Another nice themeless from the BOY WONDER duo, Brad Wilber and Byron Walden. An interesting grid layout I haven't seen before — always neat to see a new skeleton. It features a lot more seven-letter entries than normal, while leaving less room for entries of eight or more letters. This can make it tricky to fill a grid with snazzy stuff, as most of the time pizzazz comes from those 8+ letter entries. But fill like SKI TEAM and PINE NUT help to take advantage of those spaces.
Some beautiful entries today, NADERITE is not a term I knew but it's highly inferable. And TAD LINCOLN, what a nice entry. That crossing OUTLANDERS was awfully nice. And E LEARNING is a great example of an in-the-language term adding some recency to the NYT puzzle.
There are so many interconnects today. On one hand, this helps a puzzle flow for a solver, making it so easy to move into different parts of the grid via multiple entries. That NW corner is so wide open, with so many different ways to break in. However, it does make grid-filling a real challenge. With the long OUTLANDERS and TAD LINCOLN running through it, it causes all sorts of constraints. I have such a high standard for both of these guys' work that it was a bit of a surprise to see ASK AN, even with a neat clue.
And look at the SW corner, SUCH a great triple stack of STALIN ERA / HOVER OVER / E LEARNING. Beautiful, top-notch stuff. However, check out the huge spaces that allow a solver to get in there. What with OUTLANDERS already being fixed in place, it becomes super hard to find clean crossings. AVERYS is a bit inelegant, in that it's difficult for me to think of one famous AVERY, much less two. And exiting that SW corner is a bit of a rough patch, with DIONE / ROODS / ISERE. All fair entries for a Saturday NYT solver, but not ideal to have them all lumped together.
I was wowed by the SE though. With all the aforementioned constraints, that corner by all rights should contain at least a bit of junk or glue. Framed by SOURCE CODE and ANTHRACITE, they do wonderful things in that space. Even DOZER is fine by me, although I would have much preferred a clue related to "The Matrix." Dozer and Tank, two of my favorite characters in the flick. All that, plus a Z and an X? Masterful.
Some great, Saturday-ish clues today. [Handy talent?] was so confusing, until it finally dawned on me that the clue was talking about the composer Handy. And [Spots likely to smear] for ATTACK ADS, that's just brilliant. My favorite though, will not be everyone's cup of tea. The clue for SERF took me back to all those times I've watched that movie — I can't help but laugh every time I think about those two mud-flinging serfs discussing systems of government. To each their own, eh?
So perhaps a little bit more glue than I typically see from either of these guys, but that's relative to an ultra-high bar. Great Saturday workout.