New York Times, Saturday, June 20, 2015

I'm very happy to have my second themeless puzzle published in the Times! The seed for this puzzle was the bottom stack HAVE A BEER/OPEN TABLE/PINTEREST. As I mentioned in the notes to my last puzzle, clue writing is a skill I've been working on improving. Thus, I was pleased to see 38 of my submitted clues used in their original form or with minor changes. Original clues include 1A, 35A, 54A, 1D, 8D, 30D, and 49D.

I learned the word SPANDRELS from an evolutionary biologist friend several years ago. In that field, according to Wikipedia, it refers to a "characteristic that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection." Some have argued that human language might be a spandrel resulting from the evolution of our brain. I chose to use the more common architectural definition, but I hope solvers who are interested in evolutionary biology will enjoy finding SPANDRELS and DARWIN together in the puzzle!

Somehow this puzzle managed to feel modern yet not quite bleeding edge (to the extent that I could even recognize bleeding edge), which makes me wonder if there was a lag between acceptance and publication. There must be a very narrow window where entries like WASSUP, WIN AT LIFE, Brienne of TARTH, and PINTEREST are common enough to be recognizable, yet not stale or dated. Also known as Item #47 on the List of Why No Single Crossword Will Please All Solvers.

Setting aside sweet-spot questions, I liked this one. It was a smooth solve, and the proper nouns were quirky and fun. A few of my favorites:

• Brienne of TARTH is one of the more intriguing characters from "Game of Thrones," and Gwendoline Christie plays her brilliantly. At 6'3", she makes everyone else on screen look like flyweights, a LeBron James effect.
• The IRAQ clue (Country created by the Treaty of Sèvres, 1920) is a solid piece of trivia. Reading up on the post-WWI distribution of the Middle East is fascinating and appalling.
• HORUS, the Egyptian god of war, came by his aggression naturally. His mother was the goddess Isis, married to Osiris, the king of the afterlife and the underworld. Osiris' brother, Set, was envious of Osiris' throne, so he murdered and dismembered Osiris, scattering his various body parts throughout Egypt. Isis gathered up all the pieces of Osiris but could not find his phallus (rumored to have been eaten by a catfish, according to Plutarch), so she conjured up a golden phallus and briefly resurrected Osiris with a magical spell that lasted just long enough for Osiris to impregnate her. Horus was born of that brief encounter.