New York Times, Friday, December 13, 2019

I'm very excited to have my first solo byline and my first themeless puzzle published! I decided to give themeless constructing a try after seeing the statistics about how few women have historically constructed Fridays and Saturdays for the NYT.

To start, I seeded this puzzle with POLAR BEAR PLUNGE because I love jumping in freezing cold alpine lakes. From there, I focused on converting as many of the long slots as possible into interesting entries and minimizing liabilities (including keeping the 3-letter-word count down.) I found that this grid offered a fair amount of flexibility since the entries in the middle diagonal (along the VEAL -> VERY axis) had several alternatives and could be swapped out pretty easily when I needed to rewrite a corner.

Since I'm still new to constructing, I wasn't surprised to see many clues changed in the editing process, but a few of my original ones (FIRST STEP, SKI SEASON, SARA, SPA, etc) made it through. SKI SEASON feels especially timely as the season is starting up right now (even though I prefer cross country skiing to going on downhill runs!)

Thank you to Robyn Weintraub and Peter Wentz for generously answering my many, many questions about how exactly one goes from a blank grid to a finished themeless puzzle. They shared useful technical tips and, most importantly, helped me keep my standards high. Thank you also to Erik and Will N for connecting to me Robyn and Peter, to Jeff and Jim for all the great resources at XWord Info, and to my mom and aunt for being my trusty test solvers!

Second puzzle, second POW! for Leslie! Her first one was at one end of the constructing spectrum — an easy-peasy, smooth Monday — and this themeless is at the other. It's a rare individual who has the potential to hit for the cycle, given that a Monday and a Friday puzzle require different skill sets. Check back here in five years; my money says that Leslie will be on the list.

At first glance, this grid doesn't look that much different from a standard 72-word themeless. Take the SE corner for example — triple-stacked 9s are a staple of Friday puzzles. The one big difference is the grid-spanner in the middle, the vivid POLAR BEAR PLUNGE. That has the potential to ice up every corner of the grid.

Leslie wisely used her black squares to separate POLAR BEAR PLUNGE from the NW and SE corners, while still allowing for decent solving flow. However, it's impossible for the ends of POLAR BEAR PLUNGE to not affect the SW and NE corners. I like her decision to break up the outside slots (SPELL / DUE and FAD / AIDES). Many constructors would keep those as 9-letter slots, giving themselves a huge problem. It's easy to construct 9-letter triple stacks when you have few other constraints, but when you fix three letters into place, it becomes much more difficult.

I love how careful Leslie was with her short fill. I'm always picking out some nit in a themeless, but not today. Top-notch work. It's not rocket science — you can get yourself a solid word list and work with the minimum score fixed at a high level — but so many constructors get fed up with the sheer quantity of iterations they must iterate through to get a clean, colorful product like this.

This wanna-be surf bum enjoyed kicking off the puzzle with RASHGUARD (try surfing without one for a day, see what happens), but Jim Horne commented that he'd never ENCOUNTERed it before. So although I see it as a great entry, something like FIRST STEP or ROSE PETAL or SKI SEASON is a safer headliner, given their more universal recognition.

Nearly faultless execution, with both quality and quantity of feature entries. Can't wait until Leslie's next outing!