Martin Ashwood-Smith author page

MAS is back, after a nearly 1-year absence! And what's this? His puzzle ISN'T A TRIPLE STACK?

*sound of Jeff toppling over like Fred Sanford*

All kidding aside, I appreciate MAS's effort to do something different. What a great seed entry in DIXIELAND JAZZ — not only colorful in its own right (says this huge jazz fan) but FOUR rare letters. Hot stuff!

And what's that? Another J worked cleanly in through a joyful JUBILEE? And yet another one, also cleanly integrated as part of JETES / JAW? Love it.

LAE as the only price to hold that snazzy middle stair stack together? That's a fine trade-off.

Editors usually prize colorful, multi-word entries in themelesses. But MALADROIT and GLISSANDI were big assets in my book. Such interesting words.

I was all set to toss this one into POW! consideration, when I got jammed. Stuck. Cramped. HULK SMASH the SW CORNER! DAH and ALB are reasonable entries, if not ideal. HDTV is great.

VISED is not. As a mechanical engineer who's used many vises over the years, I've never heard any colleagues say VISED. It's reasonable if you need it to hold a great region together, but at least make the clue more straightforward. [Tightly gripped, in mechanical jaws] or something.

Along with a wide-open clue for DAH, a tough one for ALB (at least for us US geography idiots), and an obfuscating one for HDTV, yikes. It's not a grid problem as much as a cluing issue, feeling like the puzzle was more interested in being tricky than setting up solvers to succeed.

Along with some wasted potential in the ILL AT EASE and TORE APART slot, I couldn't consider it for a POW! nom. It's a shame — that middle section was such a JUBILEE of pleasure.

Great to see some variety from MAS! He usually locks onto full-width triple-stacks (and quadruple-stacks as well). As interesting as those sometimes can be, I do get tired of the same thing over and over again. While there's something to be said for focusing only one's strengths, I like to see people push their personal boundaries. Makes for better puzzles overall.

Beautiful work in the impressively wide-open center. That's such a challenge to fill, especially given that six very long entries must stack atop / intersect each other. I'd usually expect a few short crossing clunkers or some mystifying / esoteric long entries, but this turned out well. DILLY DALLIES is fun, as are SOUNDING BOARD, MARILYN MONROE, DEAD GIVEAWAY. Four snazzy answers out of six is an incredible hit rate for an area this tough.

CAPITALISTIC feels more workmanlike to me, especially without a playful clue. And GEORGE SMILEY … I can't agree with MAS on this one. I think he's fair game, given that he's the main character in the series including "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." But even having watched that movie, I needed most every crossing.

And such little crossword glue in that center! I'm not sure why EKING got the dreaded "old-style" modifier in its clue, since "EKING out a living" is a fine phrase. Well, there's LOESS. It's a word in the dictionary, but it is a bit out there.

There were a couple of prices to pay as MAS expanded from the center. In the NW corner, the fantastic pair of THE ATEAM over MEA CULPA did force BELG, but if that's it, I'm sold. (I don't mind EHS, as I tend to say EH a lot.)

Also, LATEXES is odd in the plural. Not sure many solvers use the word NATANT. Not sure if I love ABATTOIR or hate it. Constructors tend to lean on ODESSA (or EDESSA) as a crutch, given its common letters.

Overall though, strong work. I think if MAS had put a black square at the E of MATTE, allowing him to work in two sizzling answers at 10- and 11-Down, it would have been a POW! for me.

Not a surprise to get another quad stack from MAS and George, this one featuring some nice long entries. ARRIVES ON THE DOT and HOTEL CALIFORNIA are both great, colorful phrases. LAID IT ON THE LINE is also an excellent one, but my stupid constructor's brain recalls other stacks using it — a quick search shows two of them in the past year, one from MAS. Not sure why that sours it so much for me — hey, I never said I was logical or rational!

