New York Times, Saturday, May 17, 2014

Last summer I did a few grids like this, with the 11-13-11 horizontal stack in the middle, and I was lucky enough to get them all accepted in various venues. This one is the only one where I was able to preserve the 12-letter down entries crossing the central stack — at least with 12-letter phrases I found interesting. I was happy to find a cool factual clue for 32A, and a new one for 56A. I'm perhaps more known for well-turned trivia-based clues than for sly wordplay, but hopefully the one at 32D comes off!

Loved this one; right in my personal wheelhouse. A pinch of culture, a dash of history, add some devilishly clever clues, finish it off with one of my personal heroes, BRUCE LEE, and you have a Jeff Chen special. I'd make a Kato / POW! joke here but that would be just too easy.

Brad, who is soon taking over the helm at the Chronicle of Higher Education's crossword, is as exacting and detailed with today's puzzle as ever. The construction itself is quite nice, with an artist I didn't know but should have, PAOLO VERONESE, straight across the middle. That's flanked by CAMEL CAVALRY, an awesome term in itself, and CAMERA TRIPOD, an already good entry made even better by the misdirectional [Stand for a photo]. I considered answers to the effect of STRIKE A POSE and PUT ON UGLY SWEATERS TO TAKE A FAMILY PHOTO AT JC PENNEY before getting it. Lovely that it didn't even need the telltale question mark, which would have given away some of the cleverness.

This type of arrangement, with central marquee answers (an 11-13-11 with two crossing 12's!), can often mean that the corners of the puzzle suffer. Not today. I absolutely love the NE corner, with the aforementioned BRUCE LEE next to BUGBEARS and SNEER AT. Reminds me of the way BRUCE LEE used to SNEER AT opponents before beating the living *@#$@#& out of them.

Once in a while, I tremble at Brad's byline, because I know there will be an entry or two that I don't know, or a piece of trivia that I just can't get without figuring out every cross. But today I really enjoyed working to pull out the pirate LAFITTE from my cobwebs, and actually being able to work out the beautiful LUCK BE A LADY from the clue. Sometimes the puzzle gets you, but today, I got the puzzle. Neat feeling.

There are few bits that I didn't care for, OREM and OTB always make me shrug, for example. But other that than, Brad keeps the grid amazingly clean. I wonder if people will gripe about FTLBS, but for me, I really liked it. Granted, I'm an engineer by education and it was a very common sight when I was practicing. And no one would ever write it out as "foot pounds" (we engineers like our efficiency). A rare example where I like the abbreviation much better than the full answer in a crossword grid.

Finally, [Group living at zero latitude?]. Beautiful. I knew something fishy was going on, what with the question mark, but what a clever repurposing of "latitude," nothing to do with geographic position but everything to do with level of strictness. Bravo!