New York Times, Friday, February 21, 2020

ANNE: I was excited to get the chance to collaborate with Erik again for my first, and hopefully not last, NYT appearance! He could not have reached out at a more perfect time. It was a nice little time window where I happened to be transitioning jobs and had more free time than usual. I had a great time finishing out the grid and cluing the puzzle with Erik. It was particularly fun thinking of trickier clues.

One of the last clues we worked on was for 30-Across. Erik's made the cut, but I wanted to give a shout out to my version — "Rhapsody in shoes."

ERIK: I had the good fortune of working with Anne on a puzzle for the Universal Sunday Crossword, and it was a pleasure to do so again here. She's a quick study, has a fun and witty cluing voice (see above), and thinks about crosswords like she's a constructing veteran. I can't wait for her next one!

Wonderfully smooth 66-worder! I'm usually quickly aware of a themeless having a low word count; all sorts of compromises popping up to bog me down. I didn't even think to check afterward, since it solved like a squeaky-clean 70-worder. Impressive work for a new constructor. (Not a surprise for an Agard joint, though!)

I'm often wary of themelesses that don't have many long slots since it's hard to squeeze juice out of mid-lengthers and shorter. I understand why Erik and Anne loaded up on the 7-letter entries though — think about how much harder the construction would be if they had shifted the black squares in rows 1-3 to the right. Instead of a 4x7 space in the upper left, you'd have a 4x8, which is maybe an order of magnitude tougher to fill.

Even though there are only ten long slots (of 8+ letters), they're used so well. RUNNERS HIGH is a great phrase, and referencing "rush" in two ways makes it even better. Similarly, SWEAR JAR's clue elevated it, amusingly using comic book-style punctuation.

Even REFERENDA is interesting, what with the non-S pluralization. So much pizzazz out of these ten long entries.

Some of the mid-lengthers were colorful, too, EURASIA, PODCAST, ROLODEX, SIDE BET, in particular. However, entries like ADVANCE, BOTTLES, EMERGES, TESTEES aren't going to win any prizes.

I found this puzzle more of a Saturday experience, mainly due to the cluing. There were so many that totally didn't go over my head (okay, maybe they did). Here are a few:

• "Mare" is the Latin word for "sea," used to describe LUNAR CRATER.
• Helpful word in solving cryptograms is THE? But aren't cryptograms those puzzles with the funny pictures that stand for words … never mind, I'm an idiot. They're the tricksy enigmas where one letter substitutes for another, and the frequent instances of THE in the English language often serves as a toehold to get started.
• PRE-GAME warm-up shots are NBA shoot-arounds … and … taking liquor shots before parties? Snapping pictures? Not sure.
• TRUED refers to "trueing" something, i.e. fixing something that's skewed.

I did get one of them right away! [Mount Sinai people] refers to Mount Sinai Hospital, not the actual mountain. Yes! I like it when a puzzle allows me to feels smarter than it.

Overall, a pleasantly smooth and piquant solve — albeit making me feel sheepishly stupid one too many times.