New York Times, Tuesday, May 16, 2023

KATE: I reached out cold to Adam, whose puzzles I love, to see if he'd be interested in collaborating. He asked if I had any theme ideas, and I had the barest germ. I love words like these and learned that they're called lonely negatives (15 letters!!). I'd compiled a long list, but didn't know where to go from there. Adam came up with this brilliant construct. We aimed for different prefixes for each themer, and originally had LONELY NEGATIVES as the revealer. The editing team suggested cutting it, which let us add DISCOMBOBULATED — so much better! This was my first NYT acceptance, though it's the second to appear.

ADAM: I normally expect theme collab brainstorms to take weeks. Not so with Kate! She lobbed "Lonely Negatives" in her very first email! I suggested deploying blocks to clue themers self-referentially, and we were off.

I also normally expect to give fill guidance to newer constructors. Again... not so with Kate! She filled circles (squares?) around me. I mean look at that BE HONEST / I CANT LIE stack … that is truly awesome.

Lastly, one neat constructing quirk: bumping INDOLENT and MISNOMER in one block from the edges is the reason the whole grid works, because it makes the block over the D in DOLENT symmetric with the block over the B in BEKNOWNST, reducing two pairs of constraints down to one and allowing much more flexibility with the fill.

All in all, we hope this puzzle left you feeling gruntled!

Hopefully finding "39-Across" left you COMBOBULATED. Secret additional Across entries like "60-Across" are not easily BEKNOWNST to newbs!

I've seen many plays on "not-a-word words," but employing this secret Across trick makes this theme shine. For the second day in a row, Tom McCoy shows us the ropes. It might seem like child's play to get the five special black squares placed, but when working with a theme set like Katherine and Adam's, you have to be DOLENT to ensure everything behaves. Constant vigilance is required since every time you shift your grid skeleton around for better fill potential, you have to keep close watch over those five black squares.

The special constraints make things difficult from the get-go. Usually, you wouldn't want to create so many three-letter entries in the upper left corner since editors grimace when you hit about 22 of them. Not only that, but look what it does to the north region, with stacked 7s. That often forces trade-offs, especially when working with an early-week theme and grid. SOCIALS and CELLI are slightly odd plurals, and LECTOR / TETONS might be tricky for some newbs.

I've known a few Ignacios over the years and never connected the name to NACHOS. Fun clue.

Although some of the fill borders on mid- or even late-week difficulty — THANOS crossing SHUE, POSNER crossing ERNESTO, etc. — I loved all the ICEMAKER / SONICARE and especially BE HONEST / I CANT LIE bonuses. Solid theme, with that secret additional Across trick putting this one over the top.