New York Times, Saturday, September 12, 2015

0. I think it would be ironic if somebody put in GAFFE for 1-Down.
1. I actually start all my algorithms at step zero, not STEPONE. (I love a good array-indexing joke.)
2. I initially thought of CHRISTIANSINGLES for 34-Across and was very disappointed when I realized it was too long. When CHRISTIANMINGLE came to me, it felt like a miracle.
3. Jim Brown and Jim Kelly were both big BLAXPLOITATION stars, but only one of them is the Pro Football Hall of Famer.
4. This is the first time IJSSEL has appeared in an NYT puzzle — is AFSLUITDIJK next?
5. I despise Crosswordese, except, apparently, when it's in French.
6. Is one who makes nonkosher meals a TREF CHEF?
7. I tried and failed to come up with a good Vint CERF/surf the Internet pun.
8. "Vegan wrap?" for FAUXFUR is, I think, a pretty good pun.
9. I'm not BICURIOUS, but I'm bicurious-curious.

Man, what a bizarre (and cool!) spelling of BLAXPLOITATION. I'm sure there will be many others who started with BLACK and then continued with SPLOITATI ... *$%! that doesn't fit! Cool morphing of the CKS into an X.

I fell into another trap with CHRISTIAN MINGLE, which I was sure was CHRISTIAN SINGLES. Given that this was another answer that didn't fit, it took me a while to convince myself that there wasn't a rebus going on. Sneaky, very sneaky.

Even after reading up on the two Christian dating sites, it's unclear to me what the difference is. Sure makes for a good crossword trap. (And a saucy pairing with BI-CURIOUS!)

Damon's layout doesn't allow for a lot of long (8+ letter) answers, but he does have some seven-letter slots to shore up the snazziness. FAUX FUR is a great one. I would have liked a couple more.

With so many four-letter entries — a whopping 26 of them — it's so important to avoid drawing attention to them. The fine ones like SCOT, CHEF, EDEN, even MOOG, do that job nicely. Not as much so when there are borderline ones, and multiple ones from the same category. Some French (AOUT, ALUI, IDEE), hard proper nouns (CERF, EVIE, along with Tony OLIVA), and some terms I only ever learned from crosswordese (MOIL, TREF, AGHA) ... those last three are all reasonably fine by themselves in my opinion, but when you have them together, it makes for a less than desirable effect.

Same goes for CBER and RAVER. Generally, I don't have an issue with either, but together it seems like a little too much iffiness.

Such a fun clue for SNARE: [It's got game, often]. It's too bad it couldn't fully be misdirectional to something colorful like "he got game," but sometimes you can only go so far without torturing the clue.

And saving the best for last, the clue [What you find crawlers on]. So many times we've been misdirected toward the internet, so that's where I automatically went, looking for a WEB BROWSER or something. ALL FOURS is such a snappy answer.