Kameron Austin Collins author page

IN EXTREMIS crossing GIVE ME ONE REASON and LIVING ON THE EDGE creates quite a vibe! Even ANIMAL SANCTUARY fits in with them, given how many animals are headed toward extinction.

Beautiful long Downs running through the solid triple-stack — not at all a SO-SO REVIEW. FREE AGENTS and SAUERKRAUT add flavor.

Note how pairs of long Downs constrain the upper left and lower right corners. That causes inflexibility, often spelling trouble when trying to fill those corners with color. WINE BARREL and PROXY VOTE are fantastic, though, especially for us "The Cask of Amontillado" fans.

At first, I didn't get the cleverness of the SADE clue, [Name on the Marquis?]. Read that out loud and you'll get it too (homophone of "marquee").

RENO, apparently, is slang for renovation.

In Taiwanese culture, it's commonplace to let one fly as loud and as forcefully as possible. Better out than in! Hear it loud, hear it proud! I'm curious to hear if solvers consider FART (not as part of BRAIN FART) a GAFFE, though. LIVING ON THE EDGE, indeed.

Unicorn … MEANING WHAT? I love that word usage, referring to the incredibly rare TECH START-UP that's still privately held yet worth over a billion dollars.

That definition is second only to the basketball usage, describing a seven-footer who can handle like a point guard, shoot from distance, protect the rim, and finish in the paint. Taking a chance on Kristaps Porzingis paid off this year, leading my buddy and me to not just finish first in our fantasy basketball season, but to win the championship!

Now, if we can just figure out how to draft Victor Wembanyama next year …

The northwest corner is dynamite. Describing a CARICATURE as a "sketchy offering" is hardly sketchy! UFOLOGISTS is already a catchy term, then you amp it up with the "disc-overies" pun? Those are topped by the innocent cluing involved with [Field of computing]. Once I got over my "I'm supposed to know subdisciplines within CS?!" chagrin, I laughed at my idiocy, overlooking the simple ADDRESS BAR field at the top of web browsers.

I paused at the SIEMENS / RHAMES crossing much longer than Paolo Pasco did at his MACKAY/MADRE vs. PACKAY/PADRE square. Oh man, I was rooting so hard for Paolo to win it all on his first showing at the big dance. Congrats to Dan Feyer for edging him out for his record ninth win!

I had to struggle through a lot of tough cluing, like [Fluff] meaning ERROR, but that made the final square that much more satisfying to complete.

BAD JUJU is an awesome way to open up a themeless!

I had some bad juju as I solved today, stumbling on a slew of tough clues and entries:

• The ZEBRA clue is brilliant — once I cracked the Saturday-level-plus wordplay. [Inspiration for some fashion lines?] refers to zebra print clothing. Not a surprise that I didn't know that, considering I now consider jeans as fancy wear.
• Cluing SNOOZES as a plural noun is Saturday-level difficult.
• SO RANDOM seems to be what the kids say these days. Taking it one step further is XD SO RANDOM. I think the XD is some sort of emoticon, but that does seem so random.
• I love me some Clash Royale, but if there's a way to create a GAMERTAG, I'm not aware of it. Given my ineptitude at the game, it's very possible that I've created a gamertag without knowing it.
• RED MASS sounds a lot less dramatic than the Red Wedding.
• KIDA is actually Kid A — interesting background, involving Thom Yorke's vision of the first cloned baby. My knowledge of pop music, especially older stuff, is on par with that of my fashion sense, but a platinum album is crossworthy.

Excellent saves for some older crosswordese kinds of entries. GMEN gets refreshed as a nickname for the NY Giants. NETZERO, the ISP, went out of style decades ago but not NET ZERO, the emissions goal. Curious if ELENORE and POMADES could have taken similarly fresh angles.

Some excellent debuts: BOLTCUTTERS, CHOKEPOINTS, VODKA CRAN. Perhaps a bad juju vibe given that GUNBORE and SUBMITS also debuted, but there was more than enough challenge to get me a brain-busting workout.

Jim Horne and I took the opportunity between delta and omicron to get together outside and eat Korean food. If you've never had BI BIM BAP, you've probably recently seen it in a crossword. And it's amazing, especially in a sizzling stone pot!

PARENTHESIS is not an exciting entry. However, a genius wordplay clue like [The right one can produce a smile] turned my 8-? into a 8-).

