New York Times, Saturday, December 26, 2020

This puzzle was submitted in October 2019 and accepted in January 2020. It was my effort to try working with quad stacks. The left side came together first, but it took a few months on and off to make the right side fit. SELF-DRIVING CAR was the entry I needed, though my clue didn't make the cut, "Its users rely on auto correction." Actually, all the clues are toughened up considerably. Thanks to the editors for their fine work as always!

I often see solvers comment about things they learned while solving. I learned something while constructing: the phenomenon I first encountered in high school Spanish, that embarazada does not mean embarrassed, goes by the term FAUX AMIS.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle, and happy New Year!

SELF DRIVING CAR, now that's a marquee entry! Awesome phrase, and it can take all sorts of clever clues. I laughed at John's "auto correction" wordplay, but I also admired Will Shortz's crack about a (car) dealer yelling, "Hands off!"

ELDER STATESMAN is excellent, too, although it's harder to integrate wordplay into its clue. [Respected figure] generates Saturday-level difficulty from how general it is. That sort of difficulty isn't nearly as much fun for me. What could it have been?

(Two hours and 56 internet rabbit holes later)

How about [Old sage still in high demand?]? Maybe something about "Old Rough and Ready," Zachary Taylor?

Seriously, that was the best you could do, Jeff?

Off to rabbit hole 57 …

When a themeless features "awkward length" marquees — 12-14 letter phrases force black square placements right off the bat, cutting into precious flexibility — the rest of the long slots tend to suffer. That's especially the case if you try to "quad-stack," like John did in the lower left corner. Great results, though, OPED PAGE and RING TRUE ringing true, hardly having to TAKE A HIT with ony (super minor) APTS.

The opposite corner suffered a little more, requiring PICOT to hold that stack together, flowing over to OID. The latter is an odd suffix, but at least figure-out-able. PICOT was a head-scratcher. (Embroiderers, feel free to knit me a rebuttal.)

A friend asked me recently what distinguishes Friday and Saturday puzzles. Often, it's the presence of entries that might be considered niche. Don't take that as a reason to aim for esoteric words, though! While odd duck entries can be wildly elating for those in the know, they can turn off a lot of people.

I did almost call it quits in the lower right, unable to recall FAUX AMIS. That's another distinguishing factor — a Friday puzzle might have hinted at the direct translation, "false friends." Today's clue does give enough so you can work at "deceptive" leading to FAUX, though. Whew!

All in all, it is an excellent job minimizing trade-offs, offering up so much to love in the grid. Along with some delights in wordplay — NOAH organizing a "couples cruise," ha! — a well-deserved POW! for John.