I like how MAS and George work to give great entries above and beyond the quad stack, HAD THE LAST LAUGH my favorite entry of the puzzle. I didn't care for the HAD duplication in HAD A HAND IN, but that's a minor little word so it doesn't bug me too much although it is inelegant at the very least. COPACETIC was also a great word running through the quad-stack.

I didn't know LA VIE BOHEME, but what a great entry and song. (Listen to it all the way through — what clever lyrics!) I didn't know ELVIS BISHOP, so he didn't do much for me, but he certainly seems to be crossworthy, having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Aargh, ELVIN BISHOP, not ELVIS! Not sure why I finished with an error in TRAISING SEMINAR. That felt like a real thing somehow.

As did COSCO Bay and Robin O'DAIR. Pretty rough crossing. I really ought to have known TRAISING SEMINAR wasn't a thing, but CASCO / ADAIR? Hmm.

A lot of good craftsmanship in this one, with not quite as many gluey ORARE, SEL, HEA, PTL, ETH, types of entries as I'm used to seeing in a quad-stack arrangement. There were a few long entries that really hit for me, but others like OF THE PAST, TOSSPOTS (talk about OF THE PAST!), and SERVICE PROVIDER felt more neutral than exciting to me.

Not a surprise to get more triple- and quad-stacks from MAS. I really enjoyed the quad. I COULD EAT A HORSE is a fantastic entry, and SLEEPLESS NIGHTS is good too. The only one I had a slight hitch on was PURSUE THE MATTER, which felt somewhat arbitrary. There's something too unspecific about it for my taste.

And it's held together with less crossword glue than I'm used to seeing in a quad. ALL UP and IS SET feel like iffy partials ... but perhaps passable. All of the TETE / AAHS / RTES / I AM NOT entries are very minor — I wish they hadn't been so concentrated, which made them feel like they stuck out when in close proximity to A HAIR — but an argument can be made that A HAIR is akin to the commonplace A LOT. As a whole, the quad held up well for me, when compared to other quads in recent memory.

I'm mixed on whether it was worth it to include two triple-stacks in the grid in addition. As much as I liked LAID IT ON THE LINE and TESTED THE WATERS, even this finance junkie got bored with INTEREST RATE CAP. And given the glue necessary to hold the quad-stack together, it was unfortunate to get more of the DET, A WIRE, I LET variety.

I found myself wondering what could have been if MAS had broken up the TESTED THE WATERS slot, and attempted to give us two sizzling grid-spanners without resorting to any crossword glue. But perhaps some people love INTEREST RATE CAP, or just the visual impact of that huge white space in the bottom.

Overall though, I like when constructors try new things. It was surprising to see that MAS hasn't ever done a triple/quad/triple stack puzzle before.

Quad-stack featuring some great central entries. AMASSED A FORTUNE seems more neutral to me than an asset, but wow, HURRCANE SEASON, AFRICAN ELEPHANT, and STICKS AND STONES in one stack is quite a treat. HURRICANE SEASON is particularly nice given its clue, [Depression era?] — as in a "tropical depression" worsening into a HURRICANE. I've come to appreciate entries that are not only colorful in themselves, but are amenable to being clued in a clever way.

Very nice crossings in that quad-stack, too. Usually we see all sorts of gluey bits barely holding the precarious thing together. Today we get treated to some awesome crossing answers — GREAT BARRIER REEF, MAKING AN ENTRANCE, TEN THOUSAND YEARS with interesting trivia about the word "Banzai" — along with generally solid shorter entries. I didn't care for A HASH or IN ONE, both awkward partials, and LENTS is a strange plural, but if that's the only glue in a quad-stack, that's a success.

I've come to appreciate MAS's efforts to open up his stacked grids, striving for good grid flow. Today's didn't resonate well with me in that regard though, the NW and SE corners having only one entry possible. The other corners are segmented off too, with only two entries apiece allowing the solver access.

That made the entire puzzle feel choked. I got stuck in the lower right; a frustrating experience to be dead-ended in a mini-puzzle that wasn't integrated into the rest of the grid. To finish by guessing at ESTE didn't make for a very positive finish, either. (JOE College wasn't familiar — apparently, it's kind of a "Joe Six-pack" for the university crowd.)

