New York Times, Friday, August 7, 2015

I've been dipping my toe in the water of lower word counts and more wide open grids. It gets more and more difficult to keep a clean puzzle with a few zippy entries the farther one goes in that direction, yet I feel it's something of a badge of honor to fit a fun puzzle in an expansive grid. The repetitive TOs and OKs obviously aren't ideal. However, removing any of them would necessitate either an awkward bit of crosswordese or the elimination of entire sections of the puzzle. Given those alternatives, I'll take the entries as they are.

On a behind-the-scenes note, I'm pleased that a majority of the final clues were my own. While my grids' fill has improved, my cluing quality has lagged behind. Of course, solvers shouldn't notice much of a difference, as each puzzle is expertly edited before being released, but it's satisfying to have a greater sense of ownership over the final product.

Super solid offering from one of the best in the themeless game. Peter starts with an ambitious 16 long slots (entries of 8+ letters), and what a start. When you're working with that many long entries, it's tough avoid some of them coming out flat, but I count 12 strong entries. My favorite is ZIPLINES, the next best thing to climbing if you're going to be in a harness. And AL JAZEERA has great Scrabbly letters.

I appreciate how Peter's been working hard to transform his mid-length material into assets as well. WELL OK is a fun one, as is BIG TOP. RON PAUL is another good one, the politician cleverly staking a claim to the anagram. GULLET is not just an amusing and colorful word, but when paired with a clue as great as [Food channel], it's a plus for the puzzle. (Think of "down the gullet!" and channel = a passageway.) I love it when a clue so innocuously deceives.

Of the four longer entries that I thought were neutral, SNAPPED TO stuck out for me. I would usually count that as an asset, painting a vivid picture of a person jolting. But crossing OPTS TO made it feel a bit so-so, and the feeling of angst grew when I encountered TRIED TO and RAN TO. I don't mind these ___ TO, ___ OUT, ___ AT, etc. phrases in moderation — they're awfully handy to solidify a grid — but like Peter noted, four TOs in a 15x puzzle is maybe two too much for four me. Er, for me.

Some other great clues:

• ESSAY is something written by Salon — did you get tripped up by the capital S of Salon cleverly disguised at the beginning of the clue?
• Neat moment of realization, that a NOSY person indeed pays too much interest.
• FRAT PARTY is not only a great entry but the clue made it even better. (Frats get "rushed" by initiates.)

If it were any other person, I might have picked this one for the POW. The four -TOs complaint might seem ticky-tacky, and really, it probably is. But my bar is set higher for Peter's themeless puzzles than for most every other mere mortal.