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Fun workout today. And written BY A CANADIAN!

*ducking from hockey stick thrown by Jeffrey Krasnick*

No need to get rough, eh? Nice change of pace today, more loaded on the proper names and trivia than a typical Saturday. These types of puzzles tend to either hit or miss depending on the solver's knowledge base, and it was a tale of two halves for me. The right half flew by because I've forced myself to learn ERIK SATIE through crossword construction (look at all those common letters with vowel-consonant alternation!), and the straightforward clue for the devil-spawn LA LAKERs made it easy to plunk down. But for non-crossword constructors / fanatical haters of the purple and gold menace to humanity's very foundation, it was a really good thing that all the crossing answers don't depend on such specific knowledge.

Trivia is so subjective. I'm sure many solvers will grumble at EQUIVALENCE and AQABA, complaining that these are esoteric bits that no one should have to know. But as a former mechanical engineer, the watts and volt-amperes EQUIVALENCE made me smile, as did remembering the amazing scene of AQABA in "Lawrence of Arabia." High thumbs-up for me, but I can understand how others will disagree.

The left half was much tougher for me, not knowing ERIKA KANE, MARLENE, EMIL NOLDE, or MADONNA with its tough Parmagianino-related clue. It does strike me as a fair area, given that the names are all drawn from disparate disciplines (not having multiple clues requiring concentrated knowledge about Dungeons and Dragons +1 Swords of Justice or something), but it certainly highlighted several deficiencies in my knowledge base. My personal perfect storm? Perhaps.

In general, I prefer more of a mixing of many different types of clue/answer pairs, proper names and trivia being diluted with a good array of wordplay type clues/answers. For example, it would have been great to have more of the "Sky boxes?" / KITES type clue/answer pairs in that left section. I learned a lot today, looking up quite a few entries after I finished.

– puzzle by Will Nediger

Thus continues the saga of JEFF VS. DAN, wherein I try my durndest to beat ACPT champ Dan Feyer on a puzzle I wrote. My solving time: 6:39. You'll find Dan's time (and that of the other speedsters) posted at Dan's blog. Curious to see how badly he beat me this time. It's been over 30 puzzles now, and I still haven't won. I've even started handicapping it by reviewing all the answers right before I solve. And sometimes I don't even come within a factor of two!

ADDED NOTE: David Plotkin's time (on paper!) = 5:54. Dagnabit! And Dan's time... 3:50. Whoa. Talk about superhuman powers. Someone ought to make him a cape.

Very fun collaborating with Dick on his big debut. He came up with the idea and I helped him refine it. I actually didn't do that much; the credit should go to him. It's tough to come up with clever ideas for a NYT Sunday puzzle.

Ah, the gridwork. Not as much of a challenge as I've encountered in some other constructions, but a toughie nonetheless. There are only six themers, but incorporating the dagger with the M A C B E T H letters made it tricky, forcing us to deploy our black squares quicker than we had desired. This left big open spaces in the NW and NE, and without those cheater squares (the two stair patterns at the top of the grid), it looked pretty hopeless. We debated whether EXERCISERS was legitimate, eventually deciding it was KOSHER, and were glad that it allowed the snazzy BANDOLERO and LITERATI to work.

The other tricky spot sort of snuck up on us. Because of the word count limitations (140 max), we had to incorporate a few long across answers, IONE SKYE notably. It's a nice entry in itself, but boy did it cause problems. Because it crossed three theme answers, there weren't many options there besides IONE SKYE, and once that was fixed into place, KIEL was the best we could do at that spot. Now, I'm a huge fan of James Bond villains and Jaws in particular, but even I don't like having to remember who played him. And having OHO, OOH, OH I, UH OH... that's my fault. Sometimes at a certain point (in this case, maybe 50 attempts), you've done your best.

Ah well, as with most constructions, there will be compromises. I had a great time working on this with Dick, and I welcome anyone who's interested in collaborating (read: allowing me to ride on their coattails as I politely shoot down all their ideas until something fun emerges) to contact me at jeffchen1972 (at) gmail (dot) com.

– puzzle by Dick Shlakman and Jeff Chen

Man vs. Puzzle outed! I had to use every last ounce of my mental faculties to figure out who this mysterious new NYT xw blogger was (clues: "My first name is Sean" + "My last name starts with DOBB" + "and ends with IN" = I eventually pieced it together.) Check out his daily posts; I like how he brings a fresh perspective to the blogosphere, giving his opinions is a respectful way.

Straightforward theme today, phrases that start with C AND Y, with CANDY as a revealer. These days typically something extra is required to make a Monday puzzle stand out. That could be an additional layer of theme, fantastic long entries, high theme density, etc. I liked Sean's choice of themers, CHICKEN YARD being my favorite. It's fun for me as a constructor to think about tricky wordplay clues — if only this were a late-week puzzle, "Place with a lot of scratch?" could have been amusing.

Interesting construction today. It's unusual to have interlock (where CANDY intersects CHUCK YEAGER and CHICKEN YARD) on a Monday. That's pretty cool. But it does create some difficulties in fill. Notice how it forces the first and last themers into rows 4 and 12? That makes for small corners in the NE and SW, and look at those big 6x3 areas in the west and east. The east is actually quite nice, especially given the difficulty of filling a big section like that. The west suffers from it though, with the plural ISAACS crossing SYD. Certainly passable, but not super elegant.

Who knows if this would have helped, but I would have likes to see CANDY in the dead center across (where the arbitrary TEN PM sits). I believe this would have made filling more flexible, maybe allowing a reduction of things like EDY, ELIA, and the only thing I really objected to, the awkward MDSE. Was the elegance of interlocking CANDY into two themers worth it? I would say no, but as I've learned through thoughtful reader feedback (thank you!), many would disagree. I always appreciate reading the constructor's comments — it usually gives me a lot of insight into something I hadn't considered.

I'll close out today's comments by highlighting Sean's attitude of continual improvement as something I greatly admire. I hope that all constructors take this attitude, never being complacent in their work, always striving to figure out what they could do better toward creating a better experience for solvers.

The final score today: Man 1, Puzzle 1. Looking forward to more.

– puzzle by Sean Dobbin

Ten years ago, three long theme answers was the norm. If you had three grid-spanners (15 letters long) it was kind of magical! Then came the era of four themers. Harder to construct, and it forced constructors to up their game. No so bad with the widespread adoption of computer-assistance. And these days, five is more typical than not, with the really gung-ho folks packing in six.

And then there's DStein. EIGHT theme answers jammed into one crossword? What's the emoticon for (slapping hands to face like in Home Alone), because whoa!

