New York Times, Saturday, September 18, 2021

To be honest, I was surprised that the New York Times picked up this grid with the explicit marquee entry GAY PORN. Though I often try to push the envelope a bit with my themeless puzzles, I kind of WENT OUT ON A LIMB with this one and was happy with the result. The final clue for GAY PORN is fairly mild, though I encourage the indie scene to think of some alternative cluing angles as a fun exercise. It's hard not to come up with puns now myself…

I enjoy making puzzles such as this one that capture a wide variety of the color and character in our world. As a result, I often include entries that are unfamiliar, topical, or a bit strange which make for a chewier solve. It's always been a personal construction philosophy to not oversanitize my grids with things everyone knows, especially for Saturday puzzles. So you'll get rarities like MECHA and MEATBAGS and AMAZON PAY (which also makes a painfully apt imperative…) It is worth noting that I've since retired NRA from my word list, so apologies if that entry caused any offense.

Excited that this is my 20th New York Times puzzle (and 10th straight Saturday!) I still have a lot to improve, but I'm really enjoying the journey so far. Hope you enjoy!

I laughed after uncovering MEATBAGS. My brother and I play Clash Royale, and certain high-hit point troops are known as "meat shields" — as in you send them out in front to take the punishment, while more valuable troops behind use them as armor.

I also enjoyed NU METAL, hearing the term maybe ten years ago. It sure is hard to parse, though, so Jim Horne (the professional musician!) asked me what "num et al" was. I bet it might have gone over better with Jim if NU METAL had been presented horizontally?

A ton of stuff that felt only vaguely familiar:

BRONZER PALETTE. Reasonable number of Google hits, and probably something ultra-familiar to people who wear this kind of makeup.

MOM BLOGS. My initial reaction was that this felt arbitrary, but it turns out there are way more MOM BLOGS than I could have ever imagined. Perhaps not surprising, given how intense parenthood is. Sadly, the number of Dad blogs looks to be more than an order of magnitude less.

TROLL ARMY. Would I rather face a Battle of Hogwarts TROLL ARMY, or an army of Internet trolls? It's sad that the world has come to people hiring armies of trolls for their electronic onslaughts.

LIBATE / APNEAL. Glad that these ran on a Saturday, not a Friday. Also relieved that I was able to solve them, deriving these word-ish entries from "libation" and "apnea."

Some of these entries gave me the same I'm-not-hip-enough-to-understand-this sensation as DANK MEMES, but as with that entry, I'm sure that there are many people that will delight in these.

I also wondered about GAY PORN. I appreciate that some crossword editors are pushing to reduce entries that are unpleasant to some solvers, like OGLE, LEER, PORNO, SMUT. I'm curious if those editors would count GAY PORN as a similar liability, or as an asset because of its inclusiveness. Glad I'm not an editor.

I'm a huge fan of Ryan's wide-open-middle, ultra-low-word-count themelesses. This one didn't awe me like those usually do, but I do appreciate seeing constructors expanding their breadth of work.