New York Times, Friday, May 13, 2016

DAVID S.:

Dave and I met at the now-defunct Silicon Valley Puzzle Fest back in 2012, which feels like just a few months ago to me! Time flies when you're busy with crosswords, I guess. Anyway, Andrea Carla Michaels and I were giving a presentation about crossword construction, and Dave (who at that point had just started constructing) was one of the more enthusiastic-looking audience members. He approached us after the talk and showed us some of the puzzles he had been working on, which I remember being very impressed with. In fact, our first collaborative effort, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times back in 2013, spun off of one of the puzzles Dave showed me that day!

Dave and I have remained in touch ever since. I was thrilled to see him make his New York Times debut with an ingenious Paint It Black puzzle in 2014! He followed that up with one great themeless after another (and a handful of fun themed puzzles to boot!). Dave was also one of the most accurate Pre-Shortzian Puzzle Project proofreaders—he used to make Excel files with all the mistakes he would find, which were always both helpful and fun to read.

I don't remember much about the construction process of this particular puzzle (my 50th published New York Times crossword, built back in late 2014), but I'm pretty sure we started with my bottom stack in one of Dave's insanely wide-open grids! We went through a ton of possibilities for the top before finally settling on the one you see. Most of the clues are Dave's, though "Piano-playing Cat" for STEVENS was definitely mine!

These days, I haven't had as much time for crossword construction, but Dave and I still keep in touch . . . even though he went to Berkeley and I ended up at Stanford! We hope you enjoy our puzzle.

Two young guns teaming up! Fun to see David and David work on something together. Also fun to see some nice stacking work — really long triple-stacks with clean crossings are very hard to do, but D&D pull theirs off pretty well.

I liked the top stack a lot. I wasn't familiar with IMAGINE DRAGONS, but that's not surprising given my pop culture deficiencies. I still enjoyed piecing it together though — what a cool name, and accessible too. The multi-talented VANESSA WILLIAMS gets a nice clue, about her fashion line "V." Gives her a fresh feel, as that fashion line was introduced this year.

D&D take such meticulous care with their crossings up top. MISE isn't great, since it can really only be clued in one way, and ANS is minor. 13 of 15 crossings being perfectly fine is good work.

And turning the corner into another triple-stack of SNARE DRUM/SMART CAR/STEVENS! That's tough to do. They make their task easier by adding three black squares in the upper right, which reduces it from a head-bangingly difficult construction to just a rough one. Those black squares do take away from the grid's total visual appeal for me, but not by that much. So I like this trade-off, allowing D&D to work in the snazzy SNARE DRUM and SMART CAR.

The bottom stack is also nice, plus every one of the 15 crossings is clean. MAKE MINE A DOUBLE is really colorful, too. However, DATING AGENCIES … I had to force myself to type in that last word, because it just didn't sound right to my ear. A lot of crossword-friendly letters in AGENCIES allows for super-clean crossings, but that entry fell flat for me. Always the trade-offs.

Themelesses featuring triple-stacks often rely very heavily on those stacks, giving not much else to the solver. So I really appreciated D&D working in those additional triple-stacks with great entries like ATTACK AD. With a bit of ODWALLA and SICHUAN spicing things up, plus the near-zero number of gluey entries, the overall result was an entertaining solve.