Another delightful clue: [Result of selling out]. Who are you calling a sellout? Okay, I sold out years ago when I went to business school. But listen! I use those skills in working with non-profits to help them grow, and I only take advantage of tax laws when—

Oh, right. Selling out a theater to make a PACKED HOUSE. That one gave me the business!

Two entries today that weren't already on our XWord Info word list: I doubt anyone would strive to add CRUDS, and PRECODE flummoxed me (especially with my inability to connect EDUARD and Russian). However, the latter was one of Jim's few gimmes, and he told me fascinating tales of the differences between PRE-CODE and after-code Hollywood movies.

It was a downer to get TASED PERPS GATEWAY DRUG PETTY TYRANT in the center of the puzzle, but I loved seeing CORY Booker get a shout-out. He graduated two years before me, so I see his name in the Class Notes section of our alumni magazine, with all his accomplishments. Elected as mayor! Then to the U.S. Senate! Saved people from a fire!

And my classmates wonder why I never write in with my [Jeff writes a crossword blog that his own mother doesn't read] updates …

MASS GENERAL, fantastic marquee entry! It's rare that I encounter a phrase that I haven't already added to our word list, and even rarer for that entry to be this evocative. Not only is MASS GENERAL one of the oldest and most prestigious teaching hospitals in the country, but it reminds me of all the time I spent listening to Click and Clack and their Boston accents. Makes me want to spend time in "Our Fair City."

HAM OPERATOR is another great one, an entry we haven't seen in the NYT since 1997. It's ripe for all sorts of clever clues and even wordplay themes. Maybe it could even tie in with CREATURE FEATURE somehow. I stay away from horror movies, but I might be enticed by a flick about an evil pig surgeon.

Neat Down entries tying into that triplet of feature entries, too. BEACH HUT brings up images of "Gilligan's Island," and ALLEY CAT is solid.

PASTICHE is a great way to conclude the puzzle. Editors usually prize multi-word entries for their color, but I'd take PASTICHE any day over GIVE A TRY. Turns out my idea of its definition — a general mixture of ideas — was a bit wrong. Fine, totally wrong!

Speaking of wrong, I finished with an error, crossing MARINT with FINA COURT. Will Shortz pushes back hard on initialisms that aren't known by "virtually everyone" (his words; think CIA, FBI), because if you don't already know it, no etymology will help you understand it. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I didn't know LITT, either, but at least COUR? was easier to disambiguate. Couldn't be anything but COURT.

Finally, a standout clue, [Trace evidence?]. The question mark had me on high alert, but maybe I've been watching too many detective series. "Lupin" is fantastic if you haven't seen it, and the title font even looks like it might have been STENCILed!

OKAY, ILL BITE is a fantastic colloquial phrase. I like the clue even better, evoking an image of my kids suspiciously wondering why I'm offering them delicious blueberry "ice cream" (that's mostly blended spinach).

COCHLEAS, what an amazing clue. Jim Horne mentioned a while back that he loves clues that feel impossible at first, but then everything dawns upon you, that you just might be able to figure it out. In this case, I didn't know the Latin word, but thinking about what part of the ear looks like a snail did the trick.

(I checked a few dictionaries, which all listed COCHLEAE first as the plural, but COCHLEAS is also acceptable.)

MISE EN SCENE is a trickier one. EN SCENE is easy enough to grasp, but knowing that MISE means "putting" in French is tougher. Good term to learn if you plan on going into dramaturgy (the art of dramatic composition).

Also in the category of "stuff Jeff didn't know" (genreally a big category), NINON. I spent one career in product design, mostly in plastic, metal, and electrical engineering, but also including the use of many fabrics. Hadn't run across NINON, which seems to be an upscale material.

I wondered if WINSOMER is fine or more a "roll-your-own" -ER word. Could I use it in a sentence? "My children are winsomer than yours"? I wouldn't say that, but mostly because they spit blueberry ice cream into my hands.

Some great clues, LEEK my favorite. I'm going to ask my French friends down the street for some "poor man's asparagus" and see what they say. My favorite, though, was [Places to bear witness?] — as in to witness bears. Hilarious!

This 62-worder gets KAC another place on our lowest word-count page. The knock on these puzzles is that they tend to be full of gloopy short fill and/or drab long entries, but excellent results. Amazing job on the first issue — aside from the ooky EFTS, there's only a minor EPS.

