New York Times, Friday, November 4, 2016

This puzzle dates back to January 2015. If memory serves, Matt Ginsberg had just sent out the final version of a crowdsourced word list that numerous other constructors and I had been working on, so I was excited to put it to the test! After receiving the word list, I sifted through it a bit to see which entries really stood out to me. One of the tricky things about crowdsourcing anything, especially something as subjective as a word list, is that everyone has slightly different tastes. So it took me a while to find three highly scored entries for the bottom left stack that I genuinely liked.

Once I had the bottom left in place, I plunked down WOW JUST WOW and moved on to the upper right. I can't say I was quite as happy with the upper right—the "never heard of it outside of crosswords" EILAT bothered me—but I was still pleased to work in a handful of entries I thought were interesting. My next task was to find a 15-letter entry for the center slot to tie everything together. I was thrilled to discover that HOT STONE MASSAGE fit nicely, and everything else fell into place from there.

I hope you enjoy the puzzle! In the meantime, I'll be busy working on my word list. . . .

A ton of flashy, catchy answers. That bottom left corner is especially shiny, with four strong answers — WOW JUST WOW / ASK ANYONE / SLOW DANCE / TUNA STEAK — stacked right atop each other, with only the very minor ASTI needed to hold it all together. Stacking three long answers is hard enough, but when you throw in a fourth (even if it is shifted over somewhat), it gets much harder. That's fantastic work.

WOW JUST WOW might not do much for some people, but it's one of my favorite types of entries, taking advantage of the crossword convention of ignoring punctuation. WOW JUST WOW looks odd, but think of it like this: WOW. (eye roll) JUST … WOW. (shake head.) Love it.

Interesting to hear David say that HOT STONE MASSAGE wasn't one of the seed entries. I would never have thought to build opposite corners like this, hoping that they would mesh in the middle — seems like you'd too often end up with unmatchable starts / ends for that long slot. But David kept his middle section pretty closed off with liberal use of black squares, so he set himself up to facilitate the start / end of that grid-spanning entry meshing in the middle. Clever!

Also nice to hear David point out EILAT as the least desirable entry, as that one stood out to me as well (a name I know only from crosswords). Is it a truly gluey entry, though? I'm on the fence about that. Major cities ought to be fair game, and never having traveled in that part of the world, I don't know enough about EILAT to gauge its tourist draw or its place in history. Tough call.

AMICO was second behind EILAT for me, but that felt more minor to me (it's easily inferable from the common "amigo" and "amicus brief"). It speaks to David's construction abilities that he was able to keep it to just these entries in terms of crossword glue, especially considering all the long answers stacked atop each other.

I wasn't a fan of the mini-theme — four of the first five answers clued to "pot" or "pots" — a rare case that a mini-theme actually detracted from a themeless for me. Felt a bit haphazard; inelegant. I'm glad I went back afterward to review the construction though, because once I got past that opening sensation of oddness, I really enjoyed the craftsmanship.