New York Times, Friday, July 12, 2019

The inspiration for this puzzle was this Peter Wentz themeless from 2013. I solved that at a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina while I was on the road, photographing post offices across the Southeast. (Seriously—I have a blog, an Instagram of post offices, the whole shebang.) Peter's grids are always great, but this one really fascinated me: how the Z occupied such a position of prominence in two awesome entries; the clean stagger-stack of 13s; and that VW-/AAA-/NBA- stack in the southeast. I started jotting down any 13-letter phrases I encountered, and tried for years in vain to create a satisfying grid with similar topography. Nearly five years later, and with the benefit of some... let's call it "competence," this puzzle was complete.

My aim was to deliver three fun 13-letter entries that were not only Shortz-era debuts, but which also formed some silly little narrative if you take a step back. (See also: 36-/33-Down. That corner was actually remanded to me, and this iteration of fill is much nicer; thank you, Will.)

This grid is somewhat segmented, and that helped me create the rest of the puzzle. I tried to maximize the count of fresh entries, and my inner nerd led me to pack the corners full of sci-tech goodness.

I don't know how many other constructors have this tendency to constantly revisit or second-guess their completed work (for you classical music buffs, I'm more of a Mahler than a Shostakovich), but it still slightly gnaws at me that there are a bunch of plural entries crossing the central stack. Feels a bit inelegant. Alas!

My inner nerd dug the heavy sci-fi bent, from STARSHIPS to TELEPORTS to waking up from THE MATRIX and saying WHERE AM I? Perhaps even a nod to Star Trek's most famous android, DATA, in DATA MINER? Loved it all.

I can understand how non-sci-fi DWEEBs might not have enjoyed the quasi-mini-theme as much, though.

"Stair stack" puzzles (describing the middle three rows) are familiar enough now that they have to shine to be noticed. The middle triplet is almost always great, since if you don't have at least that, it's a non-starter for most editors.

Where this one stood out from other stair stacks was in the lower left and upper right corners. These regions too often get filled with neutral or blah material, since they're often highly constrained by the middle stair stack. Not only are both of Evan's SW / NE corners clean and smooth, but WHERE AM I / THE MATRIX are so strong, doubly so when adjacent. NOSE STUDS and IN STEREO are winners, too.

Excellent work in squeezing the most out of all the long entries. I wasn't big on SWEETEN UP — filler more than an asset — but there were no other wasted long slots. That's a fantastic hit rate.

A couple of amusing clues, too. SEVEN was confoundingly self-referencing — clue number 49 divided by SEVEN itself. I had to stop and think about it, and I loved how it gave me an initial DOES NOT COMPUTE that was quickly resolved.

MOP, with its head usually on its bottom? That's the way to make a boring ol' common entry stand out!

In any particular week, Jim and I don't usually agree on which puzzle we liked best. Jim's words expressed my thoughts on today's puzzle so concisely: "Everything a Friday puzzle ought to be."