More importantly, to get so many great long entries is rare within this themeless subgenre. BORSCHT BELT, HOT WIRING, NO NONSENSE, NO U-TURN, STAR WARS (with a fantastic tour de "force" clue, ha!) — that's great stuff. I enjoyed BE PATIENT, DISH IT OUT, NERDCORE, too.

I wasn't so sure about HERSTORIES. A friend of mine recently rolled her eyes at someone (a guy) for using the word "herstory," partially because it's a passé term (according to her), and she didn't like the guy appropriating the word.

Probably didn't help that he was trying to mansplain it to her.

The rest of the fill ... ENTERIC, SESTET weren't so great. SATIATED, plus so much of the mid-length material, was more neutral than an asset. There were so many common letters in ENGELS, LISPED, S CLASS, AENEAS, DISSED, and the odd HATTED.

All that said, it's a standout puzzle within its class. It's rare to get a themeless so heavy on the 5-6 letter range — almost half of the total — so I enjoyed the novelty.

ADDED NOTE: I had a rough time with all this — Kameron sprang this on me with no warning, an hour before the puzzle went live, so I had to scramble to process and figure out what to do. Didn't sleep all night and probably won't for days. But he has valid points, and so I decided as painful as this would be, it was important to post it all, word for word. I've always said this is a site highlighting constructors, and I should live up to that.

Yes, it's probably best to take my personal opinion, especially as biased and uninformed as it can be, out of the equation. I apologize to Erik, to Kameron, and to whoever else I may have hurt. People ought to feel heard, able to promote their beliefs, and I was inhibiting that.

TRUST EXERCISE is a fantastic central marquee. It's something most everyone can recognize, and it evokes vivid imagery. Who hasn't told their brother to trust them, of course, you'll catch them, and then let said brother clonk to the cement, necessitating a trip to the emergency room?

Um. I haven't either.

It's also apt for crosswords, describing the constructor-solver relationship in a nutshell. If solvers can't trust the constructor to set them up for a victorious win, they won't be as interested in solving future puzzles.

CUDDLE BUDDY is a perfect example of strengthening that trust. You might not have heard this term before, but what's not to understand? CUDDLE and BUDDY are two words you know, and putting them together is a 2 + 2 > 4 proposition. Love it; fist pump!

GEODESISTS is tougher. Yes, regular solvers should be able to figure out that GEO means "Earth." You might even feel smart, remembering that in Greek mythology, GAEA is Mother Earth.

-DESISTS, though … wait. What are you, stupid? Of course, it means "ceases." Therefore, GEODESISTS are people who want to blow up the Earth.

The trouble with these types of entries — besides causing idiots like me to think we're funny — is that they can make solvers feel stupid. I got eviscerated (rightfully so) a few years back when I thought (ironically, as it turns out) that including CLERISY was smart. A case can be made, though, that these entries will educate; broaden horizons. It's a tough balance.

I haven't seen THE GENERAL, so it didn't do much for me. The much more worldly Jim Horne loved it, though, which shows how much personal experience affects one's themeless solving experience. Oppositely, this MBA loved IBANKER (Wall Street term slang for investment banker), while Jim wondered if this was a ridiculous-sounding banking app for an iPhone.

I enjoyed a lot of TROUBADOUR, edgy SAFE WORDS, TRAIL MIX, CHAIN LETTER, which helped outweigh the weird AANDP, GNARS, plus the smattering of AMOR NGO (non-governmental organization) RAS SNO. So much of themeless construction is about that delicate balance.

CELEBRITY CRUSH, a fantastic marquee answer! It's colorful, and even if you don't know the term, it's easy to figure out. Give it a clever clue like [Star attraction?], and it's nearly perfect. (The telltale question mark wasn't necessary, so removing it would have taken away that "nearly" qualifier.)

Speaking of hard, a constructor's most critical job is to set up solvers for a victorious finish. You want to leave people with a feeling that in a 2020 world full of plagues and woes, you can still claim a moment of victory.

Saturdays are a gray area, though. Just like not every top-notch athlete can complete the flying bar, not every top-notch solver should be able to fill in Saturday's last square. It is important, though, to give everyone a sense that it is at least possible; that maybe with enough work, they too could achieve total victory.

