New York Times, Friday, April 28, 2017

This is the oldest puzzle I have in the New York Times queue: It dates all the way back to June 2014, the summer between my junior and senior years of high school! Looking back on this puzzle now, I have mixed feelings about it. I still love SEXY AND I KNOW IT . . . yes, I'm totally a dork for getting excited about a trashy song from 2011, but it brings back so many memories for me! I also really like ACROPOLIS, GO DEEP, WHAT A DUMP, LEMON/LIME, and PEA-BRAINED.

Then there's GENTLEMEN'S CLUB, which I'm honestly less fond of as an entry now, since the whole concept of a gentlemen's club is kinda gross. Gentlemen's club is certainly well-known enough to appear in a crossword grid, but it's just not the kind of thing I'd want to showcase in a themeless now that I'm no longer a teenager. I still got a chuckle out of my original "Where less is often more" clue, but I'm glad Will and Joel went with something more neutral.

I also wish I'd made the lower left more lively—BOUNCES OUT and ADDICTED TO are both a bit bland, and I can't say I love ICC or XERO. I do like GO DEEP, GMAIL, and CITY MAP, though. Overall, I'm pleased with how smooth the fill in this one turned out, and I'd say there's a nice amount of zip. So even though this isn't my favorite themeless Will has on file from me, I'm very grateful it's being published!

14-letter entries are hard to build themelesses around because they automatically force placement of a black square (at the start or end of the entry). That might not seem like a big deal, but the name of the game in smart themeless creation is flexibility. Retaining as much possibility to shift a block around is huge — often meaning the difference between a zippy, clean corner, and one that includes a glob of crossword glue right off the bat.

David employs a tactic that tends to work well when working with 14s — he basically creates a triple-stack in the upper left corner, but shifted one row down. This can be easier to create than a regular triple-stack, since you have some flexibility at those four letters inside of 1-Across.

Funny how much David's and my assessment of the puzzle match up! Great start, with ACROPOLIS over WHAT A DUMP, and ESPN ZONE running through it all. Short fill is all fine, and even shines with CODER's great clue, [Bug exterminator?] — CODERs spend a lot of their time debugging.

PEA BRAINED ... something about that word that makes me laugh. Maybe because having two young kids has made me even more PEABRAINED than usual.

At the opposite corner, it's hard for me to get excited about add-a-preposition phrases. BOUNCES OUT and ADDICTED TO don't compare to WHAT A DUMP in my eyes. And getting dabs of ICC (the … Interstate Commerce Commission?) / XERO (odd prefix) was indeed inelegant, as David pointed out.

Hard to get excited about SEXY AND I KNOW IT if you don't know it. (The song, that is! We all know that I'm sexy.) And yes, GENTLEMEN'S CLUB has a bit of an ick factor for me, too. At best, it evokes images of 19^th century London, where many an establishment prohibited women. It's also a euphemism for a strip club. That said, I'm sure there will be some guys who dig these seeds. Maybe even some women.

I can see how people who love the song SEXY AND I KNOW IT could really dig this puzzle — even past that mysterious title, there are some nice features.

Also neat to see how David's perspectives have changed over the years!