New York Times, Friday, August 16, 2019

"As smooth as a Berry" is one of the highest compliments I can give to a themeless constructor. This one had a scent of the craftsmanship and care the Great One might have shown. Even though a 70-word themeless isn't a difficult gridding challenge, finishing with no short glue is admirable.

(ABUELA might be tough for some, but it's fair game.)

One element The Master would never do on a 70-word grid, though, is to allow for such segmentation. Note how the four corners are choked off from the middle, creating five mini-puzzles. It's not the worst chunking ever, especially in the NW / SE, but it's not as wide-open as a 70-worder should be.

It's easy to understand since something like the NE corner becomes much easier to construct if you can do it separately from the rest of the puzzle. As always, construction is all about trade-offs.

Another aspect where Sensei Patrick is so good: aiming his content at a gigantic swath of solvers. As much as I liked several of Ori's entries — GLUE STICK stuck out, especially with its clue, pointing out the duplicative name — there was a lot of material aimed at DUDES:

• BEER KEGS
• LAD MAG
• MAN BUN
• MAILMEN (our delivery person is a woman)
• LARA CROFT

And some baseball clues. I loved ON SECOND's clue, playing on "halfway home," i.e., half the way along the basepath to home plate. It, unfortunately, added to the dudiness of the puzzle, though.

Still, there were enough solid entries (TALL TALE, PARAGON, PETER ROGET) and clues to keep me entertained.

JESUS, I was stuck on the [One with more than two billion followers] clue, especially after flubbing on INSTAGRAM FILTER (I still don't have an Insta; doubt I ever will). I was rolling my eyes on having to know all this social media stuff when the light bulb finally came on, that it was talking about JESUS's followers outside social media.

Just think how much more popular he'd be if he'd only get an Insta.