Interesting theme today, people commonly known by their J_ initials. Extremely tough for a Tuesday. With any name-based puzzle, opinions are going to vary widely, especially with names drawn from the deep corners of specific knowledge areas. I live in Seattle and am a Mariners fan (whenever they're not playing the Giants or A's), but it took me a while to pull out JJ PUTZ (whoops! no pun intended)*. The rest of them thankfully were easy enough, except for JB FLETCHER, which I feel like should know. Point is, this might be a love-it/hate-it puzzle depending on the solver's background.

Many experienced constructors can cleanly pull off a puzzle with five themers. Some can even handle six without an ANOA or an ULU. Since I've never tried to incorporate eight before, I can't say how truly hard or easy it is. But judging by the fact that David has some chops and there are some rough edges to this construction, I don't think I'll be attempting it in the near future.

I do like the experimentation, the pushing the boundaries to see what's possible — nothing worse than complacency, sticking with tried and true with nothing new. But the stacking of themers in the SE produces some unsightly crosses — JCTS next to random Roman numeral MMDII with ESTE nearby, oof.

And the NE and SW corners felt like they should be easier to fill, but upon closer inspection, I changed my mind. The preponderance of J's up in the NE makes it extremely difficult (what else could go where JOJO is besides JUJU?), and once you fix JOJO into place, hotchee-motchee do things get tough. Easier in the SW (no J's to worry about), so I found it an odd choice to cross two very tough names together in BROZ and JJ PUTZ. I would have much preferred something like DR OZ in there, which isn't bad to fill around and feels to me much more gettable to a bigger population of solvers. Budding constructors, try replacing BROZ with DR OZ and see what you can come up with. There are a lot of ways to do that while also putting something better in for the arbitrary ONE LB.

All in all, an interesting experiment in pushing the boundaries, and glad I learned a little about JB FLETCHER.

*He's lying

– puzzle by David Steinberg

What nice theme entries today. HELL OR HIGH WATER, THE WALTONS, GREAT WHITE, and especially SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW. Some fine material, all held together by SHREDDED WHEAT (the letters WHEAT anagrammed in various orders).

I've highlighted the WHEAT sequences to make them stand out. Ideally, they'd be easy to pick out, either as standalone words, or all at the beginning of phrases or something, but that may not have been possible. To me, it felt a little inelegant to have sequences placed in random positions. But then again, Tracy did such a nice job picking out theme entries that I think it's an okay trade-off.

Five theme entries and a central 13 makes construction tough. Notice how the NW and SE corners are 6x3 as a result? Anything requiring stacked sixes running through a themer can be tricky, but Tracy does well in these areas, even working some nice entries in, SKEWER and the really nice REHABS/OCELOT/ALL FOR.

Where some issues do occur are in the NE and SW, where two themers overlap each other in a big way. In particular, the SW: ACTA is fine by itself, but coupled with in the esoteric ALAE it feels slightly rickety. I really like HIDEAWAY down there, but I'm not sure if it was worth the price of the esoterica. The NW is well done given the constraints, although I think I would have personally gone with ODE instead of OBE, since I can't keep all those British three-letter distinctions straight.

SHHHH is either extremely bold or unfortunate. But what else are you going to do with a ??H?H pattern? UH HUH might work, but that's the only other option I see. This more than anything demonstrates the difficulty of using five themers — with all the crossings needed, one of them is bound to be problematic.

It would have been great for those WHEAT sequences to stand out better, but overall I quite enjoyed today's long entries.

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

Any time I see Joe Krozel's byline, I set aside extra time to solve (and go grab a beer). Perhaps more than any other constructor, Joe pushes the boundaries of puzzle construction, sometimes coming up with ideas I would never have imagined if I had employed a million monkeys typing at a million workstations. No, I've never employed monkeys to generate crosswords for me. Yes, those are all my banana peels.

A phonetic puzzle today, phrases that sound like Japanese words: WASABI, ARIGATO, SUDOKU, and KARAOKE. Light, playful theme, one which actually helped me in my solve today because the rest of the puzzle played like a themeless. In fact, look how much themeless-type material he packs in, thanks to his unusual grid design: OH BROTHER, MOM AND POP, PHARAOHS, and an incredible amount of 7-letter fill. Typically 15x15 xws don't have much long fill due to theme constraints (this is 16x15, FYI), but Joe's shorter than average theme entries allow for more goodness in the fill.

Typically it's desirable to make grids easy to get from one subsection to the next, because it can be a little tricky if there's only one way into a particular area. That happens in the NW and SE regions today, so it's a good thing that the phrases OH BROTHER and MOM AND POP are both lively and clued easily. Still though, it would be nice to have a secondary way in (or out) of those sections.

One aspect of Thursday puzzles that make them slightly easier to fill is that one can use words and phrases that probably wouldn't fly on a Monday. Note ALAMORT in the NW, kind of a head-scratcher with just a couple thousand Google hits. I'm sure there will be some French scholars clapping their hands out there, but how big is the overlap in the Venn diagram of French scholars and Greek scholars (ELEA)?

Enjoyable solve with some fun linguistic play.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel

Themeless puzzles typically don't incorporate a lot of 11's 12's, 13's, or 14's, because they cause problems. 10's are fairly easy to triple-stack, and 15's can get placed without wasting a black square, but those in-between lengths can be murder. This particular arrangement is one of the few more common ones that allows constructors to take advantage of those great 11's and 13's waiting to be debuted. (singing) DOO BE DOO BE debut...

Hey, no throwing eggs!

This type of stack is very similar to a triple-stack, but with a slightly smaller degree of difficulty given that the corners are easier to fill than a full triple-stack. In the outer edges you only have one letter constraining you — much easier in that regard. Not surprisingly, most of the crunchier crossings come in places where three letters are fixed: MDI, EHLE, and TYE. Perhaps Jennifer EHLE will become a superstar one day, which would be awesome for us constructors given the friendly letters. (shaking fist at Craig EHLO for not becoming an NBA superstar)

There seems to be a sort of mini-theme, which I typically like. It's pretty fun to have a subtle nod to the solver a bit of a "You see what I did there?" The replication within phrases was kind of neat, but the fact that there wasn't one of these in the south half left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. It was nice to read Ned's note and see that's exactly what he tried. I'm glad he didn't jam it in there and live with icky crossings. Good choice!

