New York Times, Friday, January 20, 2017

A couple of years ago I decided to try my hand at themeless puzzles because I have such a hard time thinking up themes. Unfortunately, I have my issues with themelesses too. Namely, cluing. So I asked Erik Agard if he would write some clues for me and he told me to do it myself. (His response was actually more like, "You are totally capable and would feel so proud if you did it yourself, but of course I'm happy to help.") So I try Kevin Der. He might be willing, right? He tells me basically the same thing. So there's my answer. It's time for me to start learning how to write difficult clues.

The grid sat around for four months. I wondered if a solo themeless was just too ambitious for someone at my level. I kept putting it off. But I finally sat down and did it. It was excruciating. So, so hard. I got some great feedback from a few friends, tweaked some clues, sent it off to Will, and crossed my fingers.

When I got the acceptance notice, I couldn't believe it. I felt like I had taken a major step in my constructing career. A solo themeless! The puzzle with all those hard clues I wrote was accepted! The funny part, of course, is that Will changed just about every clue. I'm not complaining! I know from experience that Will knows what he's doing and every change he's ever made to a puzzle of mine has been for the better. To be honest, I'm not sure what the lesson is for me. Should I not stress over the clues? Am I really bad at cluing? Was I just "off" on the difficulty level? These are questions I'll ponder while working on my next themeless grid.

PuzzleGirl! So great to see her name back in the NYT lineup. That combo of TONY SOPRANO and his TOY SOLDIERS in a HOTEL ROOM being THE DEVIL YOU KNOW makes for such a neat middle of the puzzle. A few other long answers spice up the corners, in particular, the AMEN CORNER. This engineer highly approves of EXHAUST FAN, too.

Angela's layout is heavily dependent on seven-letter entries, and those can be tough to make sing. There are a few so-so answers like SINCERE, NETTLES, MARIANO (sorry, this Yankee-hater can't abide by that), but Angela does well to work in the colloquial MR RIGHT (aka "Jeff Chen"), DREAM ON!, and AFROPOP.

Not only that, but she spruces up some of the entries that don't sing by themselves with great clues. EPITHET as ["The Great" or "The Terrible"] is fun, giving such a huge range. ASTAIRE gets a nice piece of trivia, his book known as "The Man, the Dancer." And TARTANS gives us cool names in "Royal Stewart" and Clan Donald" (the patterns associated with those clans). It's stuff like this that makes me wish my name were MacChen.

Even [Activate, as a wah-wah pedal] for STEP ON and [Chat, across the Pyrénées] for GATO ("chat" is the French word for "cat") help spice things up.

Now, I didn't care for some entries. SAINTE feels a bit of a cheat, tagging on that uber-friendly ending E. The HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) is outdated, although one could argue it's historically important. STD isn't a great abbreviation, nor is PSS. With SEL and the arbitrary TEN AM, it was on the verge of being too much for me.

(KEB and PITTI are tough proper nouns, but I think both of those are both crossworthy and done with fair crossings.)

And this puzzle might not do much for those who haven't seen "The Sopranos." TONY SOPRANO is a toughie — he'll elate some, and cause others to shrug.

But overall, I was personally so entertained by this one, that middle in particular.