New York Times, Friday, March 14, 2014

I have been creating puzzles since 1994. This is my 10th Times puzzle. Most have been of today's type, a non-themed (Friday or Saturday) puzzle. While trying to create this type of puzzle can be fun, it can also be very frustrating. Of course, the software does much of the work, but the difficulty lies in avoiding unacceptable entries. Where there are a number of long entries in a 15 by 15 puzzle, particularly ones that appear in adjacent rows or columns (in this case three 15 letter entries running down the center of the puzzle), the options for other entries may become quite limited.

I continue to be amazed by some of the published Friday and Saturday Times puzzles as I attempt to solve them. I know from experience just how hard it is to put together a good puzzle of this type. Periodically, I will decide that it is time for me to work on a new one. More often than not, there be one or more areas where I will need to use an entry that is not very good. Often it's a three letter entry. At this point, I may scrub the puzzle. But that doesn't stop me from trying again. When I am not working on one of these puzzles, I am always on the lookout for new long, particularly 15 letter, entries. Where I can get three of these to go together well or place five or six good ones in a grid, I may have the start of a good non-themed puzzle.

In my years of puzzle writing, I've had more than 4,000 puzzles published, including crosswords and more than 30 other types of word puzzles. I'm four years into full retirement from my legal career and create puzzles to stay young. If you like this puzzle, please check out my eBook of puzzles book on the free Puzzazz app.

An impressive number of grid-spanners in today's construction, the likes I haven't seen for quite a while. Not just a triple-stack going down the center, but two more in the down direction plus three more in across. Eight 15's in one themeless — that's pretty cool to see.

Typically with this many grid-spanning entries, some (or more than some) are just so-so, but Alan has picked some beauties. ANDROMEDA STRAIN didn't come easy due to its opaque clue, but wow, what a nice entry. And all three in the triple-stack are really nice. I didn't know THE NOONDAY DEVIL and when I tried to research it, only a few links came up. Perhaps I'm missing a cult classic? In any case, by my count, seven out of eight winners is a great slugging percentage.

As with most themeless puzzles highlighting lots of 15's, there will be a good number of shorter entries. I typically gloss over the four and five-letter stuff, but the threes sometimes stick in my craw, and with 24, they did seem to be ubiquitous. Not that any of them are terrible, but as a whole, I IN plus MDL and others made the puzzle feel slightly shaky at points. The clues for many of the shorties were awfully hard, so overall it made the entire puzzle a real challenge for me.

I really appreciated that Alan didn't stop just at the eight 15's, but integrated two very nice eights (BBC RADIO and THE SLOTS), plus IN THE WILD and PHASING IN. Because he was at 70 words, Alan could have split up one of those pairs to make a 72-word puzzle, but I like the added zing of the long fill.

Finally, with any triple stack, the crossing answers are bound to have some rocky places. Really only ROTOS was troubling for me — anytime you have to use "Old" or "outdated" in a clue it's a sign that maybe the entry isn't so good — but Alan does give us a pretty cool construction; three grid-spanners intersecting a triple-stack is no mean feat.

All in all, a puzzle that stretches for an ambitious goal, paying the price of a good handful of not-great filler material. I admire the strive to do something which pushes the boundaries. And a big congrats to Alan for hitting his 10th NYT puzzle, which qualifies him for our list of most published constructors.