New York Times, Saturday, October 5, 2013

I started out picturing the grid with the two double stacks of 15s. The intersecting central 13s only came into the plan once I started writing the NW corner. 15-Across was the first to go in and I started looking at other 15s staring with F, thinking that 1-Down would be OFF-something. I got really close with CARLOAN/D and TIEGAME (singular) at 2 and 3-Down. I saw ALGORE working nicely but the dearth of OFFA??? led me to try AFFABLE. Then I worked out a pretty good corner if BOANS was a thing (a defunct department store in Perth).

I joked to myself about using CARLEAK instead. That was enough to get me over the hump by thinking of LEASE and adding the central 13 running across. I wasn't psyched about FREONS and would have chucked it if the opposite corner hadn't come together so well. Didn't much like HOMELESS SHELTER as an entry. A lot of space for a word you can't really clue with my usual japery but there was too much good stuff in the SW corner to pass up.

Do you quake a little when you see Byron's byline? He fills his puzzles with lots of vocabulary never seen before in crosswords, which makes them naturally difficult, and then he writes good, tough clues. Most of the clues here are his. So many favorites — 1A, 18A (nice bit of trivia), 20A, 25A, 39A, 54A (more trivia), 9D, 16D (mean!), 34D (whew!), and others.

Two Puzzles of the Week, can that be? I tried so hard to adhere to my own rule of highlighting a single standout puzzle of the week, but I struggled, given how many puzzles I thought were fantastic this week (and we still have a Patrick Berry Sunday to look forward to!) Thanks to my Girlfriend/Wife/Barbarian Jill Denny for the idea of settling on two POWs.

Beautiful puzzle today. To continue my climbing analogy from last week's Saturday puzzle, I looked at this puzzle's teenty-tiny holds, slopers, and near-nothing features, and I quaked. Sure, I fell at times as I made my way up, but I fought through each of the tricky spots, taking a few rests to figure out how to move past a certain section, and came away slapping the top anchors with a triumphant yell. It stretched me in such a way that I wanted to take a picture of it (yes, I take pictures of great gym routes) to bottle the feeling of struggling mightily but ultimately managing to accomplish the near impossible.

Byron is a master at the challenging Saturday grid, a skill that few constructors have honed to his level. He's the 3rd most published Saturday author in the Shortz era, behind only the great Rich Norris (now the editor of the LA Times crossword) and the mystical/magical Patrick Berry. And Byron gives us a constructor's clinic with this puzzle. Two double-stacks, both with interesting answers and (mostly) squeaky-clean crossings, accompanying solid short fill through the puzzle's midsection, makes for a masterful construction. It's amazing how clean all the crossings through the double-stacks are; a real rarity. Only ENS and OEO as your (very minor) dings? You gotta be kidding me.

And it's not often I'm SO impressed with a puzzle's cluing, but the "Large monitors" clue was fantastic; same with "Tip used for icing". For the latter, I kept pounding my head, swearing at Byron for likely tossing some sort of ridiculous esoteric baking tool into the puzzle. When I finally hit on SILENCER, a big smile came to my face.

Brilliant. How could I not name this stonker co-Puzzle of the Week?