New York Times, Saturday, January 20, 2018

I don't remember exactly when I came up with this grid, but the seed for it may have been planted all the way back in summer 2011, when Todd Gross showed me the grid of his puzzle that went on to be published on February 23, 2013. At some point in the year or two after that, I came up with the MAJORITY RULES / HOME THEATER / TEXAS-SIZE combination, and went with SISTER SOULJAH after many attempts with ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH failed. I then continued going clockwise through the grid, getting particularly lucky with PACHINKO, and am very thankful for the feedback I received from my fellow constructors on both the fill and clues.

Had I come up with this grid today, I probably would not have pursued it, because it can be cut in two by turning the A of MAJORITY RULES and the corresponding E into blocks (this also violates one of the Chronicle of Higher Education's style guidelines). But it is always a pleasure to see the effects of Will's editing acumen, and this puzzle is no exception, some of my favorite new clues being those for 10A, 47A, 8D, 11D, 13D, and 46D.

I hope you enjoy solving this as much as I enjoyed making this!

Beautiful, eye-catching grid! Jim curates our Grid Art page, and he tends to put in more than I would. But this one I have no doubt about — looks like a Magic 8 Ball filled with crossbones! Stunning.

Those corners of black squares (six apiece) don't just help create neat grid art, but they make "turning the corners" so much easier. Those black squares nibbling away, helping stagger the starts of answers, are magic indeed.

Speaking of magic, wow was I surprised to get such goodness in YES MASTER / BOSTON CREAM / SISTER SOULJAH! Heck yeah! That's not supposed to happen with puzzles like this, where so many long stacked answers have to wrap around the full perimeter. (If you're one of those people who doesn't want the magic to be taken away, forget what I said about those black squares in the corners …)

And MAJORITY RULES / HOME THEATER / TEXAS SIZE? Okay, that's equally as good! Seems impossible, even with those chunks of black squares in the corners.

AND BOOP A DOOP (awesome name, even if I didn't recognize it) / BIG TICKET ITEM? Yes! SEND A LETTER didn't do much for me, but so far eight out of nine long slots converted into gold? That's an incredible conversion rate.

Too bad the east section didn't quite live up to the rest. RELEASE WAIVER is okay. MARIONETTES is fun. PANNED OUT didn't quite pan out, those +preposition phrases a bit dull. Still, an incredible quantity of long answers interlocked around the perimeter.

If there hadn't been quite so much in the way of esoteric mid-length entries — ANSELMO, SYNODAL, HELLENE, SARAI, the deadly AMATO / PELLA crossing, this would have been a POW! level themeless. But this type of grid arrangement is so tricky, bound to force compromises somewhere. As much as I loved the perimeter, the middle let the rest of my solving experience down.

I think it's a reasonable trade-off though, as you're bound to have to give up something somewhere with a layout of this difficulty.