It was odd to get all the usual gluey bits one would see in a quad-stack … in the non-quad-stack regions. ADM / ELENI / ADAMA make for a tough trio up top, and EA POE A PEAR / ERY down below felt equally inelegant. I can see what happened — at 73 words in an expanded 16x15 grid, MAS and George are already near the maximum for a themeless. Trying to work around MAKING AN ENTRANCE / SEINFELD / INKSTAINED makes that north region very tough.

Loved the quad-stack and the long crossing entries, though.

I appreciate MAS's effort to branch out from his usual triple-stack fare today. In many ways, a giant parallelogram(ish) block of white space in the middle of today's grid is more impressive than a triple-stack. I mean, five 12+ letter entries atop each other — that's crazy hard to do! Many themeless builders use a similar "stairstack" center, but people usually do it with just three long entries.

And what great entries! TAKE FOR A FOOL, BARITONE SAXES, MOUNTAIN BIKER, THREE STOOGES are beautiful. FEMININE WILES is definitely in the language, but it did make me hesitate, as it has an old-timey, patriarchical feel to it. I'm not sure I like it given the connotations it carries, but no doubt it's a genuine phrase.

Speaking of genuine, though … I had ???BOTTLE and wished so badly that it wasn't going to be the arbitrary ONE BOTTLE, which the clue seemed to be aiming for. MAS asked me last time if I thought THREE TENS, a similar sort of entry, was bad enough to warrant scrapping the stacked entries. My answer: yes, since we've seen a lot of quad stacks by now.

Today's puzzle is a little different, in that the center section is pretty innovative. Still, ONE BOTTLE ... ugh.

TAB BENOIT is a different story for me. I used to listen to a lot of blues guitarists, and although TAB BENOIT was not familiar to me, I think he's passable for a crossword in a non-featured spot. I don't personally find him to be crossworthy — tough to ask solvers to reach into the depths of a genre — but I think if he makes an incredible grid work, then I give him the thumbs-up.

As with many uber-wide-open grids, there was too much crossword glue for my taste — I personally would have preferred two fewer long entries at the top and bottom in exchange for less of ARMEE, TERNE, SCIS, ECOL, CTN, AS YE, etc.— but overall, I like it when constructors reach out for new territory.

MAS gives us a colorful selection of entries in the quad-stack, CELESTIAL EMPIRE my favorite. I should have known that one, being Taiwanese and all, but it's such a snappy answer I really wanted to look it up. (It was in use during the 19^th century.) And I CAN SEE FOR MILES is such a catchy song.

I also liked APPLIED RESEARCH, although I would have preferred a more colorful clue, i.e. how Jaeger manned robots were born from APPLIED RESEARCH. (My grasp of reality is tenuous.) I'm glad DAYTON TENNESSEE (population less than 10K) got clued with respect to the Scopes Monkey Trial, which makes it gridworthy in my eyes.

I've appreciated MAS's efforts to make his fill cleaner on these wide-open grids, which is no mean feat. Given how tough these constructions are, limiting the gluey bits to things like CTR, ISE, SHA, SNO, RTES is impressive. I'm always mixed on INO (Greek mythology) and APIS (Egyptian mythology) since they're not nearly as recognizable as Zeus/Hera/Isis/Ra, but if the crossings are fair, this mythology-lover tends to look the other way.

I've also appreciated his efforts to create flow, using a ton of white space to connect all areas of the grid. It's fantastic to get entries like LONG STEMMED and DETOX DIETS running straight through the stack. One of the knocks I have on puzzles built on grid-spanning entries is that there's often not much else besides those long entries. Not today!