I'll finish off with an interesting word and a great clue. VIRAGOS: I didn't know it, so looked it up. One definition described it as a woman with a violent temperament, another as a woman with exemplary and heroic qualities. A word with two definitions that somewhat contradict each other — I can see why Ned placed it in there; very cool, bizarre and fun! And OMERTA (which describes the code of silence often referring to the mob), had a brilliant clue, using "singers" as in "one who spill their guts". Spilling their guts when they sing... and again later when they get offed!

– puzzle by Ned White

★ A beautiful puzzle, chock full of great entries and great clues. It's tough for me not to give out a POW automatically when I see the Wilberson byline. There is a touch of lesser stuff, but when it allows for such snazzy entries as (earworm alert) JUKEBOX HERO, T-BONE STEAKS, and HAIR METAL I barely shrug at the stuff like ODER and CBER.

Brad ain't kidding when it comes to stacked 11's. Look what trouble they force in the NW and SE corners: six three-letter words just to start. In a themeless, more than twelve(-ish) three-letter words starts to become noticeable, and you'll almost always need a couple here and there to make a grid work.

Then there's the fact that you have all those parallel down crossings to deal with in a stack of 11's. It's easier than dealing with a triple stack of 15's, but typically triple-stacked 15's are the singular focus of a themeless. Check out today's vertical stacks (on the left and right sides), just waiting to throw a monkey wrench into things as they connect up to the stacks of 11's. But Wilberson tames them, bringing us some good BATHSHEBA and EZRA POUND... with HOMBRE running through the former!

There's a ton of other good entries, but in the interest of space, let me point out just some of the clues that sizzle. "It once had many satellites in orbit" innocently makes you think about planets and astronomy. But no, it's talking about the Soviet Socialist Republics — THAT kind of satellite. And "Dieter's beef" doesn't refer to a dieter, but a person from Germany's olden term for its government (or perhaps Dieter, a common-ish(?) name in Germany). What a way to rescue the otherwise boring ACH!

It's that type of attention to detail, to enhancing the solving experience, that makes this pair such a force. DOS could easily have been a broad "Cuts" or something, but they take care to design the tricky "Lock combinations?" And they mix in some interesting trivia with the clue for BISHOP; I found it fun to learn that the fianchetto is a chess opening. Extremely well done, I'll be studying this one further.

– puzzle by Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber

Ah, the Beatles. There have been several puzzles incorporating JOHN, PAUL, RINGO, and GEORGE, including a stealth one by Peter Collins, but none incorporating their full names quite like this.

I found the most interesting question to ponder today: how the heck do we fix the answers up so the database is clean and accurate? Jim and I take great care to reverse entries, unbend them, do whatever it takes to make the entry make sense to the clue. This often requires judgment calls, and we try to just be as consistent as possible. We ended up splitting the theme answers into two, so that if solvers later want to find this puzzle, a search for *JOHN LENNON* (the asterisks being wild card operators) will turn up PAUL MCCARTNEY JOHN LENNON. Perhaps there are better ways to do it? (shaking fist at constructors who defiantly break the molds)

Neat change of pace; it's rare to see a long entry sweep around like this to form a single gigantic theme entry. The shape isn't bad, although it struck me as more of a banjo than a guitar. A few slight indentations in the body of the guitar might have helped, but could also have made the construction even harder than it already is.

This mirror-symmetry grid may not come across as tricky, but as soon as I saw it I knew there would have to be some compromises here and there. Just look at 9D and 11D separated by only one column, and they stretch almost the full length of the puzzle. And to top it off, they spread out, forcing a very tough section within the "body" of the guitar. Stuff like AAU and NEUER in the center is bound to happen with this many constraints. Not only that, but you have to spend so many of your black squares in the middle of the puzzle, that the outer regions are forced to be big white swaths, hard to fill. A real challenge.

Some compromises in execution today, but I find that it's always fun to remember the greatness that was the Beatles.

– puzzle by Charles M. Deber

Nice way to start out a week, an easy-breezy theme: phrases with REC smack dab in the middle. C.W. chose some nice themers, SPARE CASH and CREATURE COMFORT being my favorites. I always like hearing constructors' stories of how they came up with the idea, and C.W. doesn't disappoint. I imagine her listening to her sister until REC CENTER gets mentioned, followed by a lot of "uh huh" and "you don't say" while madly thinking of theme entries. And if you're wondering, no, I NEVER ignore people when I have a crossword theme idea... huh? Oh, sorry. I was listening to you. Really.

Good consistency, as each REC always breaks RE/C. I suppose it would be hard to find R/EC breaks anyway. A quick search over at onelook.com gives a heck of a lot of options for the RE/C split, many more than the R/EC. And when you add the constraint that REC be right in the middle of the phrase, the only entry I could find was BARTER ECONOMY. Being a finance and econ junkie, I love that phrase, but I can see how other (read: normal) people would start swearing up a blue streak.

One small issue did give me a slight pause. One was that I was expecting some sort of S* C* initials puzzle because of SCORECARD and SPARE CASH, and then SCARECROW only reinforced the idea (I mentally added an S to make it SCREATURE COMFORT — my brain does weird things). So it would have been nice to have one of those swapped out for a phrase not starting with an S. Maybe work in PRESSURE CHAMBER and/or VIGENERE CIPHERS? What, you don't like VIGENERE CIPHERS? I am a dork, ao euh av!

Now who's sorry they don't know their Vigenere ciphers. (insert smug look here)

Lovely NE corner up there, C.W. working in SOUS CHEF, KAHUNA, AZALEA, and HYDRA all in one region. Totally makes the SSS worth it for me.

A final note on our crossword friend, ORTS. I remember the first time I ran into ORTS in a puzzle. I said "I gotta know what an ORT is to do a crossword?" and didn't do another one for a while. So I try to keep that in mind with every construction I do, often scrapping an entire grid if I'm forced to use an ORT or ADIT or ANOA. Opinions will vary of course, some people enjoying learning esoterica for its own sake, some reflecting fondly on the Maleska days. To each their own, but I'd so much rather have a couple of five-letter partials and plurals than a single ORT.

Anyway, an enjoyable diversion.

– puzzle by C. W. Stewart

And now for another installment of "JEFF VS. DAN", where I speed-solve against ACPT champ Dan Feyer on my own puzzles. Because he's spanked me so badly recently, I studied the grid extensively just before solving this time, trying to memorize every single entry. My time: 3:00 even. And that's with me typing in an utter frenzy! Check back into see what times Dan and the other speedsters post at Dan's blog.

