, SPRAY ON TAN, STRIP MALLS = great stuff!

(I wasn't wild about ED SHEERAN, as I'm not a fan of his music, but I can see how others would love seeing him in the grid.)

What stood out for me was the fantastic cluing, which has become more and more important in how I assess a themeless puzzle. AIR QUOTES is a great entry on its own, but what the heck is [Four-finger gestures?] Maybe it was something four times as offensive as a one-finger salute? Some crazy thing the kids are doing these days? No, two fingers per hand, making that smarmy gesture!

SEX QUIZ, similarly. Fantastic entry, and [Cosmopolitan feature] had me thinking about skylines at first, and then the cocktail drink next. Nope, it's Cosmo, the magazine!

And DOG EARS is a good use of a mid-length slot already, but its clue elevates it into the stratosphere. "Turns a corner" is a common phrase. Repurposing it into how DOG EARS are turned corners of pages is brilliant.

For a 72-word puzzle — the max allowed in a themeless — I want to see less of the PPS PTS RIEN SHMOO stuff, but it's passable. Given how much color and sizzle there was in the entries and (maybe more importantly?) the clues, I was able to overlook those.

I debated whether to give this one the POW! Could easily have. But in the end, I decided I gotta make David work even harder (especially when staying in relatively easy 72-word territory), now that he's near the top of the POW! list.