New York Times, Friday, March 25, 2022

This was my white whale. For as long as I've been trying my hand at constructing crosswords, which is about a decade, I've always wanted to build a grid around the phrase QUICK QUESTION. It's one of my go-to expressions in real-life conversation — I can't tell you how many times over the years I've walked into a room and struck up a chat with a friend or co-worker and said, "Hey there, quick question." Plus, y'know, it's got two Q's, so it's crossword gold.

I spent years fiddling around with various grid designs, trying to find the best way to build around those Q's without making ugly sacrifices in the rest of the grid. There were a lot of false starts. But at some point in 2020, I hit upon this design, with the long QUICK QUESTION running through the center and the pairs of 15-letter answers cutting through it, and I was overjoyed to discover that it worked. Once LOVE CONQUERS ALL and LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE fell into place, it was on. The rest of the grid practically filled itself.

Thanks to the NYT team for publishing this one — and, as always, for punching up my clues. "They might help with the dishes" is great for RECIPES, and the team came up with a cool factoid about UTAH as well. And I'm glad they kept my reference to LEN's hit song "Steal My Sunshine," a banger if ever there was one.

Hope everyone enjoyed the solve!

LOVE CONQUERS ALL and HATERS GONNA HATE? No love/hate relationship there, just a fantastic pairing. Work in LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE and run QUICK QUESTION through them, and that helluva themeless backbone nearly conquers all.

Some brilliant clues, too. [They might help with the dishes] one day would be MY KIDS if the clue more accurately read [They might help break dishes]. I fall for ENAMEL as a canine coat all the time, but (dental) [Crown topper] amps it up.

A lot of personality in some clues, too. As Evans mentioned, neat UTAH shout out with "Greatest Snow on Earth." We finance types often make fun of marketers, but I'd cut a big check to whoever came up with that.

This hater's gonna hate on some short entries, though. Some editors are phasing out SST, as the fleet was phased out decades ago. I've read a ton of contracts in my day; can't remember coming across NISI. I'm tolerant of a lot of A- words, but ABED is not among them — unless we're talking about one of my favorite TV characters.

I'm a huge fan of wide-open grid flow, but I bet some of the issues could have been smoothed out by closing off the region around SST. Isolating the SE a little more would likely have made it possible to jazz up the EXCAVATE DIAMETER slots, too.

Although, I really dug the effort to elevate the potentially snoozy one-word entries, with [Really dig] as a literal description of EXCAVATE.

A POW!-level of marquees headlining today's puzzle, and Friday-fun cluing, too. One round of rejiggering, and this would have been outstanding.