New York Times, Friday, August 30, 2013

PEER ASSESSMENTS running across the bottom row is a little cheap, and I didn't care much for ATTS and EGERIA. Still, overall this is a pretty spectacular construction. I'm impressed.

I submitted the original version of this puzzle in October 2011, when I was 14. Will rejected it in January 2012 because of a few pieces of ugly short fill (RALE, STG, USAR, and MUSTA), though he liked the 15-letter entries. I couldn't salvage the bottom stack because of STG, though I was able to keep the top one; after many hours of grid wrangling, I came up with a new bottom stack, which I felt contained stronger short fill than the original did. I sent Will the current version of this puzzle in February 2012. Although he wasn't fond of the columns of three-letter entries along the sides and the un-Scrabbly PEER ASSESSMENTS at the bottom, he accepted the puzzle in June 2012.

Will did an excellent job of editing my clues — I particularly like the brilliant "Formula one?" and "Modern mouse hole?"! Also, I'm glad he made my original MICHELE BACHMANN clue ("Candidate who called 'The Lion King' gay propaganda") less controversial. I hope you enjoy solving this one as much as I enjoyed constructing it!

"...when I was 14" What more is there to say?

I appreciate how much Will values both younger constructors and older constructors, realizing that encouraging youth to construct is a great way to build the long-term future for crosswords. Young 'uns, bring the heat! If you know of precocious teens let us know and we'll connect them with experienced constructors who can help smooth their path to NYT publication.

15-letter triple stacks are tough to pull off. And when you have two sets of them, that's 15x2 sets of parallel constraints. My experience with triple stacks often involves finding 14 crossings that work great...and a hair-pulling, vitriol spewing 15th crossing. Once I worked on a triple stack for ten+ hours before stuffing it into a place the sun rarely shines.

David does an admirable job with his stacks. Having four sparkly 15's out of six is no easy feat, and generally his crossings are nice. I would disagree with Will on EGERIA if this were a Saturday puzzle, because I liked looking up EGERIA and learning something new about Roman legends. But on a Friday, having something so esoteric felt out of place, especially considering how accessible David's other answers are.

One drawback to grid-spanning triple-stacks is that it often means that there will be many three-letter words in the puzzle (unless the constructor tries to go for a super-low word count), and having too many of these can break a puzzle's flow. This grid contains 20 3-letter words (data shown below grid), which is much higher than the typical 10-12 in a themeless. It didn't really bother me during the solve, but I did notice it.

Here's hoping I'll achieve as much in my life as David already has (fat chance of that).