New York Times, Friday, October 14, 2016

This one was a lot of fun to make! I'd thought AINT I A WOMAN would make a nice entry ever since Finn Vigeland, the JASA Crossword Class, and I had a puzzle rejected because (among other probably reasonable reasons) it had (to the editors unfamiliar) BELL HOOKS in it. (!??@?@??!?!!?!?!?!#?@?@?!@?!@?@#? <- verbatim quote from me after hearing the news. Also verbatim: "But it's an inferably-spelled name! Bell! Hooks! LIKE THE THINGS ON WHICH YOU HANG YOUR BELLS.) Robbed of seeing her name in all caps in the solution, I mentioned her work in the clue for AINT I, hoping for another rare starts-off-lowercase crossword clue. No dice.

A lot of wordplay-driven clues in this one, and Will and Joel (and Frank?) did a lovely job smoothing my excesses when I leaned a little ungrammatical (I had "Play hard to get?" for IN-JOKE before they realized English syntax is a virtue before G-d). Most of the clues are mine, though I went, originally, heavier on the pop culture — besides bell, no more references to Pynchon (YEOMEN), Vonnegut (his SAN Lorenzo), or DAS Racist. My roomie tells me his dad would have hated those clues, so hopefully this was all worth it.

Very happy to get TRANSGENDER into a puzzle, and with a hopefully inoffensive clue — not always guaranteed these days. Crosswords are our own little sandbox of linguistic import; that word hadn't appeared in a puzzle before, though I hope to see it again and again.

When I become my generation's great writer, what adjective will people use to describe my style? "Chenesque" sounds wonky, and there happens to be a couple of billion Chens in the world, making it a bit unspecific. I suppose I'll have to settle for "brilliant." I'd accept "magical."

HEMINGWAYESQUE is so descriptive and spot-on. Really liked it, especially since it reminded me of Byron Walden's ZOLAESQUE-seeded themeless puzzle back in the finals of an ACPT (was that featured in "Wordplay?"). And to get the fun BARGAINING CHIP, along with TRANSGENDER right above Sojourner Truth's AINT I A WOMAN made for a fantastic heart of the puzzle.

The periphery was pretty good, too. Not sure how AOL RADIO compares to other services, or if it's kind of outdated, but DOG PARK was awfully nice.

Similar story for the rest of the corners. POUND CAKE makes my mouth water, but INQUIRE OF felt like neutral filler. IN JOKE, yes! GO NEAR, kind of sketchy. That last one is *probably* fine as a lexical chunk, but it's neutral at best to me.

I liked EREADER (although its super-friendly letters is starting to make it a popular crossword entry these days), but COLD OPEN … I enjoyed discovering what the term meant (jumping straight into the show without an opening sequence), but it doesn't have a lot of spark for me. More of a "hmm, that's interesting to learn."

Generally a well-constructed grid, although GARI was a hard glob of glue in my eyes. It's a tough call — it technically is an accurate word, but in the many hundreds of times I've gone out to dozens of sushi places, never once have I heard it called GARI. When someone wants more pickled ginger, they just ask for ginger, yeah? Now, that little GARI is critical to holding the fantastic skeleton of long answers together, so I ended up doing my best to overlook it in the end. But finishing the puzzle guessing on that G was like finishing a sushi dinner on a piece of uni — sea urchin is a taste/smell/texture I haven't acquired yet.

Overall though, a great skeleton of long answers, with a couple of nice entries spread around the perimeter.