New York Times, Friday, February 5, 2016

The third try was a charm with this grid. I received an encouraging response from Joel on my original version, submitted in June 2014. He noted that it was a near miss. One longer word, MARGERY DAW, which Joel said neither he or Will were familiar with, as well as some of the shorter fill — MAWR, LELY, TYE, E MALL, RHEO, SLA and LEFAY — were mentioned as reasons for the rejection. That version had CHANCES ARE SMALL running across the top.

Will noted that my second version featuring BEATS ONES BREAST was a close call, but too many of the shorter entries were unappealing — TPS, MARA, ITO, AVI, SLA, ARN, INSP and SSTS.

A minor change was made in the accepted version with GRANDSTAND SEATS. The OZS / ZORA crossing I had was replaced with OHS / HORA.

I was pleased to work two strong women, SHAILENE WOODLEY and JESSICA CHASTAIN, who have triumphed over early difficulties to success, into the grid. GO AT A SNAILS PACE is also new to the NYT database. GRANDSTAND SEATS was last used in 1975 by Maura Jacobson. (She was quite a prolific cruciverbalist — great role model! I discovered her puzzles in some old NY Magazines at the library and found them quite addicting.)

I appreciate the concise feedback I received from Will and Joel on the earlier versions of this puzzle as well as their acceptance and editing of this final version. I'm still working on clever cluing. I appreciate their clues: "A dance that might give you a lift?" (HORA), "Setting for fans" (GRANDSTAND SEATS), "They might work at a revival" (EMTS) and "Doctor seen by millions" (PHIL).

I loved WHAT MORE CAN I SAY and GO AT A SNAILS PACE, answers that felt like they could hit a broad audience with strong effect. And CANNERY ROW has a special place in my heart, as my favorite Steinbeck novel. It was harder for me to appreciate A MODEST PROPOSAL, as I didn't recognize it, but some Googling shows that it's taught in some school curricula.

Not being very well versed in pop culture, it was harder yet for me to appreciate SHAILENE WOODLEY and JESSICA CHASTAIN. I forced myself to go Google them, and afterward I especially appreciated Chastain's recent meteoric rise — such big roles in a short span of time! I'm sure some solvers will get a thrill out of seeing these two names (and A MODEST PROPOSAL), but I wonder how many who don't already know them will bother to look them up.

For me, that's a problem with themeless puzzles featuring full names that aren't of uberstratospheric star quality. I do appreciate learning a tidbit or two from my crossword, but sometimes that's not a very fun process for me.

Themeless grids featuring grid-spanning 15-letter entries are so tough to execute on, as those long entries tend to lock down the entire grid, choking flexibiilty to near zero. This one, with six grid-spanners and two other long answers, makes for quite a challenge. Every single subsection of the grid is so constrained by those eight long answers, making clean filling so difficult.

Not only that, but as soon as you fill one little area, that further restricts the region next to it ... which was already constrained to begin with! Very, very tough. Thankfully, most of the crossword glue like SENAT, AMPAS, ELEC, ABAFT, IRAE, PREV, etc. is spread out today, but it felt like a lot in aggregate.

The clue for ASCII made this nerd smile. ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange — is a standard part of nerd culture. It has a chart mapping codes to symbols and letters, which makes it a fertile ground for various code puzzles.

So, not my favorite style of themeless, but I bet fans of Woodley and Chastain will get a kick out of seeing their full names in the NYT crossword.