New York Times, Friday, December 27, 2013

This puzzle went through several rewrites before settling on the final themeless. CALVIN AND HOBBES (my favorite entry) is the perfect answer, I think. It's well-known by multiple generations, universally beloved and evokes some really fun memories.

Big thanks to Dan, Carol and Grant (to name a few) for their help putting this one together. Dan adds: "It was a great deal of fun to participate in the creation of this puzzle (as it is every semester). Any crossword enthusiast (at least 55 years old) would find this class immensely rewarding."

Twice a year for the past few years Ian Livengood has conducted a class on crossword construction for the Jewish Association Serving the Aging in New York City. (Caleb Madison started the class in 2010, but Ian took it over when Caleb went off to Yale.) As with all of Ian's constructions, the grid here is lively and superclean. I wonder how he does a collaboration like this in real time in a class.

I wrote Ian a month ago, in mock surprise that his name WASN'T on the list for upcoming puzzles that week. His response: "If it ain't broke ..." I'll have what you're having, sir.

Seriously, when you're this good, I don't mind seeing a name pop up this frequently. Today's themeless is a collaboration with his J.A.S.A. Crossword Class, which sounds like a blast. It's hard for me to imagine anyone in the class knows INSTAGRAM or DJANGO UNCHAINED well, so it's pretty awesome that this puzzle has a relatively recent feel to it, what with INSTAGRAM, OBAMACARE, and texty OTOH (on the other hand). Good mix too, with RED SCARE and NEWSREELS; something for everyone.

Themeless puzzles have an interesting race-like quality amongst constructors: "who'll be the first to debut X?" OBAMACARE debuted in the NYT in a 2012 David Quarfoot puzzle and has appeared two more times since (three including today's). Seeing it once recently is fine, but seeing it four times now gets a little tiresome. It's such a tough thing to figure out, since the delay in getting themeless puzzles can run in the range of two years.

A rule of thumb I use in my own themeless submissions is based off a comment Will made last summer. He puts checks by snappy answers (DADS TO BE, VETO POWER), and minuses next to ugly fill (I would consider NAOH, EST, plural UNOS, TAE, and TAI in this category), and that helps him figure out whether or not to accept. I like to have at least 10 checks (preferably 15), less than 5 minuses, and zero "automatic disqualifications" (recently I tried to sneak RSI (repetitive stress injury) by, but it didn't fly). This is all subjective of course. ONE IN TEN seems awfully arbitrary to me, but perhaps someone else would see it as desirable, especially if they could come up with an awesome clue for it.

Enjoyable solve today. J.A.S.A. Crossword Class, keep up the good work!