New York Times, Saturday, December 19, 2015

This is not the first themeless puzzle I've had accepted, but it is the first one I began working on that was accepted. It started out as a completely different puzzle, but when I got to the final section (the southwest) I couldn't quite get it to work, and I got frustrated and set it aside. When I came back to it several months (and puzzles) later, I liked the part that didn't quite work — the EXWIFE/GAYICON/OZZFEST stack — better than anything else in the puzzle, so I started there, tore everything else down, and essentially made an entirely new puzzle.

My favorite answer in the grid is WIFFLEBALL, because I've never before seen it in a crossword puzzle and because I spent much of my adolescence playing Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby. (I always called I was Ken Griffey Jr., if you were wondering.)

My second favorite answer is BELLYLAUGH, because for years I've stared at Jenny McCarthy's book "Belly Laughs" on my bookshelf. I've never read it (I think it's my wife's … or it could be one of those random books that just ends up on your bookshelf somehow), so at least I got some use out of it in some way.

If I was making this puzzle today I probably wouldn't settle for INSTR, REPOT, OREN, MERLINS, and ARBORED all in the same puzzle (and all lumped so closely together). But I'm not making it today, so there's nothing I can do but have some General Tso's chicken, watch a CFL game, and call it night.

I often find that themelesses heavy on 7-letter entries are not very colorful — I find that a very few people (Tim Croce is a good example) can really pack a grid with great 7-letter entries — but I like Damon's work today. It's usually too easy to slip into using neutral entries like ARBORED and DISEASE (and NABBERS, I see you), so I was pleasantly surprised to get a ton of great OZZFEST, SKYWAYS, TELL-ALL, COLUMBO, even "MERLIN'S Beard!" Nice save on that last one — usually a pluralized name is much worse when there's only one famous instance, but MERLIN'S Beard is in the Harry Potter world and reasonably inferable.

Weaving in a few long entries helped too. Entries like BELLY LAUGH, WIFFLE BALL, ARENA ROCK, and YOU GO GIRL! spiced things up. Even the usually neutralish LEGAL PAD becomes an asset when given such a great clue: [It contains rules for writing]. ("Rules" refer to the ruled lines.)

Working in the long answers creates an interesting layout. The grid has nice flow, everything well-connected, but each of the six mini-sections can still be filled one at a time (more or less). It's a great balance between high solving flow and ease of filling for the constructor.

That lower left corner is so beautiful, with EX-WIFE, XYZ, GAY ICON, and WIFFLE BALL — that's GOLDEN! The EAZY E / OZZFEST crossing might cause grumbling, but I don't have any sympathy there. Ozzy Osbourne (over 10M Google hits) is famous enough that OZZFEST ought to be solvable even if EAZY E is a mystery. Plus, EAZY-E is pretty darn famous himself — a whopping 8M Google hits!

I wasn't so much of a fan of the south section, with the pile-up of the awkward NABBERS, the tough OREN Ishii, General TSOS. I appreciate Damon's sentiment. What can you do given the delay on publishing themelesses is (sometimes well) over a year, and the bar for themelesses is rising so quickly?

All in all, though, quite a colorful puzzle.