New York Times, Saturday, May 20, 2017

PAOLO: Full disclosure: I've been an admirer of David's puzzles/general constructing vibe for a while, so constructing this puzzle was a dream. Our first meeting was at Lollapuzzoola 9, and it was fun talking to one of the very few young-gun crossword constructors around. We hit it off, and naturally, a collaboration was bound to happen.

This was the second collaboration (the first was rejected, sadly), coming from an email chain that started about a week after Lollapuzzoola. I sent him the SE corner (seeded by BECHDEL TEST), and he sent back an email a few days later with the bomb NW stack you see right now. After that, I filled in the top and bottom center sections, he filled in the NE and SW corners, and we were done. I'm still in awe of his NE section in particular-- so Scrabbly, so good.

After that, it was a matter of writing the clues (the good ones were his, obvi), and sending it to Will. Looking at it now, a few clues got changed, but I'm just glad that my clue for DAB made it.

All in all, a really smooth collaboration, and a fast one too-- our constructing styles seriously click. Hope you enjoyed (and hopefully this won't be the last Steinberg/Pasco joint you see!)

DAVID: One of my favorite things about Paolo's puzzles is how they capture his voice so well: They're super modern, ridiculously smooth, and full of Hamilton references :). So when Paolo sent me the awesome lower right stack you see, I was quick to hop onboard!

Getting three seed entries from my word list to stack in the upper left was both a ridiculous stroke of luck and a testament to Paolo's grid design skills. Paolo also writes great clues, so he may say that the good clues were mine, but y'know. . . . In any case, Paolo and I have more collabs in the works, some of which will hopefully come to papers near you!

Two of the youngsters teaming up! I was a little excited to do the puzzle … and a little apprehensive. What hip term would they use, that I would have to pretend like I was cool enough to understand?

Thankfully, they featured a ton of great material that was accessible even to me. That NW corner of SILICON CHIP / AVOCADO ROLL / ZONE DEFENSE was fantastic — and even better considering how smooth it was. (ERG is short and fairly ignorable, at least to this mechanical engineer.)

And although seven-letter themeless entries can be tough to make shine, what a neat NE corner. Love those two Zs (Aziz Ansari is The Man) and the J, made even better by being featured in a great entry, JOYRIDE.

Now, FACESWAP had the potential to be the type of hipster entry I worried about. Thankfully, the clue directly gets at the answer in an explicit way. Whew!

Speaking of piecing it together, that bottom right corner was rough, even though I had heard of the BECHDEL TEST. It's an important concept — a measure of how women are portrayed in media — but BECHDEL is a tough proper name to get right.

I do like that the NYT crossword helps the term get more exposure, but I fear that solvers denied their "I correctly finished the Saturday NYT crossword!" high will harbor a negative impression of the term. Paolo and David did well to make all the crossings gettable … except that STOWE as a ski town (and not Harriet Beecher) is suspect. I call foul on that, opening the door to perfectly fine-looking STOWA or STOWY.

The SAZERAC / RIIS crossing was much better — I don't expect all educated solvers to know what a Sazerac is (plus, they're disgusting), but Jacob RIIS is one of the most important journalists in history.

Another big highlight for me was DIREWOLF, as I used to be a "Game of Thrones" fan. Love those fiercely loyal and protective creatures.

So much to love here; smooth, well-crafted puzzle. If ODETS and SOREL hadn't highlighted the SAZERAC and BECHDEL proper noun issues further, I would have given this one my POW!