I got lucky today, guessing on a few squares correctly. There was so much tough material that could trip people up, though: ELOI, SION, BAHA, HETTY, SAMOS, GARANIMALS, EISNER, ART ROSS. I don't mind BAHA crossing ART ROSS, since ERTROSS or ORTROSS looks odd, but SION/SAMOS = a big yikes.

Along with a NW corner whose cluing difficulty was turned up to 11 — OXEN as "travelers"? OAR as a "sporting blade"? — it wasn't the type of challenge I prefer. I'd have loved more difficulty stemming from wicked wordplay, like [Rubber production?] producing an ERASURE.

Still, a couple of excellent feature answers to buoy the solving experience. Not quite a DROP THE MIC showing ... PILED IT ON is more appropriate.

SOUL TRAIN! Ah, young Jeff, glued to the TV, watching the awesome moves on SOUL TRAIN and even more frequently on "Dance 360" which is supposed to be for young'uns, not old dudes who want so badly to be cool once again, not that they ever were --

I've said too much.

Even if you weren't familiar with the SOUL TRAIN LINE — I admit, I couldn't recall the "line" part — at least it's three words that make sense put together. The full entry may not do anything for those unfamiliar with the show, but Don Cornelius's sign-off is well worth a listen in this day and age of divisiveness.

Back when I first started playing "Clash Royale," a YouTuber once called the simple knight a great "meat shield." My brother had to explain to me that the term referred to the knight's "tanking" ability, absorbing all the enemy shots while archers and wizards fired from behind. That is one descriptive term! So I was able to piece together MEAT SPACE, even though the words don't go together as coherently as SOUL TRAIN LINE. I was convinced for the longest time that it had to be MEET SPACE.

PARADISE FOUND was another that didn't come readily to mind. I'm familiar with Milton's "Paradise Lost" that I (was supposed to have) read in college, so PARADISE FOUND makes logical sense. Might be yet another term I'm not cool enough to use.

ME TOO MOVEMENT! Great to see its NYT debut. Surprised that it hasn't made its way in earlier.

Sometimes I FEAR Kameron's byline, in that I'm not sure I'll be able to achieve a victorious finish due to all of his cutting-edge entries. All the crossings were fair though, so even though some entries didn't ring a bell (DRAGOON MOTET ALEROS), I appreciated the setup for a clean finish. Beautiful grid pattern, too, as are many of his others.

BTW, Kameron put up a long essay on gender and race inclusiveness last week on Crossword Fiend. Well worth a read.

Some great feature entries. I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of SKIMOBILE / TEN SPEEDS — it's neat when constructors can relate adjacent answers. Tiny feat of magic.

HEBREW CALENDAR was a treat, a colorful answer in a rarely-used grid slot. It's incredibly tough to weave in a 14-letter answer, one of the most inconvenient lengths for constructors. Far, far from an AMATEURISH result.

People often ask me what differentiates a Friday and a Saturday themeless. Will's short answer is that Saturday should be harder than Friday, simple as that. Only it's not so simple. There are so many different ways of turning up the difficulty dial. The most straightforward way is to make clues esoterically challenging, but that's usually not a fun solving experience.

Another way is to work in tough entries that will only be familiar to solving subgroups. The risk is that while you make the puzzle memorable, even standout, to those folks, you might cause broader solving angst.

OUROBOROS is a prime example. A few years ago, I had a puzzle in the Chronicle of Higher Education, based on the legend that the BENZENE ring — one of the most important and curious structures in organic chemistry — was imagined when August Kekule dreamed of OUROBOROS eating his tail. Now that's a story! It's fascinating trivia, but I can see how it could alienate people struggling with the strange sequence of letters standing in the way of their perfect crossword solve.

KAZAAM. I'm a big NBA fan, so I knew this right off the top. Talk about Shaqtin' a Fool! Again, if you didn't know this and guessed KASAAM / SAPATISTA as a crossing, I'd be sympathetic.

GALOP. Famed for its pluralized inclusion in Rex Parker's NYT debut crossword, I've come to change my mind about this one. When I initially solved Rex's puzzle, the inclusion of a single, bizarre word which affected my ability to accurately finish, was striking. Now that I've seen it a few times, it doesn't feel as icky. Perhaps even interesting. Perhaps.

ARTEL. Infrequently used this decade in the NYT; it's a tough term that could bring a huge sense of triumph to history wonks. It has the potential to alienate, though.