I was so impressed by the sheer feat of construction and eye-popping visual impact … until I hit THREE TENS. Now, I'm not usually one to judge a grid by its weakest entry, but this one left a sour taste in my mouth. I researched it to see if THREE TENS was some special holding like a Dead Man's Hand or Pocket Aces, so badly wanting to turn up something, anything that would redeem the entry. But, no. If it had been some tiny arbitrary entry off in a corner, that would have been one thing. But THREE TENS is essential to the stack.

Still, an entertaining solve.

★ A ton of great material + a wide-open grid pattern I haven't seen before = win. I've often wondered why triple-stacker (and quad-stacker) specialists don't use mirror symmetry more often. It's not great for traditional themelesses, but it's perfect when you want to feature one grid-spanning stack without having to create a symmetrical one.

Such nice grid-spanners in the quad. Beautiful choices, each and every one. I STILL DON'T GET IT is a marvelous entry; so colorful and in the language. The prices to pay are ARE I, ENDO, LESE, and the awkardish IN A PEN / MISADAPT, but I think those are reasonable given the quality of the long answers. When you throw in how MAS worked in the beautiful COWGIRL and CAFÉ AU LAIT with MANIACAL laughter, the bottom half makes for a strong puzzle just by itself. I'd actually be okay with a little more glue, given how eye-poppingly open and fresh this grid looks.

But wait, there's more! I was impressed that MAS didn't stop there. Getting JOHN STEINBECK and ORWELLIAN … plus two nice corners in the top! I'm a huge SATCHMO fan, and although I didn't know GI BLUES, it's a fun entry. Working all this in with just a few AN OX, ADANO / KNAR kind of things made my solve very fun.

Bravo to MAS for trying something different; branching out from his typical triple-stacks — we've seen so many of those that they've gotten repetitive for me. I would likely have given this the POW just for the bottom half alone, but the top half was sure a bonus. Looking forward to more experimentation with new and eye-catching grid patterns.

I find big stacks to be visually stunning, but they can often require way too much gloop holding them together, leaving me feeling like I just ate a juicy steak which turned out to be full of gristle. MAS, the stack-master, does a nice job today of putting together four nice grid-spanners with using only OLEAN, SERI, ONE AT, and SSTS to bind them. That might seem like a lot to some, but as far as quad-stacks go, it's actually pretty good.

And although none of the grid-spanners are unbelievably sizzling, SALES ASSISTANTS sure gets a beautiful clue to help it sing. [Counter intelligence?] is so clever, referring to a person working a sales counter.

I also appreciated how much connectivity there is through the puzzle. A few weeks ago, Will made a comment about not accepting any more of a particular grid skeleton because of grid flow issues, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Here, MAS does a great job of connecting the top, middle, and bottom thirds together with long answers. SONNETEERS and ENCOURAGED are a bit neutral for my taste, but CAR ANTENNA sure sings. TETRIS also plays a nice role in grid flow, plus it has a brilliant clue: [Fitting entertainment at an arcade?] refers to how a player must fit TETRIS blocks together.

I appreciate some Scrabbly letters in a puzzle, especially in one where the construction difficulties are so high. Three Xs and a J add a lot of color. Given all the Scrabbly goodness though, I might have preferred just two Xs, which would have reduced the type of XENO (prefix) and REXES (odd plural) entries. Normally those are too minor to even be mentioned, but since the middle quad-stack already requires a couple of gluey entries, I'd prefer to see the rest of the puzzle err on the side of cleanliness.

Overall, quite a nice construction which (unlike many triple- and quad-stacks) actually adheres to my themeless criteria. Roughly 11 assets - five liabilities + maybe three bonus points for visual impact = a quality themeless.

Five things I think I think: (with a nod to the great Peter King)

1.) What a lively quartet of stacked answers. I CALL EM AS I SEE EM is not only sparkly, but it looks so crazy as ICALLEMASISEEEM. I wasn't sure what BREAKER ONE NINER meant, but it sure sounds like fun CB lingo. And I don't mind ONE'S phrases, which tend to get a bad rap.