Very fun to work with Matthew on this one. He was so pleasant in writing, and equally pleasant when I gave him some feedback. Theme ideas are hard to come by, and often times it's a real strength to know when to let something go. Very few people can do that, moving on to brainstorm further (I typically go through 20ish theme ideas before settling in on something that moves me).

This one was a toughie! We wanted to incorporate WASH DRY PRESS FOLD in that order, use LAUNDRY LIST as a revealer, and have each of the four words in snazzy phrases where the word had a different meaning. Not easy at all. As Matthew mentioned, we originally had a different grid, and Will gave us thoughtful feedback with his rejection. After nodding my head (read: swearing up a storm and perhaps making a mustachioed voodoo doll; I neither confirm nor deny this), we went back to the drawing board. Good thing we did, because Will's intervention forced us to dig harder, and we eventually came up with these themers, which we liked much better than the original set.

One aspect I'll point out in the gridwork: incorporating five long themers is tough, and it becomes even tougher when your middle entry is a "weird" length (13, 11, or 9 letters), which sort of splits the grid in half. Solvers might have minor gripes today, saying we could have cleaned up NEH (yup, ugh!) and SWED (double ugh!) by breaking up OF SORTS and PREPARE with black squares. We tried that, but look where POLIO sits. Turns out that there were few entries that could have worked there, and I just despise OLIO. Personal tick of mine. So we deemed it better to include the nice OF SORTS and exclude the ugsome OLIO. Would you rather have NEH or OLIO? Matter of taste, methinks.

Matthew and I have another collaboration waiting in the wings — he's two for two on submissions to the NYT! A whole lot better than my overall acceptance rate, roughly 33%. And that's a whole lot better than my original acceptance rate, which was roughly 0% (0 for 22). That was a long two+ years (with a very patient editor)...

– puzzle by Matthew E. Paronto and Jeff Chen

★ I'm a sucker for a visual element in a puzzle. Throwing in mirror (left-right) symmetry makes it even more enticing. And incorporating enough snappy entries to make it play like a themeless? MAN CRUSH ON PETE COLLINS DECLARED! Whoops, excuse me.

I enjoyed so many elements of today's puzzle. I really dug the three T's in the puzzle's black squares, and liked even more the fact that there weren't any other "free-floating" black squares in the grid. Very cool-looking. Aesthetics are subjective of course, but I really appreciated the prettiness of those three T's hanging out in the middle of the grid.

True to the three T's, Pete give us three grid-spanners, all following the same pattern: T* THE T*. I actually prefer some of Peter's original themers, TRUE TO TYPE being especially nice. I did like TRIMMING THE TREE and TELLING THE TRUTH, but TURNING THE TRICK sounded a little off to me. TURNING A TRICK (ahem, not NYT material) or DID THE TRICK sounds so much better, yeah? But Google/Bing clearly disagrees with me, "TURNED THE TRICK" getting a huge number of hits.

Minor idiosyncrasy, but I tend to prefer past tense phrases in my xws. TOLD THE TRUTH has more elegance than TELLING THE TRUTH, in my eyes at least. Often, I don't add the "-ING" variation of a phrase into my word list, unless it sounds perfectly normal to my ear (usually it doesn't though). Awfully hard to find three past tense phrases that 1.) fit the T* THE T* pattern and 2.) are long enough, though.

Best of all today: the snazzy entries! SHAR PEI, HIGH NOON, NIHILIST, STRIKE ZONE, LETHAL AGENT, AGED OUT (xwordinfo donates to Treehouse for Kids, a non-profit I volunteer for) = so much goodness. Well worth the cheap price of admission (the ERN, EPI, ENE kind of stuff). I would have liked the puzzle even more if there had been more wordplay clues. But then again, filling everything quickly in off the straightforward clues made me feel smart. (in Homer Simpson voice) I am so smart! S M R T!

Well done, I like it when a lively puzzle lets me smugly sit back and call myself the world's biggest genus.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

Rebus puzzle today, MAD squished into eight different squares, with the marquee answer ITS A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD. That's one of the first movies I ever saw (in school, too — no wonder I didn't learn anything) and I can never remember how many MADs to use. It makes me mad mad.

Will has said he has too many rebus puzzles in the queue, so he's trying to space them out to stave off "rebus fatigue." I'll admit, I had a case of that a few months back, feeling like there was no real point to many rebus puzzles. But I think Will's tactic has helped, because I found this one to be a nice challenge. It took me a while to uncover the MAD in MADELINE/ARMADILLO (I plugged ELOISE in at first, drat!), but I found it very satisfying when I did. Extra challenge, overcome!

Daniel does a nice job segmenting his grid, making it easier to fill by placing a single MAD in each quadrant. I tend to like when rebus squares are within long answers, so ARMADILLO really did it for me, while AMADEUS/MADAM, not as much. It is much easier to incorporate rebus squares into shorter answers though, so I can see why he did that. The MADE WAVES/LADY MADONNA entries are quite nice, but there is the price to pay of AS WAS, an awkward five-letter partial, right below SEIS and UNI. A pretty typical trade-off of longer, colorful phrases at the price of a couple of no-so-great entries.

The overall construction is quite a challenge — the fact that there's a central 13 effectively splits the grid vertically in half (Daniel could have split the word SESTETS in half at the T, but that would have created many more three-letter words and also caused a ripple effect in black square placement). With such big chunks of white in each of the four corners, you're almost definitely going to see signs of stress. I really like themeless-quality fill like ED ONEILL (who will always be Al Bundy to me) and even the wacky SORE ARM. Are they worth the price of SERE and SE RI? I think so, but some will disagree. Perhaps trying a less audacious 74 words (instead of the current 72) could have cleaned things up.

All in all, a fun workout, made extra challenging by those free-floating MADs.

– puzzle by Daniel Landman

Nice Valentine's Day mini-theme today. I wouldn't want mini-themes in every one of my themelesses, but I really enjoy them when the occasionally pop up. A themeless with a WORLD DOMINATION flavor was one of my recent favorites.

Interesting layout today, many more three-letter words than usual (20). Typically I start to notice a proliferation of them in a themeless when I get to maybe 12-15, so they did bother me a little. Well, the natural ones like YET and CAT remained invisible, while the ITA ITO OPA kind of stuff stuck out. In my own themeless constructions, I hardly ever work with more than 12 of them, but today's puzzle makes me think I ought to experiment.

Why? Along with the extra three-letter words comes a lot of space for longer fill. Not only do we get the usual stacks in each corner, but a couple of nice longer phrases in the middle: KEEP IT UP, LAKE POET (I just learned this, so it felt awesome to plug right in), ON PATROL, PUPPETEER. Yeah, I'm going to have to do some experimentation. Thanks for the push, Bruce!

