New York Times, Wednesday, March 11, 2015

I came up with this puzzle idea back in 2012 when Michael Sharp (aka Rex Parker) was coordinating submissions for American Red Crosswords, a collection of 24 donated puzzles compiled to raise money for Hurricane Sandy victims. Anyway, Rex liked the idea behind this puzzle but was concerned that it was too similar to one he had already approved; he encouraged me to hold onto the puzzle, though, as he felt it would ultimately be salable. So I sent Rex a different crossword, which ultimately made the collection, and submitted this one to The New York Times.

To my delight, Will liked the puzzle — in fact, so much that he wanted to use it for the 2013 ACPT! Unfortunately, I had to inform Will that Rex had already seen the idea, which meant that the puzzle couldn't be used in the tournament since Rex would be competing. On the bright side, the Wednesday queue ended up being so long that the pay rate for daily puzzles increased, so I'll have more money to *drumroll please* fund my eventual college tuition with!

Looking back on this puzzle, I'm particularly pleased with how the fill turned out. My favorite entries are BUT WHY, AT SIGN, and OPA-LOCKA, all of which will be making their New York Times crossword debuts today, and the grid ended up necessitating only a few pieces of crosswordese and a smattering of proper names.

I've noticed that Will and Joel seem to be increasingly emphasizing clever clues in early-week puzzles, which I think is a delightful way to spice them up for those of us solvers who have "seen it all"! I especially like their "Something that's just not done at the dinner table?" for RARE MEAT and "It's a gas up north" for ESSO.

Hope you enjoy this relatively straightforward puzzle — the next time you see my byline, there's a good chance it will be on a Friday or Saturday. Mwahaha!

David creates five RED CROSSes today, pairs of reddish answers literally crossing. At first I thought they were all shades of red, but RARE MEAT threw me off. Does Crayola make a RARE MEAT crayon? (If not, I call dibs on that business idea.) And aren't many NAIL POLISHes non-red? So, a looser interpretation of "things that are generally red" crossing each other.

Five pairs of crossing answers — and long ones to boot! — is a tough task. It's impressive that David not just pulled it off, but managed to work in a few good pieces of fill like TV TRAY and the awesome BUT WHY? All while keeping the grid mostly clean as a whistle.

Sure, some will argue that NASA's AMES Research Center is pretty esoteric, but I think it's a good piece of trivia to learn. I happened to intern there while in high school, so it brought back good memories of being on a 2 a.m. flight in a C-5, getting above the clouds to take astronomical readings.

One interesting bit about the grid design is the deployment of a huge number of black squares in the middle of the grid. This helps tremendously to separate the five crossing pairs, allowing David to treat them quasi-independently. Very important when it comes to clean fill.

But it doesn't leave a lot of black squares available for elsewhere in the grid. That means some region(s) is going to require some long answers — in this case, the NW and SE. I really like the SE, with PROSPERO and AIRBASES, but I wondered if WOMANISH is a real thing. And it would have been great to get a good piece of trivia on OPA LOCKA, but [Miami suburb] made me wonder if OPA LOCKA is really crossworthy.

Finally, [It might have a stirring part] gave me a laugh when I realized it referred to not an actor's stirring role, but actual stirring. Great clue for RECIPE.