2.) Upon further Googling, I wonder if BREAKER ONE NINER is flawed. BREAKER ONE NINE appears to be quite common (BREAKER used to start a transmission, ONE NINE referring to channel 19), but not BREAKER ONE NINER. Perhaps the difference might seem small, but I wonder if it's a huge difference in the CB community. MAS and Jim both remember it as NINER though (and MAS tells me saying NINER helped with clarity), so I'm inclined to believe that some CBer ought to get on Wikipedia and change the entry.

3.) I love how MAS and George have left 16 slots open for 8+ letter entries. Love to see that sort of structure in a themeless skeleton, as longer entries have more potential to be snazzy. That's not easy to do with a quad-stack taking up a lot of your real estate. Nice use of triple-eights in the NW and SE corners. I would count DELAWARE and SENESCENCE and MEANINGLESS as only neutral, not positive, but that's still a pretty good number of snappy entries.

4.) A touch too much glue for my taste. I think stunt puzzles deserve more leeway with regards to crossword glue, as they have such potential to push the boundaries. But I've seen enough quad-stacks that I'm not as willing to extend those liberties anymore, at least not to the same degree as before. Some entries like SCH and YEO and GPS are reasonable. Add in A MERE, the odd BEGEM, the forgotten ELIAN, the esoteric ERICK, etc., and it's a lot for me.

5.) I haven't been so stumped by a clue in ages. [Mideast pops?] as ABBA? I can almost always figure these out with enough Googling, but I sat with this one for a full three days before asking Will for the answer. I like the drive for originality in the clue, but I think it would have been so much better if "Mideast pops" was a real thing, like "Boston Pops" or "ice pops" is. Much better to me was the question-marked clue [Smoke without fire?] playing on "where there's smoke, there's fire." Beautiful clue for an even better answer.

Ah, another from the quad-stack master, MAS. I really liked the open layout of this one, the puzzle flow being pretty darn good. That bottom stack sure contains a lot of great stuff. When your 15's have to carry so much of the burden for pizzazz, WISDOM OF SOLOMON is the way to do it. ASCENT OF EVEREST felt a little newsy at first, but I think I like that one quite a bit too.

I like the direction in which MAS is moving, not just being content with quad stacks in themselves. The crossword art form is always evolving, and if you don't try new things as a constructor, you'll get left behind. In the past, we "just" saw triple stacks and quad stacks, but MAS's recent ones have all given us such nice long answers crossing through the stacks. NEON TETRA and HERSHEY BAR through those stacks? Yes, please! And note how those long guys keep the puzzle flow open. As a solver, I really appreciate that.

WHEN IM GONE... I'm a complete moron when it comes to pop music, perhaps only better than my (identical twin) brother, who once asked, "Who's this 'eh-my-nem' guy?" Ha ha ha, he's so out of it! (Sadly, I couldn't identify Eminem at that point, either.) Anyhoo, WHEN IM GONE is a song I recognize now, so that's saying something. Still, I like prefer the NEON TETRA type answers, unless the song is wildly popular, like BABY GOT BACK.

The top stack isn't quite as snazzy, especially given the two ONES phrases (glad MAS is humble enough to admit this issue up front) and the abundance of common letters. So many RSTLN E type squares. And there are some rough crossings, as with most quad stacks. The SOHNE / TRE area, STAFFA/SNERD... well, I won't belabor the point.

The first ever quad stack was a huge eye-opener, a visual stunner. Now that we've had a good handful of them, it's going to require raising the bar to keep them interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how MAS can evolve, what different types of grids he can give us in the future. I'm betting we'll see more innovations out of him.

I enjoy the variety, every so often getting a wide-open grid like this. Eye-catching to see so much white space — makes for a very neat first impression. A friend of mine (a daily NYT/LAT solver) works at the coffee shop where I write every day, and he mentioned that these types of themeless puzzles are astounding (typically he can't quite finish them, but he enjoys the visual of it all). As Will once mentioned, I wouldn't want to have one of these mega-stacks every week, but once in a while it's a great change of pace.