I did have a bit of trouble in certain sections, EASTON/ITO/EPI notably, and I wondered if something could be done to make the grid easier to work with. I love the aesthetics of it, wide-open with a free-floating windmill, but the fact that there is so much interconnect makes filling tough. I dinked around to see if repositioning a few black squares could help clean up the fill. The grid I came up with would segment things more, making each individual quadrant easier to fill since it has much less interconnect. But even though it reduces the number of three-letter words to 16, the pattern looks uglier to me. Would the hit to the visual appeal be worth some cleaner fill? Hard to say.

Happy World Domination Day!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

Some beautiful entries today, my favorite being the SOUP NAZI from Seinfeld. Kind of a surprise it's taken this long to show its face. What a nice exercise to rack my memory, going through all my favorites: MR MOVIEFONE, NEWMAN, BANYA, FESTIVUS POLE, STEINBRENNER. Love it when a crossword brings a little bit of joy into my life.

It's not often that I get surprised by a seven-letter entry, because it's hard to find debut stuff in the shorter lengths. But HOUSE MD got me with its bizarre ???SEMD ending. Really nice moment when it came to me that HOUSE wasn't just HOUSE at all.

Some beautiful clues today. I've come to love Saturday puzzles (even though I can't always finish them without a little help) because they more often than not are loaded with tricky wordplay clues. "Position papers?" is such a great clue for KAMA SUTRA, and we get another one right below in "Vanity case?" for EGOMANIAC. And then we get my favorite, "Members of a joint task force?" for NARCS, with "joint" in the "doobie" meaning. Really fun.

As with most themelesses, we get a smattering of "glue" type entries. ENOTES has such friendly letters, and Julian/Will do well to try to rescue it with a term actually used by a few internet companies. Still, it doesn't quite hold up to my understanding of modern usage. ETAIL is perfectly fine with me, perhaps because I see that term all the time in the NYT and WSJ, but ENOTES... I'm still not convinced.

The name pile-up in the SW corner is going to get some people, too. It's good that MELLON, CEE-LO, ESSEN, NELLE, and ST BONIFACE are all drawn from different areas, but it's not ideal. A very tough corner to fill though, given the big chunk of white space with FORELIMBS running through it.

Why has NO SOUP FOR YOU never been in a NYT themeless? A travesty! NO SOUP FOR YOU CONSTRUCTORS!

– puzzle by Julian Lim

Themers today are phrases with their F's changed to D's, thus giving "passing grades." At just 134 words and six themers, this is another one in Will's experiment of mashing up a Sunday-size puzzle with a themeless. It's hard enough to create a Sunday-size puzzle with 140 words, and SO much harder to reduce to even 138 words. Get down to 136, and you have to be a grid ninja in order to pull it off. 134... there are few Sunday puzzles in Will's tenure that have achieved this level. Super hard to do.

The theme itself is pretty entertaining — "wacky" phrases are often going to be hit or miss depending on one's sense of humor. DAIRY GODMOTHER amused me (especially with Yaakov's original clue!), as did SCIENCE DICTION, but the rest I was plus/minus on. It seemed to me with a simple letter swap, there could be many more humorous options. And TWO DIVES FOR A TEN felt like it was an outlier, in that this poor themer still failed, with its F. I would have preferred all F's changed to D's, but I don't think it's a huge deal; there's no law against it. I'm sure some people will get their knickers in a bunch about this supposed travesty though. Mrrrrrow! (That's supposed to be the sound of a hissy-fit)

More notable to me today was the longer fill. Great use of the longest slots, BED OF ROSES being particularly nice. Even the unexpected COMO ESTA (apparently it's used in more formal situations, whereas COMO ESTAS is more informal) was really nice to uncover. Add in LOVE NEST, BLONDE ALE, and ORANGE OIL and you have some great stuff.

I wonder if sticking to 136 or even 138 words would have been better though, as some of the longer slots had so much more potential. LEFT SIDES feels pretty arbitrary, LOOSE TEA doesn't seem nearly as nice to me as LOOSELEAF TEA, and JILTERS could have been so much more. Makes me wonder what could have been if LOOSE TEA had been broken at the S, or JILTERS was broken in half (and their respective sections refilled).

Finally, my favorite clue gives an insider's nod to crosswords: "Iglu and yoghurt, e.g." for VARIANTS. Here's to you, EMEER and TIPI!

I appreciate the experimentation; it's an important way to try pushing the boundaries. I think I still want either more themers or more clever wordplay-type clues in my Sunday puzzles, but the variety allows me to better clarify and understand my own tastes.

– puzzle by Yaakov Bendavid

What a nice construction from a relatively new constructor! The 9-letter middle entry makes for a higher degree of difficulty, which is why I usually steer newbies away from doing this. But David does a really nice job filling those big corners with lovely 7's like DAYTONA, E TICKET, INCISOR, AT A TROT, SWEAR TO. Even better, the crosses are almost all smooth. If LEONS is your worst crossing entry, that's a big success.

And the theme is a nice variant on the "word that can follow" type. Typically Will doesn't take many of these anymore since they've become overdone, but David does a great job of choosing fun, colloquial phrases as themers: (SAY) UNCLE, (SAY) NO MORE, (SAY) CHEESE, (SAY) WHAT. I especially like that last one. I'm going to make it my personal mission to indignantly say SAY WHAT? to one person a day.

The one pause I had, the reason I didn't hand out the POW! today: the revealer felt a little strained. Specifically, the three SAYs didn't feel like they matched the four themers. This is a case where I think "less is more" would apply — having only three themers (in addition to SAY SAY SAY) would have felt more elegant to me. WHAT A JOKE 9 could have been the first one, SAY SAY SAY 9 could have symmetrically matched it as the last themer. Anyway, a matter of personal taste.

A final note, look at the word count: 78. A bit surprising, isn't it, given the big open corners? If pressed to guess, I would have said 76, maybe 74, but there are a lot of short entries in the middle of the grid that I didn't notice (a good thing!). I think many ambitious constructors would have cut down the word count to 76 (by taking out the black square between KEG and SELL) or 74 (by taking out the black square between EGO and AKA) but David chose not to. I think that's absolutely the right decision for a Monday puzzle, for which smoothness and lack of crosswordese are two of my greatest desires. Very well done.

– puzzle by David Gray

Very neat concept today, not sure if I would have ever thought it up: thirteen words in a progression, starting with A, B, C... and ending in Z, Y, X, ... (the appropriate letters are highlighted in the answer grid below). Sort of a dual alphabetic progression, the starting letters going forward, the ending letters going backward.

