New York Times, Tuesday, December 31, 2019

This puzzle is dedicated to Andy Richter. Why? It's got nothing at all to do with the theme, that he super-kicked butt on "Celebrity Jeopardy!," or that I just saw "Elf" for the first time two weeks ago. It's funny how things work out sometimes...

Constructing crosswords can feel like a game of Whac-A-Mole: get one corner just the way you like it, and it constrains how well you're able to fill another part of the grid. Crossword construction is a complex web of interconnected trade-offs. And this grid was surprisingly difficult to fill.

In fact, in my first submission of this puzzle, I was careless enough not to notice that I'd included both "opener" and "open-toed." Oy. When Will & Co. remanded it with this observation, it wreaked havoc: Butterfly Effect incarnate. To replace one word, I had to gut everything. Fortunately, between the time I first constructed this puzzle and its revision, I'd added a new entry to my word list: 11-Down.

Right about the time I submitted this idea (a year and a half ago), my first NYT crossword appeared. One of the entries in that puzzle was PANINI. Andy Richter was overseas, and but took the time to tweet an (accurate) observation (see right).

Vowing revenge, I added TEAM COCO to my word list. You can't avoid it if you watch TBS at all; how had it never appeared in a puzzle? I knew THAT would get his attention, at which point my cruciverbal vengeance would be complete. It turns out that one entry rescued the upper-right corner, and so I credit Andy Richter for this puzzle's current form. BWAHAHA! Now we're even.

I've been on a kick to LOSE WEIGHT in my quest to become the first-ever Ninja Warrior to defeat the notorious Crossword Wall, where you have to pegboard up a 15'x15' grid, punching out letters as the clues flash behind you.

That really should be a thing.

Fun take on LOSE WEIGHT, the word POUND shedding to POND, down to POD, bloating back up to PROD then to PROUD. DAMMIT I LIKE MYSELF FOR WHO I AM; I DON'T NEED NO STINKING DIET!

I overthought this theme waaaaay too much. Don't people lose weight on the sides first, not the middle? Okay, the first losses are hard to see, so POUND to POND makes sense.

And POND to POD is consistent with that!

Then I wondered, is RIVER PO accessible to newer solvers? I imagine a big chunk of regular solvers would say they learned about the PO through crosswords. Maybe something like NEW YORK PD would have been better? It'd also have been more consistent with the other removals, always coming from the middle.

Finally, Evan will be hearing from MASTER P, his STANDING O withheld, for not including that last step.

My doubts were quickly swept aside by Evan's beautiful gridwork. TEAM COCO / MAROONED / SLY NODS is a great result in a big corner. (Although if you haven't heard the nickname TEAM COCO, that could be a head-scratcher.) Most notably, though, check out Evan's use of mid-length slots: CORNEA, UNICEF, PAPAYA, SAFARI, BOOGIE — that deserves a ton of PRAISE! So many constructors would fill those spaces with whatever worked easily, like A TASTE, ADDS TO, SLAM ON — boring material indeed.

The constructor in me enjoyed the gridwork enough to set aside my (ridiculous) hesitations about the theme. I'd have loved it if there had been something more playful, though, like a more realistic portrayal of the LOSE WEIGHT process: two steps forward, one (make that three) step(s) backward.