New York Times, Saturday, September 16, 2017

FINN AND NATAN: We're having a lot of fun at the JASA class by making types of puzzles as yet untried by the group, and someone in the class was hungry for a themeless with chunky, stacking corners. We were tickled by the SHE LOVES ME / HE'S A KEEPER combination, and spent a lot of time tinkering with the lower left, which is our favorite section. Our last puzzle in May debuted ARREST HIM; we're pleased to bring the entry back to the Times a second time.

It's tough to write a themeless in the first place, let alone as a group, since you want to make sure you've really exhausted every possibility to ensure the cleanest possible grid. The class was very patient as we all tested and retested new fill in the corners. If we recall correctly, the bottom right had a few other types of RACEs and LINEs at some point in time.

At this point, the JASA folks who make these puzzles are pros at all the aspects of construction, but the group clearly has a knack for clever cluing. [Sea as in Cannes] for MER and [Celebration after a run?] for CAST PARTY are among our favorites the class came up with. Will, Joel, and team did a lovely job neatening our clues, which tend to be overlong (Natan's fault) and overflowing, happily, with puns and alliteration (the class's!). A lesson in the original clue for PANIC BAR: [Don't push it!]

Hope you enjoy!

The JASA class is back! With a standard themeless layout — four sets of triple-stacks, one in each corner — you have to make every one of those long entries count. So many colorful assets, from SHE LOVES ME (she loves me not) to ARREST HIM! to ENEMY LINES to SHARK TANK (I love me some Mr. Wonderful!). High conversion rate, making good use of those 12 long slots.

But that's not all! They could have gone the easy route by doing a 72-word puzzle — perhaps by putting black squares at the Rs of EMERGEN-C and of ATTORNEY. A 70-word puzzle allows for a couple more juicy long entries, in this case allowing for some PANIC BAR goodness.

The stretching did come at a price, though. See how EMERGEN-C and RHEOSTAT (a boring term, even for this mechanical engineer) extend in toward the middle of the grid? That makes the NE corner much less flexible. As a result, in order to get the GO IN PEACE / SID CAESAR type goodness, they had to dab in some ERTES, TROI, MER.

Those three are fairly ignorable (although ERTES is tougher to swallow, taking up slightly more real estate), but those types of trade-offs occurred in other places too, notably the SE. TTY is … tele … typewriter? Huh. GOL attempted to be cute by misdirecting toward the much more common OLE, but it's not a good entry. Along with the mysterious CHAYOTE in that region and the groan-worthy A-TESTS, it felt like the weak part of the grid.

Speaking of that, POTATO RACE? Again, huh. Wikipedia says it's basically a race involving potatoes. Go figure.

But overall, kudos to the class for producing a mostly solid grid with a good number of feature entries. Also, a nice wink to get MEEMAW, from the senior-aged class!