New York Times, Thursday, June 25, 2015

This puzzle had its genesis when I was a neophyte constructor back in 2008. I wanted to try a rebus puzzle and built one around the theme of "Peanut Butter Sandwiches," PB being the rebus. I submitted it to Peter Gordon at the now-defunct NY Sun and, to my dismay, he rejected it. The basis for his rejection was that PBJ is better known than just PB. The rejection hurt at the time but, of course, he was right. I put the puzzle away.

Several years later — for reasons I don't remember — I decided to look at the puzzle again. PB as the chemical symbol for lead just jumped out at me. The reveal LEADBELLY followed quickly. I tweaked the old puzzle to get the theme entries to align nicely and sent it off to Will. The result is what you see today. I'm happy with the finished product.

This puzzle is a testament to perseverance. I still consider myself a rookie constructor — always more to learn. But what I learned from this one was not to give up on a puzzle. A little tweaking may very well salvage an otherwise unpublishable crossword.

The guitarist LEAD BELLY riffed on today, entries containing PB in their middle. (Pb is the symbol for lead, from the Latin "plumbum.") Some strong theme entries, DEE(P B)LUE tricky to see, and PO(P B)OTTLES / TO(P B)ID also clever.

Check out those huge open spaces in the upper right and lower left. I personally wouldn't have even tried to fill those, as they're unlikely to be fillable without a good amount of glue. And spaces that big are hard enough when you don't have any constraints, but when you stick two crossing themers in, they become extremely challenging.

So I was pretty impressed by David's work in the bottom left. BRASSERIE is a fun word, and with only RRS and A GIRL as slight blights, it turned out DECENTLY. No eye-popping answers down there, but nothing egregious.

In the upper right, I love BRUCE LEE. Always gives me a rush to see one of my idols in a grid. There's a price to pay though, with the esoteric ECARTE and not just a suffix, but a plural suffix in ETTES. And to have one of your precious long slots taken up by OVEREATER feels to me like quite a missed opportunity.

These two corners perfectly illustrate the constructor's dilemma — do you go clean, with mostly neutral answers, or do you go big, with some bits you wouldn't want to write home about?

A ton of great clues; much appreciated on a Thursday:

• Many people have a pet cause. The ASCPA is an apt one!
• [Cause of inflation?] got me because I'm always thinking about (money) inflation as I help people with retirement planning. Great way to spice up an entry we see all the time.
• [Like M, L, XL, but not S] confused me, until I realized M, L, XL are all ROMAN numerals.

Nice rebus idea, with a couple hiccups in the execution. It'd be interesting to see what this would have looked like with a 78-word grid instead of 76. I wouldn't mind breaking up two neutral entries in the hopes of creating opportunities for one or two more sizzling ones.