New York Times, Saturday, August 5, 2017

I have a confession: constructing a 72-word themeless grid scares me. When I personally begin solving a themeless puzzle that goes up to the max word count, there's a tiny, overly entitled person in my head that mutters under his breath, "This puzzle better be fresh, lively, and contain zero crosswordese or I'ma gonna throw my hat in-a disgust." (For the purposes of this blurb, I wanted Mario to serve as my privileged persona, because Mario's funny when he's haughty.)

If, as a constructor, I went by Mario's judgment, I'd say this puzzle doesn't quite hit the mark due to a lack of super-fresh entries (perhaps with HAWKMAN and APP STORE serving as exceptions) and the existence of crosswordese/undesirable entries (including, but not limited to, URE, ESTE, CRU, and SRA).

If I were to take a more holistic approach and tell Mario to find his princess in another castle, I'd say the puzzle does just fine. The puzzle doesn't seem to contain a preponderance of entries in any single subject; plus, many of the clues/entries seem to hit my ideal combination of trivia, wordplay, and fun--with some thought-provoking material thrown in for good measure (see 36D; I'm glad Will/Joel/the editing team kept this clue).

Overall, I kind of like this little guy (the puzzle, not snobbish Mario) but would listen to the other little guy a bit more if I were to tackle another 72-word themeless for the Times.

Some brilliant cluing today, so much clever wordplay in effect. Wordplay for short entries is great, i.e. an [Apple field] isn't a field of apple trees, but Apple (computer) in TECH. And wordplay is even more delightful when applied to feature entries, making those long answers stand out even more.

PEACE SIGN was a perfect example. "Double-digit figure" is a fine phrase, expressing when a number crosses from 9 to 10. Here, "digit" actually refers to the finger" definition. Great stuff.

Another example is SANS SERIF. [Unembellished type] at first struck me as describing an engineer like me who doesn't bother matching his socks and enjoys shaving his head because no hair means a huge savings in time and shampoo costs. But "type" refers to a type font — such an innocent clue, yet so deviously brilliant.

A lot of themeless constructors aim to debut their favorite new musician's full name, or an esoteric entry that they love but solvers might need every cross to figure out. More and more, I'm favoring these types of PEACE SIGN / SANS SERIF entries that lend themselves to taking a great wordplay clue that so many more people can enjoy.

HAWKMAN is a good example of the esoteric(ish) type of entry. I'm a big comics fan, so HAWKMAN was fun for me to see (he really does fly around hitting people with a giant mace!). But he is admittedly not a major character in the DC Comics universe. Not sure how well this one will hit solvers who aren't comics fanatics. (Hopefully not with a mace.)

A good number of feature entries, although PER ANNUM, PET SOUNDS (a Beach Boys album), EAR DOCTOR (ENT, yeah?), LEFT ALONE didn't sing as well as others for me. I'm sure Beach Boys fans will call PET SOUNDS fun, fun, fun, though.

As David mentioned, a few dings. PANTO was another that felt not as minor-feeling to me.

All in all though, I had a lot of fun with all the great cluing. It just takes a few stellar ones to make a puzzle sing, and all of today's wordplay made for an entertaining solve.