New York Times, Saturday, October 1, 2016

This was really just an excuse to get BIGSPOON in a puzzle. With that in at 1A, I decided to shoot for big, open northwest and southeast corners while keeping the number of 3 and 4 word answers to a minimum. So here's a short list of the things I liked about the puzzle while I was constructing it.

1. The presence of HAHAHA and DADADA in the same corner, the latter of which was made pseudo-famous in the late nineties by a Volkswagen ad.
2. The Gashlycrumb TINIES are a delightfully morbid piece by the always great Edward Gorey.
3. Coming up with STRESS EATS saved me from having to completely tear up the northwest after I was most of the way through constructing it.
4. CELIAC Disease sufferers represent! We should form a club where we lament the lack of good gluten free pizza.
5. The non-forced dupe clue at 5D and 6D.

I was happy to see many of my favorite clues survive the cut, and particularly enjoyed some of Will's additions in the southwest. Also, the timing of this puzzle's publication couldn't have been better, as my wife just 41D'ed a baby while her family was on 47A for a wedding, so they're surrounded by 16A while we're surrounded by, well, 5D. I hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

That northwest corner is sooooooo impressive. Almost no one tries an 8x4 themeless region, because it's too tough to get both colorful and smooth. Who would be crazy enough to run a 7x4 region through an 8x4 — along with a long entry as good as STRESS EATS? Check out how much great material David packed in: BIG SPOON, LOGROLLS, BOLO TIE, GAG REEL, STRESS EATS, and even OIL RIG. Yowza! Well worth the price of the unsightly I REST partial. Nice bonus to have POOP deck and ORLOP (that's a thing, apparently) deck right next to each other, too.

Pretty nice work in the opposite corner too, considering the constraints. Seeing things like ETOILES (deep foreign vocab) and ONE TO TEN (felt kind of arbitrary) is more what I'd expect from a giant L-shaped region like this, but to get FIRE SALE and RATS NEST, with only ESOS as a price to pay is a good result.

Snazzy lower left. BMX BIKE has that lovely BMXB start, and TEAR GAS / BAR CAR make for excellent additions to that corner. The one oddity was IN GAME. Tough to swallow — I couldn't force myself to believe that was "a thing" — but apparently it is. Huh.

HOT DOGGER anchored the final corner, and I particularly liked how it echoed the nature of some BMX BIKErs.

I had to really think about why yesterday's themeless struck me better than today's. As a constructor, I really admire the tremendous challenge David set for himself. But there were enough entries that made me hitch — GOOD REASON was another where I wondered "is this good or not?" — that the solving experience was more one of admiration for the construction feat rather than the pure joy of the solve. There were some feature entries today that I've seen several times already, like RATS NEST and ORATORIO, as opposed to debuts like yesterday's HACKATHON.

Still, there's something to be said for very nice piece of ambitious construction work. Kudos!