Kameron is known for his avant-garde grid designs, often aesthetically striking, and his upscale vocabulary / knowledge base. The latter was on display today. I was fortunate to finish this one with no errors. (Alas, Jim wasn't so lucky).

I watched every episode of "Three's Company" when I was in middle school. Looking back on it, I'm kind of appalled that I wasted my life away like that. It paid off today when I was able to plunk in CHRISSY right off the bat. See mom? IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!

Strong center of the puzzle, BOOTYLICIOUS such a fun word. TRUST FUND BABY felt a bit pejorative, but no doubt colorful. And RESCUE DOG! Love it.

NORSE DEITIES didn't feel as strong as NORSE GODS might have been, but that might be my obsession with Rick Riordan's career as a best-selling children's book author, focusing on Greek / Egyptian / Norse gods. THE GODS OF ASGARD; what an awesome series title!

Clue of the year potential for BIKE SHOP. I struggled with this for a long time, making my a-ha moment even better. Spokesperson, as a person fixing spokes? That's genius!

Quite a bit of great long fill, too. Big fan of EXIT ROW seating, the MET GALA, REDDITOR (someone who edits on Reddit), CHEM LAB, RED TIDE.

I think I like TECH BLOG, but does that open up the floodgates for COOKING BLOG, GARDENING SHOW, SOCCER PODCAST?

I thought I'd like HONEYPOT more than I did — it's such a funny sounding word. Something that Winnie the Pooh gets his head stuck in! But that clue, referring to a spy trading sex for secrets?

Eew.

There were also a couple of entries that made me pause. LUNULAR is a valid dictionary entry, but it doesn't seem like the greatest use of a mid-length slot. ORANGS is an entry I've gotten dinged on before, people (rightfully) pointing out that who actually says that? Along with (random letter)CLASS, the tough SADA CEY MT DANA AMOR ...

A solid offering overall, though.

Kameron is one of the most creative constructors when it comes to low-word-count puzzles. Typically, constructors rely on grids they've seen before, but Kameron does an astounding job of carving out intricate black square patterns. I appreciate how he rarely (if ever?) repeats a pattern.

The middle of this one isn't as hard to fill as some other low-word-count puzzle middles, but it's still tricky. I thought Kameron did very well here, CAMERA READY / GENETIC CODE / STROBE LIGHT / MORAL CENTER making for a beautiful middle.

Two more long entries interlocked as well? Yikes, that's so tough to execute on! SEND REGRETS worked, if not as colorful as the four aforementioned entries. CABARET CARD made me pause and look it up, but I do enjoy learning one or two new things in a puzzle.

Overall, a great center section.

I didn't enjoy the corners as much. I was pretty sure I had finished the NE, but AMATORY looked so bizarre. I had seen it in a crossword before, so I studied it to make sure there were no other possible choices and then moved on. But I squinted.

The SW made me squint a bit more. Here in Seattle, there are almost as many pot shops as Starbucks. KUSH … huh? And CANDY COAT … did you badly want it to be SUGAR COAT, too? Another huh.

The one region that put this one out of POW! contention for me, though — the ARRIS / APSIS crossing. Yikes. Double yikes. I took a lot of physics in college, but APSIS isn't something I recognized. I ended up guessing APSES, thinking maybe there was some relation to the church regions, and Mrs. ARRES going to Paris seemed fine. Dang it!

Still, more than enough great fill like BEER NUTS, HOT RODS, STEEL CAGE to keep me entertained. It's incredibly tough to execute on a 64-word puzzle like this, so I thought Kameron overall did well.

GOOGLE HANGOUTS! Funny, I just looked this up yesterday when trying to figure out what replaced GChat. Still, dunno what it is, or if it'll stick around — for all the successes Google has had, there have been plenty of failures like Google Reader, Google Video Player, Google Buzz, GChat, etc. Curious to see if this one will have staying power or not.

(Apparently, it's a way to … make free video calls?)

BEAT A DEAD HORSE is a great phrase, one I use all the time. A friend did point out that it's morbid though, in the same vein as "screwed the pooch." I still use both of these, but I do hesitate (for a nanosecond) before I do.

