New York Times, Friday, November 12, 2021

It's a thrill to be back in the Times! Just a casual decade-plus hiatus for me that stretches back to my college days. I never stopped solving, but only during the last couple of years did I have the itch to try and construct puzzles again, so it's nice to know that after shaking off some rust, I can still make a publication-worthy grid.

The inspiration was 1A, which is a phrase I've always found funny. As a gay man myself, there's something about, for example, comparing the legions of gays descending on Fire Island summer shares each year to a quasi-religious pilgrimage that amuses me. That two corners of the grid ended up with GAY... and LESBOS was serendipitous.

The other entry I really wanted to make work was BEER KOOZIE, which had the potent combination of never having appeared in the puzzle before, but being super recognizable, all while including some Scrabble-y letters. In the end, I was super happy with the whole northeast corner, which between BEER KOOZIE, ICE MACHINE, IMBIBE, BIKINIS, and BELIZE, has some nice beach vacay vibes.

As someone who doesn't love Random One Half Of Proper Names in the puzzle, despite their inevitability, I probably would've preferred fewer of them here in an ideal world, but I felt like the rest was lively enough to compensate. I hope people enjoy!

Funny that Patrick called BEER KOOZIE super-recognizable — it was the one entry I didn't recognize. Not by name, at least (Googling jogged my memory).

I was much more enamored with PATROL CARS. It's a fine entry, but the [Copper container?] clue elevates it sky-high. I initially thought this might be a mini-theme echoing back to BEER KOOZIE, hinting at COPPER MUG for a Moscow Mule. Thankfully, the telltale question mark made me think twice. That's COPPER, as in slang for a police officer.

GAY MECCA didn't ring a bell, but it's a fantastic entry that allowed Patrick's voice to shine through. It's two recognizable words, making it easy to recognize as correct, and it's such an interesting juxtaposition, given the problems some religions have around LGBTQ+. Great way to pique my interest in reading up on Fire Island.

Not as much juice as I seek out of a themeless, only 10 long entries (8+ letters), with some of them not stellar. SEA EAGLE is much less interesting than EQUAL PAY, for example.

However, there are a half-dozen genius-level clues, which helped make up for it. I enjoyed the repurposing of "lift one's spirits" for IMBIBE, and [C, for one] made no sense for ARC. That is, until I finally thought about the shape of the letter C!

Similarly, I had to think long and hard about why [Shrimp in a shell] might fit TACO. Glad I didn't gloss over it, because it's such a magical way to misdirect from delicious shrimp TACOs.