New York Times, Saturday, July 17, 2021

Happy July! I'm on a retreat with my a cappella group this weekend. This is at least the third time one of my puzzles has come out on one of our retreat weekends, so it's basically a tradition at this point!

This grid was built around the intersecting triple stacks, which I thought were all fun and colorful entries. I'm a guy who prefers crunchy over smooth when it comes to themeless puzzles (both solving and constructing), so mixing in relative rarities such as 10D & 36D and a taste of socioeconomics with 33A is my cup of tea.

If you're interested in more, I also have my own indie crossword site McGrids where I post puzzles every 17th (including today!) plus whatever else I have time for.

Hope you enjoy!

Ryan is such a master at these gigantic open middles. I've made a few themelesses using this pattern(ish) but note how Ryan shunned the big pyramids of black squares on the left and right of the grid. I wanted to do that, but it felt impossible — those extra black squares make a world of difference, an order of magnitude. To achieve something like SLICE AND DICE / EMOJI KEYBOARD / WAGE LABORERS, crossing BLANKET TOSS / LOOP DE LOOPS / RAGGEDY ANDY is a tour de force.

Puzzles like this one, with astonishingly few short answers, can be difficult to solve. Where do you even begin, with no toeholds? I was thankful that Leon URIS got a gimme clue — could easily have been clued to "Topaz" or "Mitla Pass." Even then, I was stuck for long minutes, staring at a nearly blank grid.

When puzzles are this difficult, I often slog to the end with frustration as my overwhelming feeling. Saturdays are supposed to be hard, but there's hard and there's so-freaking-impossible that it'd take Erik Agard a full six minutes to finish it. (I clocked in at about 50.) However, I was more exhilarated than anything when I finally reached the end. It was like that high you get when you sprint across (okay, stumble in a heap over) the finish line at a triathlon. So satisfying to finally crack EMOJI KEYBOARD.

Granted, I wouldn't think of saying EMOJI KEYBOARD in everyday language, but it's definitely a thing. I also wasn't positive was SPA TUBS were—SPATULA isn't something I want to think about in the bathroom—but they're also most definitely a thing (that I badly wanted after finishing this solving marathon!).

I gave this one a lot of consideration for the POW!, and if some of the clues had been turned down from difficulty = 11, like the SCOTUS not so generically described as a "high branch," it could easily have gotten there. Stunning achievement in gridwork.