Grid mostly features seven-letter entries, and Kameron and BEQ convert some slots well. NUTMEAT always makes me laugh. PLUS ONE, ART DECO, GO GREEN (as in "change to eco-conscious ways"), ALADDIN. METEORS gets a clue to elevate it. Things seen in showers? Oh, you naughty Gray Lady!

UGLY CRY … huh. I'm sure by the time I get around to understanding and using this meme, all the kids will have moved away from it like the plague. When you have to spell out a clue in so much detail, for it to be understood ...

A shame that there's a good amount of wastage in the sevens, but that's the norm with seven-letter-heavy themelesses. ENNEADS, CATER TO, TESTATE, AMASSED, ALLOW IN, ENTEBBE, etc. = all fine, but these didn't add anything to the quality of my solve. Nice try on the TESTATE clue, [Willful?]. But TESTATE wasn't familiar enough to me to provide a great a-ha moment after I realized the wordplay.

Enough strong entries to keep me entertained, though — BANK VAULT and ROB REINER (huge "Spinal Tap" fan here!) — and good craftsmanship. Some SIE, ROM, RIAA, DSO to hold everything together, but nothing there is egregious.

What an eye-catching pattern of black squares! Kameron produces a lot of innovative grid art for themelesses, one of the few people to do it well. Big thumbs up for the first impression. In the past, sometimes I've felt like he's used too many black squares, thus making his construction job a little too easy, but that wasn't the case today. Grid was both visually mesmerizing to this solver, and awe-inspiring to this constructor. Big swaths like the SW and NE corners are so tough to fill well.

Love COMMITMENT PHOBE, great feature entry. BRAIN PLASTICITY wasn't quite as electric to me — pretty hard to give it anything but a dictionary clue — but I enjoyed it as well. Along with LOTUS EATER and LEG ARMOR, that's some excellent long stuff.

It's so tough to fill a grid like this with both sparkle and smoothness. Kameron did extremely well with the latter. Finishing a grid as audacious as this with just some CELA (sad to say, I couldn't figure it out even with five years of high school French), AGA, HRS is great craftsmanship.

I didn't get much out of RANSOM OLDS — interesting name, but he felt outdated. BANANA cream PIE, yes! BANANA PIE … maybe I don't eat enough pies to feel like this is a great entry? BAYBERRY ... I should probably have known it? BELTLINE gets defined by the dictionary as "waistline," which felt like a much more apt word to me.

There were also a lot of tough proper nouns. ETSY, ILSA, CATT, LILIAN, ATLI, along with RANSOM OLDS, and it felt a bit too much like a trivia quiz at points.

Still, impressive work in filling such a tough grid pattern — so few puzzle makers dip into daunting 62-word territory. Amazing to finish up with such little crossword glue.

A ton of great long entries in this 70-worder, Kameron converting nearly all his long slots into snazzy entries. My favorite region was the east, with the awesome KREMLIN INC next to the IONIAN SEA and a MUST READ. Neat triplet, with SCREENER DVD nearby. I wasn't familiar with that last term, but it's easily inferable and a fun term I want to add to my vocabulary.

A lot of strong material in the west, too, HOT SYRUP a beautiful phrase and GUNS N ROSES sparkly. I wasn't convinced about JUKEHOUSE, as JUKE JOINT sounded so much stronger to my ear. Some Googling shows that JUKEHOUSE has many fewer hits, but they seem to be focused in Kansas City? Perhaps it's a regional term?

Although I loved KREMLIN INC, its impact was watered down for me after I ran into RHEE and SEKO, both notorious human rights violators / atrocity committers. I don't mind one of them here and there as fill, but in total, it put a gloomy pall over my solve. I wasn't sure if ARMY and NROTC helped or hurt that.

Some interesting gluey bits, SOCLE rarely used in crosswords despite its friendly letters. (It's an architectural term.) PILAR is another toughie, apparently the name of a Hemingway character in "For Whom the Bell Tolls." I don't mind a dash of ALEE or OLEO in a themeless, but I think SOCLE and PILAR might cause some solving headaches. It's all fair — I think all world leaders should be fair game, including strongmen tyrants — so even that SOCLE / SEKO cross is acceptable, if not elegant.

OLIVER REED is an interesting one. I didn't know him, but the clue was fun enough that it made me want to learn about him. Made me laugh to read in Wikipedia that he was known for his "hellraiser lifestyle." It would have been great to somehow shorten the clue so it was more easily digestable, but what an interesting piece of trivia, OLIVER REED starring in OLIVER!, directed by Carol REED.

