New York Times, Saturday, October 24, 2015

I'm pleased to make a comeback after a single, rather controversial outing a few years ago. I soon realized that cutting your teeth on themeless puzzles is probably the most intensive way of getting better at construction in general. A phrase like VANITY PRESS is ideal to me, because 1) it's a new entry for a Times puzzle, 2) it has so much personality, and 3) it's decipherable as a phrase even without prior knowledge, meaning it passes my "learnable moment" test. As a musician who currently finds himself at a highly academic institution, I love it.

Jacques LACAN may seem obscure, but he is UBER-big in academia (I originally had "'Hysteric's Discourse' psychoanalyst" hoping some solvers would lay down FREUD). KICK ME SIGNS are ... also big in academic settings? (Although, honestly, more cultural trope than reality? Tell me, world!) NIQAB and ARAB conversing with each another at the top is nice, though I hope implication of any sort of one-to-one between them has been avoided.

My non-reliance on any sort of autofill — does that qualify these puzzles as "artisanal"? — has taught me to think creatively about longer entries. ADULT SITES and BLANK CDS came about this way — it is always my hope that the quality of the seed entries and non-seed entries are near to each other enough that it becomes hard to tell which came first.

Thanks to Will and Joel for most of the clues and for a mild redo of the SE corner. The isolation there isn't ideal, but opening it up a bit would have meant undoing the central weave. I'm happy to see Will stuck more or less to the flavor of my original clues for 1D and 34A. My clue for 21D (BEDTIME STORY) was originally "Its end is rarely reached," but the published one is more on point. The transformation of 27D (CHESS) is just hilarious: my original clue was "Speed ___."

Really dug this one. I like odd grid patterns, and this one has a cool-looking middle. Slant-stacks (answers on top of each other but shifted) are easier to create than straight-up stacks because the ends have fewer constraints, but they're still hard. And running EIGHT long answers through them — that's notable.

Now, Andrew doesn't have a huge number of long slots in this grid — just 13 that are 8+ letters long — and most of them are located in that tough-to-build middle section. With only 13 long slots, it's important to me to get most all of them converted into great material. Andrew delivers, with KICK ME SIGNS and BARREL ORGANS my favorites.

The only one that's neutral in my eyes is SOLVENTS, and even that could have been made into an asset with a more interesting clue. With a more esoteric chemistry answer like ENOL or AMINE, you need a straightforward clue. SOLVENTS I think is well-known enough to be fair game for a clever clue, though.

I think a great puzzle should have (assets minus liabilities > ~10), so did Andrew hold his liabilities to three or less? EROO sticks out like a sore thumb, an inelegant suffix. Hard to avoid in that tough south section, what with BEDTIME STORY, ALPINE LAKE, and DENSE FOG bordering it. But other than that … SSA is minor (Social Security Administration), and AGE ONE is iffy to me. It is an important age milestone though, so I give it a pass.

Some might complain about NIQAB — I plunked in HIJAB as I think many will — but I like how these ported words have multiple acceptable spellings.

The NW corner, which was too sectioned off from the rest of the puzzle for my taste, had the one real worry for me. As I was solving, I had 14-A [Toughen] as ?NURE. I was rooting so hard for it to be the spelling I knew from before I started crosswords: INURE (not ENURE). Whew!

Overall, enough assets to overcome the small number of liabilities, plus a cool-looking grid. A great solve.