A perfect start to it, A TO Z being the ideal revealer at 1-across. Often times, revealers at 1-across can come across as deflationary, sort of giving away the puzzle even before the solver starts. So I like the way David/Will presented the puzzle. It's not ideal having to read a note even before you begin solving, but I think it was a reasonable solution.

Extremely tough from a construction standpoint. Not only must you incorporate 13 theme answers, but they all have to follow a particular alphabetic constraint. It did feel a little odd that so many starred clues were for short answers, but it would be near impossible to have your themers be the longest answers in a feat like today's.

As with all audacious constructions, signs of stress pop up in the grid. Once you lock in the (slightly made-up feeling) EX-GOV, FONDU, and ICIER, there's the MTGE, GENL, SLUE pile-up in the middle. Not ideal from a smoothness standpoint, but almost necessary given the high constraints.

Another shoot-for-the-moon decision was to use GARMENT DISTRICT instead of another short answer such as GET IT? or GLOAT or even GET. I have a feeling that would have smoothed things out in the west and east (where HIKES and FONDU overlap GARMENT DISTRICT) but it is pretty impressive to have that grid-spanner as a theme entry. Same goes with CHATTERBOX (the more boring CAR WAX, CONVEX, etc. could have eliminated the old-timey ONERS plus ERI, ENORM, ORONO) and KARATE CHOP (KIDNAP, KISS UP, etc.).

All in all, a clever idea and a high-reaching construction with some trade-offs in solving smoothness.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Fun reinterpretations of common military phrases, along with the bonus SIR / YES / SIR. There are very few puzzles in the Shortz era that have repeated words, and Michael joins the club today.

Interesting construction. Typically cross-referenced entries work best when they're close in proximity. If they aren't, it forces the solver to jump around the puzzle (or in my case, ignore the clue and move on). It was fun to see that bonus set of entries, SIR / YES / SIR, after I finished, but it felt a bit loosey-goosey to me. I think I would have preferred 1.) to see those three entries straight across the middle or at least closer, and 2.) if those entries had answered the themers more relevantly or something.

Some people might complain today about the appearance of two of our most famous crosswordy literary names, Melville's OMOO and Salinger's ESME, especially situated so close together. I'll admit I was a little put off by that at first, but looking back on the grid, I kind of like the echo between those entries.

I enjoyed Michael's note and totally agree that debuting (the incredibly hard to spell) DIPHTHONG and IMPIETY is cool. PRESORTED... not so much for me (although Jim really liked this entry; there's no accounting for taste). As I've told a couple of co-constructors now, debuting a snazzy entry is the bomb dot com. (I still have my 2002 Motorola Razr.) Debuting an entry for the sake of debuting an entry, not so much.

Note those big chunks of five black squares in the NE and SW, not terribly attractive. But given the arrangement of themers Michael has chosen, using zero cheater squares there would require the filling of a big 6x3 area in the west and the east, never a simple task. From an aesthetic viewpoint, I would have preferred to see zero or only one set of cheater squares in these areas (making the block above LOSER (and its symmetrical pair) white instead of black), but I do appreciate the relative smoothness of those sections. All in all, I would almost always accept extra cheaters if that allows for better resulting fill.

Finally, I'll leave all today by highlighting a clue that delighted me: "What might get you through a quiet stretch?" for YOGA. I loathe yoga (I know, blasphemy for a Seattle-ite!), but I would totally sun-salutate that clue.

– puzzle by Michael Dewey

WOODROW parsed into WOOD ROW today, i.e. rows of short answers, each of which can follow the word WOOD. Who knew there were so many words that go with WOOD?

This may seem like an easy construction, given the short theme answers, but it is no mean feat. In some ways, it's actually harder to use short theme answers than long ones. Counterintuitive perhaps, but this sort of arrangement can be very difficult due to crossword norms, both related to integration of long fill.

First, the 78 word maximum. Today's grid would have been a piece of cake if C.C. and Don could have used 82 words. That would have let them break up entries like GOING OVER, PREDATORY, etc. But there's a reason for that 78 word maximum — those types of long entries are a big part of what makes a crossword spicy and interesting. Of all the entries today, my favorites were I DON'T BUY IT, POP DIVA, and RUBINSTEIN (I'm a fan too, Don!). Breaking up those entries would have been a real shame.

Then there's the presentation of said longest answers. Typically, solvers tend to think that the theme of a puzzle is contained within the longest across answers. And for good reason — that is the case 90% of the time! So when there's an anomalous grid like today's, the constructor(s) have to be careful not to mislead the solver. No doubt that the shaded (or circled) entries help distinguish the themers from the non-themers, but I couldn't help wondering what PREDATORY and ORIGINALS had to do with WOOD at first.

Finally, in this type of arrangement, the puzzle's zing is highly dependent on the long down fill, since the theme is basically a "words that can follow X" type of theme. In addition to I DON'T BUY IT and POP DIVA and RUBENSTEIN, CLAY COURT is particularly nice. But GOING OVER seems to me like a missed opportunity. Nine-letter spaces are meant for snazz. I realize that it might not have been possible due to the high constraints today, but that still doesn't keep me from wishing that entry had been something more splashy.

Tough construction challenge today with relatively smooth fill. Good workout.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel and Don Gagliardo

★ Another beauty from the master. 66-word themelesses are not supposed to be this smooth. It's a fundamental law of crosswords that the lower your word count, the crunchier your compromises get. Seriously, it's like he's breaking the laws of nature. J'accuse!

The aspect I like best about this puzzle is not the amazing grid, which is saying a lot. The cluing is so fun, so tricky, and gives me an incredible a-ha moment at every turn. As with most of his recent puzzles, I had to wrestle this one to the ground, taking over 30 minutes to finish, but what a feeling of accomplishment after figuring out "Provider of early projections" had nothing to do with business or political races, but the old-style CAMERA OBSCURA. And "They run out of clothing" had me thinking about colorfast issues (even though I still don't understand why laundry colors and whites need to be separated), and coming up with STREAKERS was a thrill. Add in half a dozen more top-notch clues and it's a work of art.

And then there's the grid. True, there aren't many Scrabbly letters, just a J, but I didn't care. When you incorporate GO BIG OR GO HOME, CYCLOTRONS, PROP COMIC, SHOEMAKER, and CAMERA OBSCURA all in a giant central area... it leaves me slack-jawed, gaping at the miraculous construction.

