New York Times, Friday, April 10, 2015

In the Xword Info constructor notes for the 13 September 2013 puzzle, Patrick Berry commented that he has "come to like making themelesses with wide-open centers, because if you can complete the center you'll probably make it across the finish line." My initial response to this was something to the effect of "Bah! You tease us lesser mortals." Yet, my curiosity led me to take his advice, and, by Jove, he may have been onto something.

Fearing the inevitable open-square bonanza, I preemptively added the "staircase" arrangement at the top and bottom. The 15-letter center spanner, LIVINLAVIDALOCA—which just screams for themeless usage in so many ways—came into play when I noticed that my designed grid made for decent crossings with the entry (i.e. it has lots of vowels and a few mid-word letters).

Besides that setup, there's really not much else to discuss. Because of the low word count, I didn't have too many options for the surrounding fill. I'm not overly fond of the ROLLOVERIRA/OVERDIDIT dupe, OMS, RFDS, PERMALLOY (though I do like its portmanteau-iness), SOO, and maybe MLLES (the French equivalent of the crossword-y SRTAS), but I think 6 or 7 clunkers is not bad given the wide-open grid.

A great majority of constructors never dip a toe into the quagmire that is the 64-word themeless, so it's that much more impressive that a newer constructor would try it. A really nice result, an open puzzle featuring a lot of long entries.

Great to get a bit of David's personal vibe into the puzzle, the clues for EMMET and LIVIN LA VIDA LOCA clued to "The LEGO Movie" and "Shrek 2." I much appreciated getting a feel of recency via cluing instead of esoteric (to me) answers. So many of the latest pop stars or rap songs go over my head, requiring every single crossing to get. At the ACPT, Sam Ezersky and I talked about how David's earlier GRAND THEFT AUTO: III / MTV MOVIE AWARDS puzzle resonated so strongly with him while I had to struggle with those entries — we had a laugh when realizing that he and David were from the exact same demographic ... very different from mine.

By nature, wide-open areas are often going to require some glue to hold them together. David does amazingly well in most of his grid, spreading out the bits of OCALA, MLLES, ILO such that they're not terribly noticeable. Most impressive is the middle stack of MUHAMMAD ALI / ROLLOVER IRA / WLLIAM TELL with very clean crossings.

The only place I hitched a bit was the SW corner. As much as I liked ALGER HISS / WIRE FENCE and SCIPIO, it's the only corner of the grid where there's a concentration of elements David mentioned: SOO, EER, RFDS. I think I like ZEIT, but I can see how it would feel like prefix-ish or too deep into the German language for some.

Finally, loved many of the clues. [Peer group?] for EYES is brilliant. [Pen that's no longer used] refers to a penitentiary = ALCATRAZ. And [Wheel of Fortune] as part of the TAROT deck is a great misdirect.