New York Times, Friday, February 28, 2014

Who needs indie puzzles with their fancy new phrases and risqué words, when you can get a delightful disease-oriented 15-letter entry like MALARIA PARASITE in one of my NYT crosswords?

All kidding aside, I was hesitant about sending this puzzle to Will, precisely because of this 15-letter entry. Fortunately (for me), Will didn't seem to have a problem with it, and I hope most solvers feel the same way!

For those interested, here's a slightly earlier version of today's puzzle. I rejected it because I wasn't too wild about having the relatively lacklustre word RECREATIONS crossing the stacked 15s. Also overall I felt the shorter fill words were not as good.

But that's just my opinion... what do you think?

Another quad-stack from the Master of All Stacks, Martin Ashwood-Smith. Every time I see these gigantic wide-open spaces, it awes me. It's still one technical construction ability I haven't been able to master (or even make a dent in) yet, so it's pretty neat to see something I can't personally achieve.

I quite liked the quad-stack and its crossings today. TRADITIONAL IRAS will be boring to most normal people — thankfully I don't qualify! (I enjoy helping friends and family out with investment planning and management.) Sure, as with any quad-stack, there are the usual IANA, AT EM sort of things, but we also get treated to the long crossers that MAS has been working in as of late: ANTI-RIOT, HAD A TIN EAR, WHAT IS THIS, and (I think this is someone I should know?) AARON CARTER. Throw in some TEXAS SIZE and LIVING WAGE and that's a lot of great stuff.

Where I had some difficulty was in the corners. Shorter answers tend to be clued harder in themelesses, and that SW was a killer. I do love the XXX and its "Really dirty" (tee hee) clue, but AT SIX feels so arbitrary. It's still probably a fair price to pay given that it allows for BOTOX and BRONX in there too, but it still makes me wince a little. Perhaps if ABBE had been clued a little easier, it would have stopped me from trying ONE PM, TWO PM, TEN PM, ONE AM, etc.

And while I love the entry TEXAS SIZE, probably my favorite of the grid, the SE corner feels like there's maybe one too many Scrabbly letters down there. I didn't notice that it was a pangram until I started writing my notes, but I did notice the fill felt a bit rocky given all the names jammed in there with opaque cluing. My fault on not grokking WALT Disney, but does IVANA trump still qualify as a "socialite"? In this case, I'd have much preferred to either 1.) skip the pangram in order to work in one fewer name down in that corner (adding one more fun, wordplay-type clue) or 2.) make the cluing of the names a little easier for at least one of the three.

Great workout, tough to crack those corners, but a great feeling of satisfaction to do so.