New York Times, Saturday, December 2, 2017

I was wowed by the look of the wide open 10/29/16 grid by Patrick Berry when I solved it last year. In the XWord write-up for that puzzle, Jeff Chen stated his curiosity was piqued wondering if the grid could be filled after trimming the six corner squares down to three. For kicks, I accepted the challenge and sent Jeff a very rough fill with the new grid parameters that had some fun stuff, but also more blah than sparkle.

The challenge then sat idle for a couple months will I worked on other projects, but I came across it again, flipped the grid, tweaked the placement of black squares a bit and finally came up with a fill that registered much higher on my themeless-fun scale. As always, thanks to Will and Joel for substituting the entertaining quote at 61 Across as a clue and all their other shiny touches.

Feel free to add the 15-letter DOUBLEDOGDAREYA to the word list, too, Jeff.

Few constructors would dare to tackle a grid like this. A quad-stack … with another triple-stack running through it? Shudder-inducing! With something so impossibly difficult, my solving expectations run low, wondering how much crossword glue or outright esoterica I'll have to wade through. And the long answers often end up boring.

What a delightful surprise to uncover the snazzy DOUBLE DOG DARE at 1-A! And BARNYARD ANIMALS nearby? Yes!

And down south, DIPSOMANIAC! over ONE THING AT A TIME! over ELLEN DEGENERES! over … SENIOR EDITORS. (*sad trombone*)

Well, three out of four is still fantastic.

ELLEN DEGENERES and SENIOR EDITORS are both so crossword-friendly, what with all common letters and such regular consonant/vowel alternation. But ELLEN is so much more fun, especially what with that hilarious quote in the clue.

I liked that down south region a ton. JOAN MIRO is a great answer running through the quad-stack, as is OLD TIMER. It's hard to imagine how so many sizzling long entries could be jam-packed and interlocked. I thought there would HAVE to be a price to pay, but those two ultra-crossword-friendly entries worked some magic. To have virtually no crossword glue or esoterica (DAIN = hmm) is amazing.

There's a lesson in that. I can just sense constructors racing off to their seed lists, scouring them for similarly crossword-friendly entries …

(Okay, there was a price to pay. But I'm choosing to overlook the TIME / TIMER crossing because everything else was so awesome. It's a TIER 1 DOUBLE PURPLE ALERT INELEGANCY though.)

The top didn't turn out as well in my eyes, what with DEBATERS, ON A VISIT, UNRENTED not very exciting. And LOYD crossing the O of ENNIO? I worry that solvers will miss that square and feel horribly unsatisfied, and I wouldn't fault them. DIRECT DEBIT is a yawner even for this finance wonk. GRACE CUP … wha? Along with ESTAB and BENE, the north didn't do it for me.

But wow, that south half was a memorable standout in the low-word-count genre. If the top had even come close to it, the POW! choice would have been a no-brainer for me.