New York Times, Saturday, August 22, 2020

This puzzle started with PAWN PROMOTION, and its 13-letter length gave me an ideal opportunity to try working with a "stair-stack" layout for the first time. I was pretty excited to discover that BARNEY STINSON fit nicely underneath it, and once I found my third answer for the middle stack, I was off and running.

The upper-right and lower-left corners quickly fell into place, but I was unsure what I wanted to do with the remaining corners, so much so that I created two versions — one with 68 words and one with 66 (left). I really liked the three stacked answers in the upper left of the latter, though I wasn't as confident about the three cheater squares or the high density of short names in that corner (six in total). I even had my friend/collaborator David Steinberg weigh in (he liked the 66-word version too). After more deliberation, I submitted it, and it was rejected on the grounds that — you guessed it — there were a few too many short names, and it "felt a bit heavy on black squares".

I eventually came up with a fill I liked for the revised 68-word version. This time, it was accepted, undoubtedly because I addressed the concerns while keeping the best answer of the puzzle, HENRI, in the same place in the grid. (Just kidding, it was purely unintentional — which reminds me, no offense intended by the bottom row, Mr. Agard).

As far as the clues go, I'm particularly glad to see my clue of [Flipper] for SASSIER make the cut, which surely must be in the running for the most devious one-word clue of all time. Happily, my clue for IN YOUR FACE also survived (all previous NYT instances were clued as the adjective).

So, there you have it — a puzzle three years and several versions in the making. Hope you have fun with this one!

Excellent gridwork, and I'm so glad Trenton didn't go hog wild on rare Scrabble letters today, as is his usual wont. So many IN YOUR FACE feature entries, KEEBLER ELF, PAWN PROMOTION, IT'S A SECRET / CHEAPSKATE, BOOM TOWNS, and the UNION JACK as a [British flyer].

I'm still trying to cram in ROYAL AIR FORCE.

Similarly, some solvers will shrug off the dissonance between SASSIER and [Flipper], figuring it must be right but not stopping to think why. It's genius, flipper not like a dolphin's flipper, but as in "more flip." I know, it's groanworthy, but in a delightfully punny way.

I've only watched some of "How I Met Your Mother," so BARNEY STINSON didn't do much for me. And as much as I admired the craftsmanship, the tone of the puzzle left me unsettled. From what I know of BARNEY STINSON, he's a smarmy bar frequenter, so getting GOES ON A BENDER, OPIUM DEN, IN YOUR FACE, FIXATED ON made me lean toward the PANIC BAR.

Solid "stair stack" construction with high technical marks, but a bit too testosterone-laden for my taste.