And it doesn't stop there. Look at the incredible SW corner, a wide swath of white, containing COED DORMS, GREEN TEA, CHRISTO, RED CAP, STREAKERS. I'd be pretty happy to construct to accomplish any one of these subsections in one of my themelesses (this is one area I'm trying to better develop in my own construction skill set), much less an entire puzzle like it.

When I originally started providing construction commentary, Will asked me to give both positive feedback as well as constructive criticism. The latter is almost always doable since most every puzzle requires trade-offs and judgement calls. But what am I supposed to point out today? "Panhandler, of a sort?" might not be to everyone's tastes? INIGO wasn't clued to my favorite "Princess Bride" line? I'm at a bit of a loss today.

Okay, I've run out of superlatives. There have been some good puzzles this week (and will be some more to come), but as one constructor put it, it's tough to have a puzzle run anywhere close (in date) to a Patrick Berry. It's like climbing next to the lead route-setter at my gym, who climbs routes four levels higher than I do... in his &$#!*# sneakers.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

One great thing about Evan is the raw enthusiasm he brings to the crossword game. Everyone is excited about their debut, but the energy he brought to his NYT debut was above and beyond, totally infectious.

And now he debuts a NYT themeless! A traditional 72-word puzzle with four triple-stacks of 10's (one in each corner), this one features some beautiful entries. My favorite was actually one of the shorter ones, SHOW DOG, especially given its neat clue, "Well-trained boxer, maybe." I think I've been doing crosswords too long, because my first instinct was to fill the last two letters in with ER, thinking it would be PUNCHER or POUNDER or something. Great surprise to find out I had been bamboozled.

The themeless game is so much harder these days, given how many people are submitting to Will (I understand he gets proportionally many more themelesses than other types). In just a few years, the expectations have risen quite a bit, as everyone has upped their games. Having a small handful of ERNS, RESOW, DE ORO, I SHOT, etc. used to be the norm a few years ago, even desirable given the lesser state of the art back then.

But these days, it seems to me like there are more and more sparkly themeless puzzles with virtually no crosswordese. I do really like the raw amount of nice stuff Evan has in the puzzle, but for a 72-worder, I would hope for slightly less of the usual crosswordy suspects. I really appreciate his sentiments in his Constructor's Note — it's great to observe when a constructor humbly acknowledges he's working on his game. Looking forward to see how his career blossoms; I think we'll see greatness.

Finally, as with most Saturdays, the tricky wordplay clues make me smile. My favorite is "High spirits?", repurposing a common phrase to perfectly describe ARCHANGELS. A really good workout today; congrats on a very nice themeless debut, Evan!

– puzzle by Evan Birnholz

I can't help it — I love it when people break rules. These days so many things have been done before that it's pretty difficult to find a completely new way of breaking a crossword rule. But Judge Vic does it today, integrating his own name into the puzzle, while hiding his identity in the byline. Neat idea.

I hadn't heard of the other Victor Fleming or some of the movies referenced today, so this puzzle played hard for me. I can totally see how many will find this puzzle a "classic" though, especially considering how prolific Victor Fleming (the movie director) was — jaw-dropping to read up on him and see how many great movies the man directed.

I really like it when we see a constructor's personality come through in a puzzle. Really neat to have two Supreme Court appointees at the top of the puzzle (ROBERTS and ALITO), clearly a nod to Judge Vic's profession. (Judge Vic is a judge, if that wasn't clear.)

Some nice fill today, what I would expect from an experienced constructor. Not a lot of ugly short stuff, plus some beautiful entries like STUDENT ID and SHEEPDOG, not to mention CAR STEREO and SOLIPSIST worked in the across direction. The layout was a bit unusual, having nine-letter fill worked in like this. Hmm, to that point...

I did like learning facts today, but I would have preferred a layout that made the theme answers stand out a little better. Granted, it's hard to do that when some of the themers are short, like RED DUST. Perhaps grouping the themers in single rows would have helped? RED DUST and A GUY NAMED JOE could have been in a single row, for instance. Even just switching the two down-oriented theme answers into the across direction might have helped. It is sort of neat that RED DUST intersects BOMBSHELL (and LORD JIM crosses JOAN OF ARC) but I felt like the confusion wasn't worth the neatness factor.

Fifty years from now, another JEFF CHEN better write a puzzle about me (listing all of JEFF CHEN's Nobel Prizes, including in three categories devised just for him, including the Nobel Prize in Mediocrity). Young constructors, get cracking!

– puzzle by A Namesake of 119-Across

A "Little Women" puzzle, featuring the four main characters, Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy, hidden at the beginning of phrases. It's a theme that's been done before, but 1.) what theme hasn't been done before? and 2.) Adam did a really nice job of hiding the four in phrases or words such that they were nicely hidden. Even after I had plugged in JOKES AROUND and LOUISA MAY ALCOTT I was still wondering what was going on. Nice job, fun to have to do a bit more work on a Monday.

Curious choice, AMYL NITRITE. A real toughie to all but the chemists in the solving audience, although all the crossings seemed fair enough to me. And it is an interesting term to learn. The crossing ALL IN clued as "Tuckered out" sure gave me pause, as I'm not too familiar with that usage of the phrase. Perhaps "Final betting words" or the like would have addressed a bigger audience? Hard to say, but I was sure glad to see Mr. Happy Pencil pop up after I had been hovering a nervous fingertip over that crossing "L".

AMY did stand out to me as the only one where the name isn't pronounced the same as in its themer (AMYL is a short "A" sound if I'm remembering my organic chem correctly — although David says he pronounced it with the long "A" while at school in the northeast, so it might be regional), but I'm not sure I could come up a better themer. AMYGDALA, a part of the brain, is the only other thing I could think of that *might* be more something I'd like to learn on a Monday. But it also has a different pronunciation than AMY.

With five themers, and relatively long ones to boot, this construction had a great deal of constraints facing it. Any time you run words through three separate theme answers (look at NESTING SITE and AMALGAMATED), you're going to have very little options for those spaces. This makes filling awfully difficult, because normally you can try out five, ten, fifty different words in any one long down spot and figure out what's going to make for best fill. But when you have only a few options to plug in (ADULTERATED, AMELIORATED, APPLE BUTTER are some of the limited choices for the AMALGAMATED spot), you kind of need to go with the best you can get. That's why I rarely (if ever) run down entries through three themers.

