New York Times, Friday, October 18, 2019

Well, I'm glad to say this one came easier than my Times debut this past spring, but it was not without its challenges. While the top and bottom stacks were pretty much set from the get-go, the editing team rightly dinged me for some questionable fill in between. Luckily we were able to meet in the middle, as it were, and the result is what you see here. Thanks again, guys.

There are a few clues I wish had survived the final edit, notably 20-Across ("Mudslide component" — more fun than giving away the store with the brand reference, no?) and 10-Down ("Its name comes from the Aztec word for testicle" — so evocative, and once you know it, you can't un-know it).

One thing I almost always enjoy in solving themeless puzzles is the challenge of sussing out a tricky long answer by chipping away at the intersections. Hopefully, I've provided that opportunity for some of you with those behemoths at 17- and 54-Across.

Lastly, speaking of 17-Across… [Climbs up on ramshackle but still sturdy soapbox] Please be sure your voter registration is up to date. And then vote! Learn more at the nonpartisan sites vote411 or vote.org.

I appreciate it when constructors attempt to push themeless boundaries. Recently, I've noticed an emerging trend of themelesses aiming to place most, if not all, their feature entries in the across direction. This might seem like a negligible asset, but it increases my solving pleasure. Like most Americans, I like reading left-to-right. Who cares if the Chinese are millennia wiser than we are? Their up-to-down writing style is bizarre!

No, I'm not Chinese-American. I'm TAIWANESE-American, thank you very much.

What? Writing in Taiwan is up-to-down, too?

Grumble grumble.

Ten snazzy long entries today, all ten oriented horizontally. I feel for poor suckers who have never heard the story of OUROBOROS eating its own tail, inspiring Kekule to envision the shape of the benzene ring. I'd feel even worse if those folks had to see:

O
U
R
O
B
O
R
O
S

Looks more like a fish blooping air bubbles than a proper name.

EVERY VOTE COUNTS, and so does every long slot. I hitched on ON THE DOLE. Hmm. An offensive term? I wasn't sure, but there are plenty of web pages denouncing the phrase as such. I'd have avoided it if I were building this puzzle.

I'd have also tried hard to avoid AMO, ITEN, UDE, ELREY. It's tough, though — when you orient so many long answers in the across direction, it's nearly inevitable to need some ugly bits to hold them together. As much as I love ILLITERATI, stacking it with TURNSTILE JUMPER / CANADA DAY / ON THE DOLE causes so many simultaneous constraints.

Overall, it didn't work as well as the last mostly-across themeless, but it did do a great job of squeezing a ton of color into the across feature entries.