Making a mega-stack amenable to crossword integration is hard enough in itself — coming up with three (or in this case, four = way harder) grid-spanners which work well enough together to produce clean crossings is very tough. I've tried my hand at it a few times now, just to see how difficult it is, and it's... well, difficult. Every time I think I have something in place, one single crossing will jut out with a strange letter pattern. When I eventually publish a famous book, the main character's name is going to be TKLED.

One aspect I appreciate about MAS's work is that these days, he pushes the envelope past "only" triple and quad stacks. The earliest of the triple-stacks tended to be extremely focused, in that besides the stack(s), there wasn't much else to spruce up the grid. Here's an example from the early days, by... any guesses? Note the differences between this one and today's. Night and day when it comes to the long fill outside the stacks. I really appreciate how MAS integrates MOLTEN LAVA and KITTEN CHOW straight through the quad-stack, and then tosses in LET IT BLEED, LAST HURRAH, ENTRANCE FEES, COAST TO COAST on the periphery. Snappy stuff.

In terms of the usual glue holding together a mega-stack, today's offering is pretty good. A RING is the awkward five-letter partial that jumped out at me, but it's impressive how clean the rest of the crossings are. Well done! So important to choose the right grid-spanners. Speaking of that...

Glad that MAS commented on A TEENAGER IN LOVE already so I don't have to. I've gone back and listened to the song a few times now, and its excessive use in triple stacks... well, I need not say any more. It sure has a nice pattern of semi-alternating consonant-vowel (repeat), so it's understandable. A heavy price to pay, especially since it's been the source of much derision (along with A LOT ON ONES PLATE), but one I thought was reasonable given how much goodness it allowed for.

My favorite clue was [Stream on the side of a mountain, perhaps] which I was convinced would be something esoteric like RILLET. Beautiful misdirection; a stream of MOLTEN LAVA, not water. And finally, one clue that I really liked and didn't want people to miss out on. A HOSTILE TAKEOVER indeed often results in changes across the board, but also often results in changes across the Board (of Directors). A witty double-meaning that tickled me.

Oh man, it's so cool that two of the quad-stack masters joined forces on this one! I love collaborating with other constructors, so I can only imagine the awesome back-and-forths MAS and Joe must have had. (Please tell me there were some tickle fights?) In particular, I enjoyed hearing about one constructor taking an unpaired quad-stack and matching it up with another's. A true peanut-butter and chocolate moment.

Quad-stacks by nature tend to require common letters (RSTLN E), so it's important to choose the entries with those letters that happen to be snappy. (At least so I'm told, since I've never successfully completed one quad-stack, much less two.) I loved getting AM I GLAD TO SEE YOU, an entry I would be happy to encounter in any themeless, much less a quad-stack. What with SACRIFICIAL LAMB on top of it, that bottom section was a mighty treat.

I liked the top one as well, although I didn't know ADELAIDE'S LAMENT so wasn't able to appreciate it as much. After looking it up (it's a Guys and Dolls song), I was happy to have listened to it. Catchy!

Inevitable to get some less-than-optimal crossing answers in a quad-stack. I did love seeing the longer ones like EXORCIST and SCARLET A (much, much better than the usual RED A we usually see in crosswords) and I DIG IT. But not may solvers will like a TENTER or an arbitrary TEN HOURS or SMOOT in their puzzle. I am very interested in the SMOOT-Hawley tariff's effect in intensifying the Great Depression, but we've already established that I'm strange.

It surprises me to hear every once in a while that a solver will enjoy the likes of ENCE or STER. I would prefer not to see those types of crossword glue, but some solvers breathe a sigh of relief because just one answer like this can help them grab a toehold in a puzzle. Go figure!

I appreciate MAS and Joe working hard to put together a puzzle which connects well in the center, something very important to keep it from feeling like two completely separate mini-puzzles. Not only are there plenty of connection points, but SNEER AT and GUESS SO make for some very nice junctions in the middle of the grid.