Because of this layout, the fill suffers a bit, seeing the partials AS A and IT IN, the random Roman numeral CMVI, the relatively not well-known places in AMES and ORONO, the foreigns OBI and AMIE crossing near to MME, etc. Sometimes adding black squares to cut down word length will make a puzzle easier to fill, but Adam couldn't do that because he's already at the limit of 78. I'm not sure, but perhaps I would have let him go up to 80 words? I do like the long down fill, but AMALGAMATED and NESTING SITE aren't (to me) as snazzy as SOUNDTRACK and BYE BYE LOVE. So perhaps allowing those to be broken up could have made this a smoother Monday. I love seeing GAVIN McCloud, who brings back fond "Love Boat" memories, but perhaps putting a black square where his G sits might have helped the overall fill quality.

Definitely a good workout, on the hard side for a Monday.

– puzzle by Adam G. Perl

And now for our next installment of JEFF VS. DAN, where Jeff feebly attempts to solve his own puzzles faster than ACPT champion Dan Feyer. Seeing as how Dan spanked me silly in our last round, I decided to give myself a significant advantage: not only did I look at the answers beforehand, but I STUDIED them. I tried to memorize as many as I could so I'd be able to fill answers in just based on letter patterns. My time was a personal best: 2:25. Check back in to see what times Dan and the other speedsters clock in at.

ADDED NOTE: Drat it! David Plotkin, aka Bug Out, checked in at 1:57... ON PAPER. That's almost 30 seconds faster than me, using a slower solving medium (I solve on computer). Sigh.

Matthew contacted me with this idea, and I thought it was hilarious, and insider's nod to the crosswordese that often must be used to glue a puzzle together. And to have all common E words that were all "four-letter words" just tickled me. We went to work trying to figure out appropriate definitions, and given my distaste for entries that sound like they're from a dictionary (I just don't find them fun to uncover in a crossword), we batted around many phrases until we arrived at ones we felt like we'd be fine with seeing in a normal xw.

The fill was especially challenging, especially because if we incorporated a single piece of crosswordese (outside of the themers), the puzzle just wouldn't seem elegant. Not to mention, we'd leave ourselves open to all sorts of chop-busting from our crossword friends. So it took a long, long time figure out an arrangement of those five themers which would allow us to produce a relatively clean fill. I don't like that we had to leave in REE or ANAT or the singular TAPA, but almost every crossword with five themers is bound to have something.

Now, if we could have just fit in FOUR LETTER WORDS...

– puzzle by Matthew E. Paronto and Jeff Chen

★ Beautiful debut puzzle today, absolutely loved it. I'm not sure I've ever seen a debut I've liked quite this much, given its fun theme, excellent long fill, and not a lot of glue-y crosswordese. I had to look it over a few times to make sure I was indeed seeing a new name. Super impressive, Ruth!

First, the theme. At surface level, it's a basic "add a letter sequence" concept, nothing new there. But each time the IST is added, it changes the meaning of the base word completely, i.e. CUB to CUBIST, and in a funny. STARK to STARKIST is just genius, especially given how snazzy the base phrase, STARK NAKED, is.

Often with "wacky phrase" themes, I find myself not super amused by one or more of them, but today, each one worked really well for me. Perhaps it helped that in my 20 years of playing cello, I sat in the very back of the orchestra, sleeping my way through rehearsals (I was that guy who always came in too early before the rests were over). Some might not find SLEEPER CELLISTS as amusing, but it was spot on for me. And the base phrases are all so solid: CUB REPORTERS, POMPOUS ASS, STARK NAKED, SLEEPER CELLS. Wonderful. Yes, two nouns are plural while one is singular, but that almost seemed too nit-picky to even mention.

Then we come to the fill. Typically a debut contains not as much long fill as I like to see. But CREDIT RISK is fantastic (I love business terms, so sue me), and MAIN STREET hits in the same way. Then Ruth works in EURASIA, CALYPSO, GUEVARA, and even SKI CAP, taking advantage of her 6's and 7's, which often don't get used to their full potential.

Given the nice long stuff, I'd expect some compromises in the shorter. But not only does Ruth keep it to some measley ESE, OR A, MSGS stuff, she works in 6x3 regions at the north and south, giving us the juicy NASSAU and SEANCE. Most constructors avoid that 6x3 arrangement, preferring to stick with 5x3 because that slight widening from five to six often makes for a rougher filling challenge. No problems today, just smooth sailing.

An extremely pleasurable solve for me, and an equally pleasurable time writing up my comments. This is a fantastic example of why I really like the "open call for anyone who wants to construct" policy. Looking forward to more from Ruth.

– puzzle by Ruth B. Margolin

Quote puzzles have an incredible ability to draw out strong reactions from solvers, some people loving them, some people calling for the guillotine. Well, I say haters gonna hate, solvers gonna solve. Not totally sure what that means, but it sounds catchy.

A veteran of the crossword world steps in for his first NYT puzzle in quite some time. Stan edits the Newsday crossword, and often comes up with the hardest puzzle each week, his "Saturday Stumper." I wrote one Stumper for him and tried to race Dan Feyer on it. But Stan had upped the difficulty so much, I barely solved it, having to guess in a few places (chalk up another victory to Dan; no surprise).

The quote today is amusing, although I found it slightly too easy in that I was able to guess the quip with a lot of blanks still out. And these days quote puzzles have become a bit overdone, requiring a truly hilarious or surprising quote in order to make it stand out. I did like today's, but I didn't personally find it to be something I'd tweet. Look at me, joining the 20th century! (Twitter: @JeffChenWrites)

I found the grid very interesting, though. Very unusual to see three black squares stacked in each of the corners. These "cheater squares" are a bit unsightly, but they are necessary when putting a 13 (or 14) letter entry in rows 3 and 13. Doing this does let Stan spread out his four theme entries so that it's easier to make a low word-count grid (72). And there is something visually cool about seeing those rectangular blocks. Perhaps it's just the novelty of it, but they started to grow on me. I wouldn't want them very often but to see them once in a while is a nice change of pace (just like a quote puzzle!).

One trademark of Stan's "Saturday Stumpers" is that he's very careful to avoid easy-to-answer three letter entries like SST, ESE, etc. And true to form, look at the care he's put into this grid: very few subpar entries. Maybe REDRAFT is the least appealing piece of fill? And not a single three-letter entry is a stinker. That's very good work. Granted, there isn't much with a "wow" factor, perhaps SODA POP or PEAPODS as the snappiest entries. But that's what often comes with a tight, clean grid.

I appreciate both ends of the spectrum: Stan's ultra-clean but not as snazzy approach on one end, and other constructors' wildly fresh but with a necessary sprinkling of crosswordese on the other.

– puzzle by Stanley Newman

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.

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith