New York Times, Saturday, April 19, 2014

I originally constructed this grid in October 2012, inspired by Steve Salitan's October 6, 2012, Saturday puzzle. In fact, my original grid was identical to Steve's.

When Will told me it was a near miss, I decided to jettison the bottom stack and replace it with TEAR ONE'S HAIR OUT, ARMED RESISTANCE and STEPS ON ONE'S TOES. Now, the fun began. Will let me know that 11-Down (C. OF E.) was a puzzle-killer, and losing Church of England meant having to abandon Steve's beautiful grid. After ten more emails back-and-forth, Will sent the "this is ready to be clued" email in February 2013; music to any constructor's ears.

Along the way, I learned (1) to avoid made up phrases [IT'S A TRADE SECRET, ATE A LOT], (2) that the letter I and the numeral I are not the same [as in APR I crossing WEIRD], and (3) if I ever wanted to see my own themeless in the NY Times I needed clean fill [no ENER, OSI, NO EAR, ... N PEPA, etc.]. Will and I ended in the SE corner where I learned my final lesson: it's better to have an obscure four-letter word than an obscure longer one. And, that's how HAME found its way into the grid. Hope you enjoyed it.

Ah, triple stacks! So tricky to pull off cleanly. Stu had me hooked at THE GOBLET OF FIRE, a beautiful entry for this Harry Potter-loving fool (although Severus Snape is and will always be my favorite character). Along with the beautiful CLEAN AS A WHISTLE and IT TAKES ALL SORTS, that's some good marquee material. So much of a triple stack is the stack itself, so it's critical to choose your seed 15's wisely. I liked these stacks quite a bit.

Stu and I had a nice conversation after his last puzzle was published, discussing the merits and drawbacks of various word lists and software issues; fun to talk shop. It was really nice to read his comments above — that high priority on clean fill for themelesses is so key. I would extend this to all types of puzzles (early-week themes, Sundays, crazy Thursdays). Glad that Stu has taken this emphasis on fill quality to heart. I hope that all constructors will take up his example: introspection and listening to constructive criticism, leading toward continual improvement.

I like to be tough on fill quality, but by no means are my criteria fixed in stone. For instance, if the construction has an extremely high difficulty level, I think a little more junk can be overlooked without losing the overall effect. So I tend to give triple and quadruple stacks a little more leeway when it comes to short, ugly stuff, since it's a harder technical feat of construction.

So let's see how the balance comes out. Very few people like to see EIS in their puzzle, even if the English translation ICE is also in the puzzle. And seeing CAS and HAME, pretty weird stuff, isn't great. But overall, the stacks are nice enough that I can appreciate the puzzle as a whole. It would be my preference to see less esoteric stuff all in a single puzzle (LATAKIA, SCACCHI, MIA SARA, RESNIK felt like a lot to take), but again, with triple stacks you almost always have to take the bad with the good.

Overall, a nice Saturday workout.