New York Times, Thursday, September 9, 2021

I'm happy to have my first crossword in the Times today! About me: I'm 18, from the Chicago suburbs, and a first year student at Carleton College. I got into crosswords in early 2020, just before the pandemic, when I would try to co-solve a few puzzles with friends (shoutout Arjun and David). Later on, solving over Zoom seemed like a decent way to occupy our time, and it didn't take long until I had the idea to try constructing as well. I eventually had some puzzles published on SPYSCAPE and since then I've had a few sales to other outlets.

I don't know exactly how the idea for this puzzle came to me, but sometime last summer I jotted down KILOMETERS DAVIS (15) on a post-it note since I found it kinda funny. That turned into the theme you now feast your eyes upon. Hopefully, you either like the theme or are able to ignore it and solve the puzzle like a themeless. Some favorite clues of mine that made the cut were 50A and 40D. I'm also happy that I was able to reference the best Miles Davis album in my 16A clue.

In terms of the editing team's clues, I really like 7A as well as 13A/48A. I'll close by imploring you to get vaccinated. Also, join Crosscord, it's pretty cool (I'm on there as pnbeef). And be on the lookout for more puzzles from me in the NYT and elsewhere!

I used to listen to tons of MILES DAVIS back when I played in jazz bands. His album "Miles Smiles" sure would have been different in METRIC.

RADIAN is a metric unit? It's been a few decades since I've taken any math classes, so I figured there had to be some sort of two-factor trickery going on, since both radians and degrees are taught in American trig. Let's see … anagrams? RADIANS does rearrange to SAD RAIN!

More appropriately, RADIAN mixes into A DRAIN — as in, that theory down a drain. Although the Wikipedia page doesn't explicitly call out RADIANs as a METRIC unit, it does say that it's an SI unit.

Audacious grid, especially for a debut. Themelesses can't have any more than 72 words, yet this themed puzzle contains only 68. Only a small subset of themeless constructors can fill a 68-worder with both cleanliness and color.

I would rarely tackle filling a 68-worder with four long seed entries. Granted, you can switch the placements of RADIAN MILLS and GRAM FOOLISH, and you can shift blocks around infinitely, but it's still a ridiculously difficult task. I'm impressed that Billy was able to keep his short glue to a bare minimum — with only ERO, this is way higher on the cleanliness scale than most 68-word themelesses.

Not a lot of color to boast of, though. I did enjoy OF COURSE, CADBURY, TOP TIER, and it's nice to get AGENDA, JOANNE, MAKE ME, MARSHA. I have a feeling so much more sparkle could have been featured in a 74-word grid, though.

I was so confused by DEGREEs to RADIANs; that threw my entire solving experience off-kilter. Now that I've mulled it over more, I like the brave approach. Instead of going with something more mundane, say HALF LITER (from HALF PINT) or MILLILITER OF PREVENTION, pushing the boundaries by omitting the obvious volume measure in favor of angular measurement feels appropriate to math. I have the fortune to be friends with many mathematicians, and most of all them are … particular. In a good way!