New York Times, Saturday, January 30, 2021

I recently passed my one-year mark of constructing themelesses, so I thought this might be a good time to jot down a few things I wish I'd known when I first started.

• Stair-step block patterns that go up are usually easier to fill than stair-step block patterns that go down. (I'm realizing now that Patrick Berry actually explained why this is in his excellent Crossword Constructor's Handbook and that my dumb ass had somehow glossed over it the first time around.)

• Actually reading Berry's handbook will save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run.

• "Cheater squares" is a term invented by masochistic constructors who want to make an already difficult task harder for no good reason.

• "No partial dupes" is another one of those unwritten crosswords rules, which in many ways resemble baseball's unwritten rules. For instance: a small but vocal contingent of crossword purists will get pretty mad at you if they catch you disregarding this "no-dupe" rule. As a rule of thumb, crossword's unwritten rules should be afforded the same respect and reverence as baseball's unwritten rules.

• Every themeless construction is an exercise in avoiding SEERESSES as your final across answer. But go too far the other way with your J's and Q's, and eventually, your seams will show, and everyone will know you are just afraid of SEERESSES. It's best to deal with the SEERESSES early on while maintaining a healthy but respectful distance.

• Pangrams should be reserved for immediate family members who have the grace not to write mean things about your puzzles on the internet.

• Don't pander. Your solvers can tell when you do, making them heavy bored. Stick with words you'd be happy seeing as a solver (without lying to yourself), and the rest will work itself out.

Beautiful construction, a work of art. I appreciate how Nam Jin eschewed the full triple-stacks and broke up the entries in rows 1/15. Many themeless constructors — including me — would scrap like hell, fighting against the full triples, trying over and over and triply over again to achieve a reasonable balance of color and clarity. Going to that dark side of the force will almost always result in some compromises. Note how clean Nam Jin's grid is — not a single dab of crossword glue in a 68-word layout as hard as this demonstrates spectacular craftsmanship.

Such standout marquee entries, too. When you only have eight long entries, it's so important to make them sing. MORE POWER TO YOU, IT'S NOW OR NEVER, ROCKET SCIENTIST … it doesn't take that last one to figure out that these are out of this world. I'm less into YOU HATE TO SEE IT, since I don't use the phrase, but it's also strong.

The eights weren't as stellar; DISCERNS, GET GOING, BASELINE more baseline entries than stars. KITTY CAT is fun, though.

Thank goodness for that rhyming hint on AXOLOTL! I've seen this creature before in crosswords, but it always makes me panic since I have a roughly 23% chance of spelling it correctly. Thank you, Ogden Nash!

I enjoyed COATES and KUNDERA, too. I have a tough time remembering how to spell their names, so it can be frustrating if my poor spelling interferes with my top crossword priority: getting a fair shot at finishing with no errors. Maybe you don't know one or both of these authors — that'd be a shame, but understandable — but not to worry. Nam Jim carefully crossed all those 13 letters with regular words while leaving no ambiguities.

This is by far the best way to work in names like COATES, gently introducing solvers to more recent influential persons. Other puzzles have risked tainting solvers' first associations with someone new to them.

Fantastic craftsmanship, high marks for technical execution. It didn't have quite enough artistic zing in the fill or clever fun in the cluing to get the POW!, but it certainly received consideration.