I wouldn't want every themeless to be a quad-stack because of their unique qualities (I'm looking at you, ENCE and STER), but I sure enjoy getting them every once in a while. A final note, my favorite answer in the puzzle? SLUG IT OUT. What a snappy phrase, and so impressive how it runs straight through that top stack.

Another quad-stack from the Master of All Stacks, Martin Ashwood-Smith. Every time I see these gigantic wide-open spaces, it awes me. It's still one technical construction ability I haven't been able to master (or even make a dent in) yet, so it's pretty neat to see something I can't personally achieve.

I quite liked the quad-stack and its crossings today. TRADITIONAL IRAS will be boring to most normal people — thankfully I don't qualify! (I enjoy helping friends and family out with investment planning and management.) Sure, as with any quad-stack, there are the usual IANA, AT EM sort of things, but we also get treated to the long crossers that MAS has been working in as of late: ANTI-RIOT, HAD A TIN EAR, WHAT IS THIS, and (I think this is someone I should know?) AARON CARTER. Throw in some TEXAS SIZE and LIVING WAGE and that's a lot of great stuff.

Where I had some difficulty was in the corners. Shorter answers tend to be clued harder in themelesses, and that SW was a killer. I do love the XXX and its "Really dirty" (tee hee) clue, but AT SIX feels so arbitrary. It's still probably a fair price to pay given that it allows for BOTOX and BRONX in there too, but it still makes me wince a little. Perhaps if ABBE had been clued a little easier, it would have stopped me from trying ONE PM, TWO PM, TEN PM, ONE AM, etc.

And while I love the entry TEXAS SIZE, probably my favorite of the grid, the SE corner feels like there's maybe one too many Scrabbly letters down there. I didn't notice that it was a pangram until I started writing my notes, but I did notice the fill felt a bit rocky given all the names jammed in there with opaque cluing. My fault on not grokking WALT Disney, but does IVANA trump still qualify as a "socialite"? In this case, I'd have much preferred to either 1.) skip the pangram in order to work in one fewer name down in that corner (adding one more fun, wordplay-type clue) or 2.) make the cluing of the names a little easier for at least one of the three.

Great workout, tough to crack those corners, but a great feeling of satisfaction to do so.

I don't know how MAS does it. I've tried my hand at quad-stacks in order to expand my construction skills, but I'm nowhere even close yet. Coming up with the four stacked grid-spanners is hard enough, but throw in the fact that you need the section to tie to something else in order to make it a full puzzle (and have everything be symmetrical!), and you have a real feat on your hands. There's a reason why very few people are making grids like this.

There's not much room for snazzy fill outside of the 15s, so they must be snappy in order to give the puzzle kick. MAS does a pretty good job here, OBSCENE GESTURES being my favorite (no surprise given my fourth-grade maturity level). Some people might disparage TRADITIONAL IRAS, but financial and investment planning is a hobby of mine, so I really liked seeing it there. DENTAL ASSISTANT isn't great in itself, but a nice wordplay clue makes it shine.

Let's look at just one interlock issue as a demonstration of how difficult this construction is. In the bottom stack we have *ESHA in the fifth column. WAUKESHA isn't a great answer (unless you're from Wisconsin and/or love cheese curds, yum!) but what else is going to go there? Sure, you could shorten the entry to MOESHA or AYESHA, but that means you'd have to do the same in the symmetrical spot (GLEASONS might become GLEANS or GLEAMS). And then what happens to the surrounding areas? Maybe you could get something to work where KERT and where SOSPAD are, but with all the other constraints locking you in, that's highly doubtful.

Sure would be nice to do something about the KERT/MENSAL/REINA subsection though.

Yes, there is a good amount of subpar fill in here, but that's typically the price to pay for an audacious construction like this. Solvers' preferences are all over the map, some loving this sort of jaw-dropping grid, some preferring smooth and silky but less ambitious. I wouldn't want every themeless to push the boundaries like this, but I appreciate both the variety and the feat of construction. Fun solve.

