New York Times, Thursday, February 28, 2019

The theme entries started with JASMINE AND JEANS. I noted this would make a 15-letter entry with a cute clue (BLUE JAYS) that could be paralleled with BLACK EYES, HONEY BEES, HIGH SEAS, and GREEN PEAS. Coming up with 4 15-letter entries and a 9-letter entry for the middle was a lot for a daily puzzle, but I didn't want to give any of them up and I thought the challenge to craft a 72 word grid that could hold them all would be something I wanted to try. To make it even harder for myself I kept the parts of each pairing in alphabetical order.

Designing the theme entries this way probably caused me to have a few more abbreviations than I would have liked, which may displease some solvers. I think the trade-off for an abundance of long theme entries was worth it in this puzzle. I know sometimes it's not, and a constructor should knock out the weakest theme entry for the sake of the rest of the grid; but I managed to get a real tight theme and the personal constructing pleasure of crafting an interlock that held so many long answers.

RESAND was also an entry I didn't particularly like - it's not a word most, if any, solvers would use or hear. I spent a long time trying to get rid of it. However, when I thought of the clue "Smooth over" I thought that would compensate for the not so great "re" word. RSVPED and NBATEAM, with their consecutive consonants both got me out of trouble in the grid. I also came up with the original UN VOTE to help me complete the fill.

This was a fun crossword constructing exercise for me. I hope it's also an "aha moment" for solvers when the theme answers are discovered.

Letter homophones, [Blue jays] innocently cluing JASMINE AND JEANS, i.e. (blue) JASMINE and (blue) JEANS are real things. I couldn't place BLUE JASMINE immediately, so my understanding of the theme was murky at first. But Woody Allen's 2013 movie came back after some thought.

Took a while to remember that a honey badger was an animal, too. That led to an internet rabbit hole of HONEY BADGER DON'T CARE memes.

I'd love for the honey badger to be my spirit animal. Too bad mine is the mole. Wah wah.

I appreciated that it's a tricky enough idea for a Thursday. I had to work for it, no doubt. But it felt more like work than fun to uncover the crossword entries themselves. That's the risk you take when you rely on oddball entries. It's inelegant when one of your entries could just as easily be CLASS and COMMAND, CHAIR and COURT, COUNCIL and COLONIC.

Maybe not that last one.

Sometimes Will encourages constructors to go for a low word count for a Thursday puzzle because that makes the solve even more difficult. I didn't like that today, as those NW and SE corners — HONEY BADGER DON'T CARE! You have to run so many entries through and around JASMINE AND JEANS / BADGERS AND BEARS. With so much open space, it's inevitable to get some RESANDS ABEAM.

AH, SO (I'm not squinting my eyes, I swear). DAMN!

In the SE, I couldn't figure out if I loved or hated UN VOTE. In the end, I leaned toward the latter. Such an arbitrary-feeling entry.

I'd have broken up these two corners (splitting OBADIAH and DEMERIT in half is one way).

It's already a tough, twisty theme. Smoother gridwork could have made for an improved solving experience. It's tough, though — I've been right there with Randy's desire to take on a personal constructing challenge. Such an allure to set a personal goal and try one's best for it.