New York Times, Saturday, December 14, 2019

I worked for a while to get a trio of answers I liked across the middle of this odd-sized grid. When I came up with this option and the "fun" clue for TAXPAYER MONEY I knew it was a grid to pursue further and I fleshed out the rest. Since making this grid I had the opportunity to sing back-up for Hugh Jackman in his touring show, and one of the numbers we performed was You Will Be Found from DEAR EVAN HANSEN. It's always nice when crossword puzzle entries remind you of something meaningful in your life. Hope you enjoy!

Don't let the fact that this grid has 69 words (near the max allowed) fool you. Since it's wider than usual (16 columns), it's effectively as hard to fill as a 67-word 15x15 grid. It's not as simple as that, though. Widening a grid to 16 presents unexpected challenges in a themed puzzle, and in a themeless, it can be brutal.

That one extra column can force oddities in the middle of the puzzle. It's unusual to get two long entries symmetrical to each other (FLYING CARPET / GREEN MONSTER), and that can be tough to build around — especially when they both have to cruise through a stair stack! Unseasoned constructors can get EATen ALIVE, but not Ryan. Seven strong entries anchoring the middle is impressive.

16-wides don't stop troubling you after the middle, though. The corners tend to get harder, too, because what seems like one measly little extra column can mean spending extra black squares. Ryan did well overall in the corners, but a couple of oddballs — UNSOBER, ARNICA, APIA crossing MANRAY, SANDP — left me with a sense that compromises were made.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN … I figured out the DEAR part quickly enough. DEAR … IVAN HENSON? DEAR EVEN HANDED? EVEL KNIEVEL, featuring death-defying stunts? Jim Horne mentioned that this marquee entry made the puzzle feel easy (I like that he and I often represent opposite ends of knowledge spectra), as he was able to drop it in without any crosses. Me, not so much. Good thing I'm secretly a MILIY Cyrus fanatic! D'oh, MILEY! D'oh, don't tell anyone!

(I bet DEAR IVAN HANSEN, written by Dostoevsky and set in the deep of Russian winter, wouldn't have done as well.)

Impressive feat of construction, as are most of Ryan's works. However, today's snazzy entries like ELEVENTY, ROID RAGE, DAIRY COW, VERBOTEN were watered down by ones that didn't hit my ear quite right — AUTOPEN, LAD MAG (do people still say this?), ECONOCAR, ECOTAGE. Those all do check out, but along with the aforementioned oddities, I left feeling a bit unsober.

If you're not familiar with DEAR EVAN HANSEN, then you're probably neither a teenager nor someone who lives with a teenager. My band sometimes programs Waving Through a Window, and as soon as it's announced from the stage, half the audience goes nuts.