New York Times, Saturday, April 9, 2016

Well, it would seem I have the honor/curse of batting cleanup for St. Patrick this week. (Hey, Kameron, if you're out there reading this, I'll take one of those "I Survived ..." t-shirts [referencing his 11/14/2015 note], assuming I don't drown in negative solver feedback over the weekend.)

Accepted in October 2013, this puzzle was my third accepted NYT themeless out of seven attempts. I started with the central 16, THE BIG BANG THEORY, and then I placed black squares below the two G's hoping that I'd find at least one spicy -ING word/phrase. After those initial block placements, I went for as much open space as I could muster without going over the 72 maximum word count. (For some reason, I remember still wanting to clear the word count despite the extra column.)

In retrospect, I like the relatively wide-open space, a few neat entries (e.g. NO HARM DONE, EDO PERIOD, LIVERMORE [clued in reference to the new element], BROMANCE, TROLLING, HOUND DOG, GLEE CLUB, and some others), and the nerdy vibe overall. However, there's also a bit more glue and/or "killer" entries, notably APT TO, NYAH, BATOR, SES, SML, and BASINETS, than I'd allow in my current submissions. Looking back, these trade-offs are a bit hard to stomach, but I hope they don't detract too much from the puzzle's positive aspects.

As for cluing, Will and Joel changed a lot for the better IMO. Top honors go to 20A, 21D, and 31D with honorary chuckle points for 15A and 4D.

Extra-wide grid to accommodate THE BIG BANG THEORY. Great trivia that Stephen Hawking and Buzz Aldrin guest-starred! (Will Shortz guest-starred on "How I Met Your Mother," but no nod from TBBT yet.) I don't watch TBBT show very often, but I love that a cast full of hard-core nerds is so popular.

Some nice entries in TALL ONES, NO HARM DONE, AIR CARRIER, and my favorite, SHELL GAME. Plus, I like how they're spread all across the grid, rather than concentrated like usual in the four corners.

Running so many long answers through each other does make filling difficult, though. Check out how HOUND DOG, EDO PERIOD, and LIVERMORE intersect that NE stack … as well as THE BIG BANG THEORY! That constrains the section so rigidly. I don't mind a bit of NEB at all, but CUT ABOVE without "a" feels pretty partialish and inelegant. CCC clued as the Roman 300 (L = 50, times 6) also feels pretty weak. Tough to make a region with so many intersecting long answers without a flaw or two.

I like GONERS as an answer — totally in my regular usage. DOER is even fine, as in "I'm a doer!" SCARERS … not so much.

I was baffled by [Whitehouse in D.C., e.g.]. It had to be some clever clue, right? Nope, but what a cool piece of info — there's a senator named Sheldon Whitehouse. I imagine it gave him quite a leg up during elections. (Makes you wonder why no candidate has legally changed their first name to "President.")

Also baffling was RIVES. I so badly wanted that to be RENDS, which I never really used before I started doing crosswords. Not sure if I had seen RIVE before, so I looked it up: "to rend." Thanks, dictionary!

It's so tough to work with so many intersecting long answers. Some slots like GLEE CLUB and RAY KROC are so well utilized, but others like BELITTLED and ELONGATE feel like just neutral results to me. Still, an enjoyable solve with a fantastic backbone entry.