New York Times, Saturday, July 21, 2018

When I was making this puzzle, I tried a couple of new things. First, I emphasized freshness and quality for the grid-spanners in the stacks. What I like about the result is that most stack spanners are either new appearances or fun entries like "There's no I in team." What I don't like is that the crossing entries are weaker than what I would have preferred: you usually don't get a free lunch in crossword construction.

Second, I wanted to see if using left-right mirror symmetry instead of regular crossword symmetry would make constructing the quad stacks easier. Answer: not really. It does let the two stack sections have different shapes (what I'm calling the open block of white squares at the top/bottom of the grid), but mirror symmetry constrains each possible shape a lot. This symmetry also puts a lot of pressure in the middle. You can see that I needed a ninth grid spanner to hold everything together, and this wound up being a weak-ish entry.

I've been taking a break from crosswords for a while due to general business in my life. However, it's really fun to have a puzzle appear, and hopefully, this will get me motivated to finish up some of my half-done puzzles.

Ah, quad stacks. By now, we expect serious trade-offs in such a crazily difficult construction. The question is, does the pizzazz in the long entries make up for the wince-worthy globs of glue?

Today, I say yes. All too often, quad stacks need to rely heavily on common letters, boring answers, or head-scratching phrases. But out of nine grid-spanners, I'd say four are fantastic, and five are solid if not flashy. STRING ORCHESTRA over THERES NO I IN TEAM is a great way to headline your puzzle!

(I used to play cello in an orchestra, and I'd always try to hide in the back corner at the last stand, away from the audience. That way, all my wrong notes and out of tune-ness would be overwhelmed. Good thing we were all a team!)

Ah, ONDES, I learned ye through crosswords. Weirdly, it was kind of fun to plug it in without a single crossing letter.

People sometimes ask me how I can possibly do the toughest crosswords. Repetition often allows for immediate fill-ins like this.

See: NEROLI. ELAM. SORA.

I appreciated how wide-open Jason kept his grid. Stringing ROCKETTES through that bottom quad was delightful.

REDEPOSIT up top ... not so much.

The lone head-shaking moment was the XKE / KTEL square. A friend recently told me that in his generation — an OLDER GENERATION — the XKE was super popular, in everyone's consciousness. Perhaps it was the same way for KTEL?

Every eye-popping grid like this will come with some sort of compromises. Overall, I enjoyed the solving experience — the quality of the grid-spanners and the novelty of the wide-openness helped me overcome the rough patches.