What a nice up-to-date central crossing to seed a themeless: CAPTAIN PHILLIPS crossed by SOMALI PIRATES. Great movie, fantastic cast, unbelievable story. Neat to see it commemorated by being featured in the NYT crossword. I didn't originally notice Tom Hanks in the clue to 48-across, but after looking at the finished grid, it made me smile.
Unlike the movie, which although fantastically executed, made me utterly seasick (that's never happened before). I'm super, super glad this crossword wasn't printed using jarring camera techniques. (Don't you get any ideas, constructors.)
David takes it one step further, using four more grid-spanners, all of which are pretty decent. SOURCES OF INCOME isn't a snazzy answer in itself, even for this business-loving MBA, but its clue was fantastic. I kept on thinking about HOUSE PAINTING, DOOR TO DOOR SALES, but I was pleasantly misled. Nice a-ha moment when it came together. Now that's how you jazz up an otherwise ordinary grid entry.
Typically with such a heavily constrained grid, compromises will be present, and there's a reasonable assortment of A ROW, MTNS, UNI, ALL OR, NNE, ASCAP crossing the double-stacks. Normal, expected stuff, didn't really bother me too much. However, I did have a very hard time with TRILBY crossing INGE, ending with an error (TRELBY / ENGE).
Perhaps it's on me to know (or be able to infer) TRILBY, which I actually did enjoy looking up, but I have a feeling I won't be the only one with a mistake in that square. Even TRALBY / ANGE seemed plausible. Another crossing, KLEBAN / ABBIE, might be tough for some, but I'd argue that ABBIE Hoffman is important enough that a majority of NYT readers ought to know him.
Not that I think all squares should be gettable by every solver — I'm sure there are plenty of people for whom TREBLY is a gimme — AARGH IT'S TRILBY! Ahem. But I might have considered adding a cheater square to change INGE to ING, which could be clued as the Dutch bank or the –ING ending. Something gettable by a larger chunk of solvers, anyway.
Finally, my favorite clue/entry pair. Maybe it's a residual Harry Potter effect, but it was so much fun for me to see BLIMEY! in the grid. A fun, quaint exclamation not unlike GOR! That's a good crossword at work, making solvers smile.