★ Beautiful construction. I'm still surprised at how few constructors use giant chunks of black squares in "stair" shapes. Tim Croce turned me onto this idea a few years ago, telling me how they can make wide-open constructions immensely easier — nibbling away at the spaces you have to fill turns out to be a gigantic help.

Low-word count puzzles tend to be dry, with a lot of neutral filler to hold them together, but not today. Very impressive to see GUIDERAIL stacked above REAGANOMICS and KINDA… SORTA… Running FAMOUS AMOS and GOSSAMER through that big NE corner makes it even more stunning.

Years ago, a friend and I submitted a themeless with ZOE SALDANA at 1-Across, but Will felt we had made the puzzle too name-heavy, which could turn off a large chunk of solvers. It made sense — back then I was admittedly worried that Saldana wouldn't be well-known enough to make many solvers happy. But now she's a real star, featured in several blockbusters. I bet I'll get some reader mail grousing about her crossing with LEDA and its tough clue, but I think Saldana's someone important enough that if a NYT solver doesn't know her, he/she really should.

The Marvel Universe fascinates me, so I liked Mister Fantastic's debut. I would have loved it if it hadn't been in the odd-looking MR. form, and if it had a more interesting clue; something to entice people to look him up — his two Harvard Ph.D.s by the age of 22, his ability to change his structure into a near-fluid state, that he's on the autism spectrum ... okay, I'm a dork, but Marvel has created some complicated, multi-faced characters.

At 45 black squares, this themeless gets onto our most black squares list. I'm mixed on the effect. My initial impression was that there was a ton of white space eaten away. But the wide-open "X" shape is pretty cool-looking.

Overall, I really enjoyed the puzzle, a fantastic amount of sparkly fill worked into a wide-open grid, with just some ICER, GAMA (feels odd with the DA), ILS, SIGNEE (man, did I want that to be SIGNER) crossword glue. Impressive work.

So much fresh material in this one! Kameron constructs a bi-weekly themeless, which also features innovative entries. I've enjoyed them. I don't know that I'd get such a neat combination of entries like FAN FICTION, WAR ON WOMEN, and SPITS GAME from anyone but Kameron — he presents a unique blend of art, liberal politics, and current slang.

GAYBORHOOD is new to me, but it was inferable and a fun word to learn. SPITS GAME … that one seems like something you either know or you don't, but it's a nice and colorful phrase either way. To me, it's like GOAT RODEO — I had never heard of it before, but am I glad I ran across it.

OLIVIA HOPE was tough. Again, it's either something you know, or you don't, and not being a Scandal fan, I didn't really care. It exemplifies a dilemma Will goes through all the time when a constructor features a proper name that's not ubiquitously known. If you're a fan, it's a thrill to see the name in the NYT crossword ... but there's no challenge to filling it in. If you don't know it, you struggle for every last square, with very little payoff. DON LEMON was the same way for me, filling in the final square with a shrug.

Aaugh, OLIVIA POPE! HOE House and Museum sounded just as good as POE House. Yes, it's my fault for not making the Baltimore / Poe connection, but these crossing entries / clues felt on the verge of being unfair.

There was a great deal of colorful long material — 16 long entries, a great majority converted into assets — but there were also a number of liabilities. Nothing was major — OSO (sorry, Kameron, OSO is worse for me than the much more known-to-non-Spanish-speakers UNO or MAS, for example), BLO, and AMAS had a reasonable save try, cluing to the American Music Awards. Agreed with Kameron on INA / IN A though; that one is totally fine by me. And OPEL isn't major here in the US, but it's much bigger in Europe.

All in all, I felt like the assets minus liabilities was around 10, which makes it a strong themeless in my eyes.

ADDED NOTE: Kameron wrote to me after reading my comments, saying that his puzzle deserves more credit than I've been giving them. After reading up on OLIVIA POPE and DON LEMON, I agree that I missed a level in this puzzle by being too flip about those two names. I personally find it tough to appreciate proper names I don't know, and I tend not to look them up afterward. Unfortunately, my laziness caused me to miss out, as I hadn't realized how popular "Scandal" was, or the ground DON LEMON has broken in the field of journalism.

