New York Times, Saturday, May 13, 2017

I always wanted to try my hand at a triple-stack. They're often filled with gluey crossing answers, not a surprise considering how many triplets of letters must be worked around. It was a (mostly) fun process of attempting this grid over and over — and over and over — and over and over — to generate a stack that had both some sizzle and a high degree of cleanliness.

Ah, there was SPILE. As a "Hunger Games" lover, it didn't occur to me at first that SPILE might be esoteric. I would have paid whatever it cost to send in that SPILE Katniss and Peeta (when they needed to tap a tree to avoid dying of thirst.)

Okay, I admit it. I'm odd.

Triple-stacks often don't have many long crossing answers, or when they do, those crossing answers can be on the dry side. So I worked hard to stick with friendly and flexible letter combinations, like ANE (that became CANDY CANE), EAT (EATS RIGHT), ELD (ELDER WAND).

I can just hear the sci-fi/fantasy haters going off again about that last one, but ELDER WAND is at least made up of two real words, so non-Harry Potter fans (pagans!) ought to at least be able to infer it.

Really though, if you don't know what the ELDER WAND is ... you poor muggle. Now, if I had worked in ANTIOCH PEVERELL (the wandmaker who created the ELDER WAND), that would have been stupefy-level awesome. I mean … unfair and undesirable. Ahem. Yes, that's surely what I meant.

I've always favored the generalist's approach. It's hurt me in some areas, like in business, where 90%+ of C-suite (CEO, CFO, CTO, etc.) want specialists, and deep specialists at that. But I feel strongly that expanding one's boundaries is important to personal development and leads to better deliverables, even in the areas in which you might specialize.

My annoying philosophical discussion aside, I enjoy a challenge. It's tough to get three great 15-letter answers stacked atop each other while not compromising in short fill. I loved RARE STAMP DEALER, and all those common letters felt like they'd make for easier construction. And it was a stroke of luck that I happened upon the combination of I BELIEVE I CAN FLY, which is often played for CINDERELLA TEAMS (I'm a sucker for basketball stories, especially underdogs).

It was more a stroke of relief, given how many other 15-letter entries I tried below RARE STAMP DEALER. I saved several dozen versions and discarded probably hundreds more.

The one hesitation I had was in BOOBOISIE, which was the only possibility given the rough ISIE ending I had backed myself into. I had heard the term before and thought it was hilarious (a take-off on "bourgeoisie"), but I wondered if it might come off as condescending. Thankfully, I could attribute it to Mencken (as I giggled about it to myself).

Huge props to Will and Joel for the USED CARS clue, which I didn't get at first. "… old and tired" as in tired = having tires. Ha!

I originally wanted TRICK / KNEE to be even trickier, with KNEE getting no clue. Probably would have been too evil to get an unexpected Thursday-ish trick in a themeless puzzle though. Ah well.

I probably won't do any more triple-stacks now — what a great learning experience, but there are so many other themeless layouts I'd like to try out and learn from. Hope you enjoyed the solve!