New York Times, Saturday, May 23, 2020

ERIK: This grid took a long time to come together (i.e., many iterations of us talking each other out of bad fill) and I'm so happy with the end result! One of my favorite themeless puzzles I've ever been involved in. Thankful to Wyna for the opportunity to collab and to the Times team for preserving many of our clues.

WYNA: This one took a while! I was inspired to start this grid by Erik's excellent DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, one of the entries from a word list we'd made. Probably went through about ten iterations before arriving at the grid we submitted, which is almost entirely different from what we started with. The editors (correctly) requested one more revision to get rid of USIE. In that process, we lost FAITH HEALER and gained A BIT STRANGE. I really enjoyed all the work we put into this grid, and I'm proud of the result!

Favorite clues in this puzzle are all Erik: 15A, 33A, 8D, and 34D. Thanks to the eds. for some great revisions, 49A and 29D in particular, though I was sad to lose our original clue for 16A [Watered-down drink].

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS! Great feature entry. There's so much lore, artwork, and festivities around the Day of the Dead. When I was young, I was fascinated by my (Buddhist) dad leaving food offerings at the altar for our ancestors, lighting incense candles, rolling odd-shaped dice that would let us know when the ancestors had finished appreciating the delicacies. As compelling as that was, the traditions around DIA DE LOS MUERTOS are a hundredfold greater.

I've enjoyed Wyna's themelesses, previous ones featuring fantastic entries like DARN TOOTIN, WHO WORE IT BETTER, and CRAZY RICH ASIANS. This one was right in line, with sizzlers like ROGER THAT, CHECK PLEASE, CLOSE SHAVES. A lot to love!

There were some that were A BIT STRANGE, though, as with previous puzzles. I score roughly -11.5 on the hipster scale, so A BIT STRANGE definitely MADE IT WEIRD. Are these things the kids say these days?

I also was on the fence about ITS NOT A RACE. [Reprimand to the overly speedy]? This is something police officers say? Or coaches who are playing mind games with their star athletes? Although, I have heard my daughter say something like "we're not racing" to Jake--just before she takes off, taunting him at the finish line, and making him cry.

Good times.

It's hard to tell who's responsible for the spate of awesome clues, Wyna, Erik, or the NYT editing team, so collective credit for:

• [Auto correction] had me fixated on Microsoft's annoying autocorrections that I can't figure how to turn off. Boy, do I sound old. Nope, just an ordinary TUNE-UP.
• [Red states, once] not only misdirects toward our country's political divisions, but I bet I wasn't the only one who put a terminal S into place. I enjoyed getting bamboozled.
• We've seen a lot of MATHLETE(S) lately, but I'll welcome more instances if the clues are as great as [Figureheads?], as in people with heads for figures.

I bet this puzzle resonated better with the younger crowd—or people from Austin, who take pride in keeping things weird. Still, more than enough to make for an above-average Saturday solve.