Another wonder from the Sorcerer of Stacks, the Genie of Grid-spanners, the MAS Maestro. What a tough workout today, and what a feat. It never ceases to amaze me, seeing all those rows without a single black square.

As Will mentioned, the crossings are pretty smooth through the quad-stack. Sure, there's a CRAT and I'm not totally sure I buy HEISTING, but NORN, SARGENT, EILEEN FORD, FILIPPO and ALI PASHA are fair Saturday material. It was fun to look up ALI PASHA and discover that his surname was Aslan, (like the lion in the Chronicles of Narnia). And it's even more impressive to see the awesome GO COMMANDO as one of the quad-stack crossers. Amazing stuff.

I like the ambition of adding two more grid-spanners into this puzzle, but neither TERRENCE MCNALLY nor SERGEANT O'ROURKE did much for me (sorry, F Troop fanatics!), especially given that there were so many other names present in the puzzle. Perhaps if one or both of those were more well known to me? Interesting that I found the roughest spots to be in the NW (D TEN / PEETE / ATRAS) and the south (ERB / RMS), both regions outside of the quad-stack. I wonder if having the two extra grid-spanners was worth it? (Or if it was even possible to complete without using the extra grid-spanners?) Tough trade-offs.

As a lover of wordplay clues, I appreciated seeing the fun clues for RIGOR MORTIS and GO COMMANDO. Amusing; it really helps to get a smile when I'm dead stuck. As I was struggling to get a toe-hold in the center, I couldn't help wishing for a wordplay type clue to help me out and divert my frustration. The tough cluing in the middle certainly made this a challenging workout, and perhaps I would have appreciated it even more if there had been a little more cheekiness in one or more of those central clues.

I would comment more on the architectural issues of the puzzle, but seeing as my attempts at quad-stacking have resulted in nuclear meltdown, I'll just sit back and admire. I appreciate the variety MAS gives us through his triple and quad-stacks, but I'm glad not every Saturday puzzle is this tough!

★ A couple of months ago, a non-crossword friend of mine pulled me aside and said I had to see something. He took out a newspaper he had saved and held up a NYT crossword, a themeless with two triple-stacks and very few black squares. "This is the coolest thing ever," he said. That's a pretty powerful statement from someone who doesn't even like crosswords.

I realize some people are going to hate today's crossword, but I say, haters gonna hate. I'm not a fan of construction feats for the sake of record-breaking, but I was so wowed by the visual of today's puzzle, with those wide-open spaces, that I had to give it the POW. Well done, MAS!

The usual knock on triple-stacks is two-fold (and these apply even more strongly for quad-stacks). First, because of their construction difficulty, they tend to use phrases which aren't very snappy, use too many common letters (RSTLN E), or incorporate ONES (A LOT ON ONES PLATE being the most notorious). MAS shines here, using eight really nice entries. At first I was put off by CHANSONS DE GESTE, but after looking it up, I decided I enjoyed learning about a term that's gridworthy; a deficiency in my knowledge base. It's just amazing that MAS managed to find two separate sets of four good entries for his stacks.

The second knock is that the crossing down entries tend to be tortured, giving the solver an equally tortured solving experience filled with a gamut of partials, abbreviations, esoteric names, roll-your-own words, etc. On this front MAS doesn't do quite as well. In general, there are a reasonable number of ugly entries, but there are so many of one type, partials, that it was noticeable during my solve. It's unfortunate that ME AT had to be clued as a partial to avoid the dupe with MADE MINCEMEAT OF, as that would have helped the issue. Should we give constructors a break, allowing for extra ugly fill when a feat is as cool as clean quad stacks? I think a little leeway is reasonable to expect, but the high number of partials did detract from my personal solve today.

So overall, very impressive work and an enjoyable puzzle. I'm usually dead set against stunt grids for their own sake, but in my e-mail exchange with MAS, I really appreciated hearing how he tossed out a whole bunch of triple and quad-stacks before settling on something he thought solvers would enjoy. Solver first, constructor second, that's what I love to hear.