Juicy middle section, featuring a huge swath of intersecting 7+ letter answers. This is a tough feat to pull off, and Kameron does well in that center. RISKY to even try it — I try to stay away from sections this big, myself — but working in TONGUE TIED, FREE UNION, the dreaded FRIEND ZONE, BABY CAKES, and HOLY SYNOD all together is a coup. It's unfortunate that LIBELEE snuck it's way in there, as it would have been just about perfect without it. LIBELEE does have dictionary support, but to me at best it's a neutral entry.

Also unfortunate that INTERNEE shows up in the same puzzle. Having two of the same type of iffy long entries is not great. I did like the rest of the result in the lower right — NAÏVE ART is a term I enjoyed learning, and PA SYSTEM along with KOBE BRYANT about to start his final year in the NBA is awfully nice. QUIRED was odd to me at first, but I ended up liking learning that word, too. To pull that all off with just a REE and TEM is pretty nice.

I wasn't as impressed with the upper left. Great triple of GEMSTONE / PEACH PIT / ON THE ICE, all strong answers, but there's so much glue required to hold it together. Starting the solving experience with GPO, EEN, ETE, and TSOS nearby felt like too much all in one location. Spreading those bits throughout one puzzle is fine, but concentrating them in the starting corner is not ideal.

Overall, there was quite a bit of vocabulary I didn't know, which is perfectly fine. It did feel like there was quite a bit more of it than usual though — EAMONN, QUIRED, NAÏVE ART, FREE UNION, etc. A mixed bag, with a visually stunning center section, some terms I learned, quite a lot of gluey bits, and a handful of great long answers.

Speaking of APOCRYP(HA) — fantastic entry and clue by the way, with the confusing "texts" plural not matching the crazy perceived -RYP ending within the grid — huge congrats to Mike Selinker and his team at Lone Shark Games for their tremendous success with their APOCRYPHA card game Kickstarter campaign.

Debut! Congrats, Kameron. Always nice to get a puzzle from yet another constructor's perspective. It always amazes me how much of his/her own style each constructor brings through the selection of a couple of key entries or clues.

Unusual construction today, one featuring quite a large white space in the very center of the grid. Typically something this big tends to be a bit rough around the edges, especially since it has to connect to four different subsections, but Kameron doesn't have a single STINKER in there. (Well, one stinker, in STINKER.) I even appreciated getting a novel and current clue for REE Drummond. It's impressive work in this large swath, even more so considering it's heavily constrained what with JAVASCRIPT and DAKAR RALLY intersecting it. I'm vaguely familiar with NARUTO, although really, what can compete with the joy that is Pokemon?

I've said too much.

Being the pop music moron I am, it took me every crossing to get ARCADE FIRE, thinking that it might be ARCADE TIRE, ARCADE FIRM, ARCADE FARE? I had a good laugh at my own ineptitude there. What made it extra tough was that the grid layout, while allowing for a giant center section, effectively chokes down each quadrant into its own mini-puzzle. The east and south mini-puzzles came quite easily to me, but they didn't help much in terms of breaking open that difficult north.

If a puzzle can be broken into two separate parts with the addition of a single pair of squares, that's generally a sign of potential flow problems. This grid doesn't exactly have that condition (try it; surprising to me that it didn't), but having two sets of places (the H of KESHA / the U of GUTSY and the N of KATRINA / the N of ANT NEST) where adding a pair of black squares could create a choked-off pattern felt constricting to me.

And wow, that west section was tough. I gave up, guessing ATABIOSIS and was initially frustrated by the term, but after pausing to reflect upon it, ANABIOSIS is pretty great. Who doesn't like zombie lingo? And for those of you equally baffled, ANA is defined as "a collection of various materials that reflect the character of a person or place." Learn something new every day. It's too bad that ANABIOSIS didn't have all easier crossings, because the more I think about it, the more I like it. If ANA had been [Santa ___] I think I would have loved learning ANABIOSIS.

Some beautiful clues today. [Printed slip] is such an innocent little clue, isn't it? Probably something like RECEIPT or BILL or something, yeah? Beautiful example of misdirection without the giveaway question mark at the end of the clue — "slip" here means "error," not "paper." [Pickup line?] was pretty good, although it felt slightly tortured to me (RAM = the Dodge Ram truck, methinks...). I liked [Reed section?] better, as it's repurposing the term for clarinets, oboes, etc. in order to make an otherwise boring entry stand out. Neat stuff.