New York Times, Friday, March 11, 2016

The seeds for this puzzle were planted some nine months ago, based on the following rationale. It's well known that 15-letter answer words (or phrases) are very common in daily-sized 15x15 crosswords. In themed puzzles, they are easier for constructors to work with than slightly shorter words of length 13 or 14. Alternatively, stacked arrangements of grid-spanning 15's can have an impressive appearance in unthemed crosswords. Unfortunately, quite a few of the 15s found in such puzzles suffer from from overuse.

It occurred to me that a richer and more varied assortment of entries could become available by drawing on somewhat shorter words of length 12 and 13, and set out to find five longish answer words that could be stacked "stair-style" through the center of a themeless grid. It took a steady 4 or 5 months of experimentation to come up with a grid that I liked enough to show Will. His response to the overall idea was enthusiastic, but he pointed out several specific long words that he felt were too rare to be usable.

Thus, an additional 4 months were required to develop the final grid that you see today. I would like to thank Martin Herbach and George Barany for helpful feedback and encouragement throughout the process. Surprisingly, Will scheduled the publication for a mere month after its acceptance. Happy solving!

I appreciate MAS's effort to branch out from his usual triple-stack fare today. In many ways, a giant parallelogram(ish) block of white space in the middle of today's grid is more impressive than a triple-stack. I mean, five 12+ letter entries atop each other — that's crazy hard to do! Many themeless builders use a similar "stairstack" center, but people usually do it with just three long entries.

And what great entries! TAKE FOR A FOOL, BARITONE SAXES, MOUNTAIN BIKER, THREE STOOGES are beautiful. FEMININE WILES is definitely in the language, but it did make me hesitate, as it has an old-timey, patriarchical feel to it. I'm not sure I like it given the connotations it carries, but no doubt it's a genuine phrase.

Speaking of genuine, though … I had ???BOTTLE and wished so badly that it wasn't going to be the arbitrary ONE BOTTLE, which the clue seemed to be aiming for. MAS asked me last time if I thought THREE TENS, a similar sort of entry, was bad enough to warrant scrapping the stacked entries. My answer: yes, since we've seen a lot of quad stacks by now.

Today's puzzle is a little different, in that the center section is pretty innovative. Still, ONE BOTTLE ... ugh.

TAB BENOIT is a different story for me. I used to listen to a lot of blues guitarists, and although TAB BENOIT was not familiar to me, I think he's passable for a crossword in a non-featured spot. I don't personally find him to be crossworthy — tough to ask solvers to reach into the depths of a genre — but I think if he makes an incredible grid work, then I give him the thumbs-up.

As with many uber-wide-open grids, there was too much crossword glue for my taste — I personally would have preferred two fewer long entries at the top and bottom in exchange for less of ARMEE, TERNE, SCIS, ECOL, CTN, AS YE, etc.— but overall, I like it when constructors reach out for new territory.