New York Times, Friday, August 11, 2023

Delighted to be making my NYT themeless debut today! While I enjoy both themed and themeless construction, themes are so subjective that basically any concept will leave some solvers out in the cold. By contrast, the standard to aspire to on Fridays and Saturdays feels relatively more objective — even if it's harder to meet. The technical difficulties in doing so are a very satisfying challenge.

Today's puzzle was built around 17- and 63-Across, which struck me as really vivid and evocative phrases in the language. The diagonal stripe of blocks between them down the center limits the statistical dependency between the four quadrants — for example, the entries in the northwest weren't super constraining on what could fill the southeast.

This allowed the corners to be significantly cleaner and livelier than would have otherwise been possible. I know opinions on this vary, but I prefer puzzles that prioritize a smooth solve over maximizing openness and interconnect.

On a culinary note, if you haven't made 12-Down, it's one of my favorite Italian dishes. Quick and easy to make, even for novice chefs like me, and outrageously good when tomatoes are in season. You won't regret it.

Hope you all enjoy!

Excellent pairing in THE SKYS THE LIMIT and YOU WON'T REGRET IT. Such optimism and positivity!

John-Clark's discussion of segmenting is on point. Once you put in the two long marquee entries, you can quickly experiment with the COBBLER and LINCOLN slots, testing to see what you can do with the two big corners. Once you lock those entries into place, you can work on each of the three grid chunks independently of each other. That's a huge constructing advantage.

Solid results in those corners. OREO CONE and BEAR HUGS make a great duo, and although CD PLAYER is outdated, that clue helps bring it back into style. The "hidden capital" trick is used to perfection here, [Turner once big in the music industry] hinting strongly at Tina or Ike.

POMODORO is a nice debut, though as a one-worder that I've never made before, it didn't hit me strongly. OLIVE OIL and PETER PAN are crossword stalwarts, but ALT POP helped bring more freshness into that corner.

In this grid layout, the upper left and lower right corners are challenging because the two long marquee entries create inflexibility, making it difficult to work in more great long entries. INNOVATE and PASSAGES aren't anything innovative, though OK GOOGLE is more interesting for Android-based solvers.

I remember an ACPT about a decade ago, where David Plotkin was stuck in the finals, unable to break into a corner like today's upper-right. Unable to crack either of the two entries leading in, he ended up not finishing. Hopefully, no solvers have a similar fate today — excellent idea to give both THE SKYS THE LIMIT and YOU WON'T REGRET THIS overly-explanatory clues.