New York Times, Friday, July 14, 2023

Greetings, crossworld! I'm an attorney based in Palo Alto, CA. I began solving the NYT crossword daily in mid-2018, and started constructing soon thereafter in my gap year before law school. Over the last 4+ years, I've made and distributed puzzles (all of which were themed) to my family, friends, classmates, and coworkers — but this is the first themeless I've ever shared publicly! Thanks to everyone who solved those puzzles for their patience as I worked out the kinks of crossword construction.

This puzzle started with the supersymmetrical grid pattern. Elements of the grid were inspired by themeless constructors who I admire, but this particular layout felt like something I hadn't quite seen before and proved to be a good canvas to work from in an iterative fashion — first, finding a set of six juicy entries in the center and then filling each of the four corners as cleanly as possible (minimizing the "dabs of crossword glue," as Jeff Chen would say).

I'm grateful to the NYT team for preserving my cluing angle while improving the clues at 5-D/26-D/42-D and for their new clues at 23-A/1-D/10-D. My favorite clues that made the cut are 21-A/6-D/47-D.

Hope you enjoy the puzzle!

P.S. If there are any aspiring constructors out there who have questions or are looking for a resource, please feel free to drop me a line at: kaufwords [at] gmail [dot] com — happy to help however I can.

I CAN'T TELL.

WHAT IN THE HECK?

DON'T BE THAT WAY!

Talk about SPEAK ONE'S MIND! Love the conversational tone.

Themelesses heavy on 7-letter slots often don't have as much color as I expect. Longer-length slots have a higher percentage of multi-word entries, while 7-letter slots contain a ton of neutral material like PENCILS, PRESALE, PRIMERS.

However, Jonathan did a nice job of pushing his 7s, achieving reasonable pizzazz with CITADEL, KEYNOTE, ONLY NOW, YES LET'S. Most tack-on-a-preposition entries are dull, like LED INTO and TUNES IN, but RIDES UP is a standout, given its cluing potential. If only the clue had played on "boxers" getting "cramped," it would have been hilarious!

Much appreciation for the SLURP clue. Some previous uses of this entry didn't feel great, and this Asian slurped today's up.

Standout clue: [Ones unlikely to rule in your favor] had me spinning my wheels about various judges. No giveaway question mark, as in [Defense mechanisms?] (which refers to an oral defense that doctoral candidates must undergo). What a delight to piece together DESPOTS, who are most decidedly not going to rule in anyone's favor but their own.

It's difficult to squeeze enough juice out of a themeless mostly featuring 7-letter slots, but Jonathan did well to pack his six long slots with enough sparkle to help compensate.