New York Times, Friday, October 9, 2015

I constructed this puzzle in March 2014, during my junior year of high school. Wait a second, what's high school? Oh yeah, that's so last year! Now that Stanford has started up, everything else has faded into a blur. Even though I've only had a week of classes, I can see that college is going to be much more time- and homework-intensive than high school was. I'm not sure how all my crossword activities are going to fit in with college, but I'll definitely make time to submit puzzles every once in a while!

My seed entries for this puzzle were PLAYBOY MANSION and TOPLESS DANCERS, which seems kind of weird now that there are girls living in close proximity . . . oh well, YOLO! I still think that symmetrical pair is pretty awesome, even though I'm obviously much more mature now that I'm in college ;).

And I was especially thrilled to be able to incorporate two of my nine-letter seed entries, AIR HOCKEY and GENIUS BAR, in the neighboring stacks. Speaking of AIR HOCKEY, my dorm doesn't have it for some reason, which is really frustrating! We have ping-pong and pool tables, but I personally prefer air hockey to both of these. Well, I guess I'll have to appeal to dorm gov at some point — alas, the struggle of being a college student!

Anyway, my other favorite entries were HIPHOP, METH LABS, HELLION, OOH-LA-LA, and BITCOIN. I wasn't thrilled with LASER PEN (which doesn't sound as good to my ear as LASER POINTER), EDH, or RATA (mainly because of its position as the first across entry), but these three entries seemed like smallish tradeoffs, and I was certainly satisfied enough to proceed to the cluing.

Well, not quite! Before I clue a puzzle, I always check to make sure there aren't any dupes, which is a nerve-wracking process. My heart sunk when I noticed BAR at 35-Across, which was much too similar to GENIUS BAR. Fortunately, I noticed that the letter at 35-Across/29-Down could also be an S. SAR is kinda meh, but at least I was able to spice up the OSAMA clue!

Well, that's about all I have to say. Time to get back to tearing it up at frat parties . . . er, I mean getting ahead on my computer science and math assignments due next week! In any case, happy solving!

Very nice construction from the recent Stanford matriculate. I very much appreciate his quest to stay further and further away from gluey bits while not compromising on featuring colorful fill. I liked the modern feel to this one, featuring BITCOIN, Apple's GENIUS BAR (which I've been extremely impressed with when my wife has needed consultation), and METH LABS. That last one is pretty edgy, but it does relate directly to the very popular "Breaking Bad." Man oh man, that series was way too much for me, never able to go to sleep after watching an episode.

On a related note, TOPLESS DANCERS and PLAYBOY MANSION form a quasi-mini-theme of "making some NYT solvers uncomfortable." I'm personally fine with both of them, especially PLAYBOY MANSION, which (for better or for worse) is a cultural touchstone, but TOPLESS DANCERS sort of tips it over the line for me. I like getting a bit of edge in my crosswords, but this one feels like it steps outside the NYT's core focus. I suppose a little shock value can be healthy.

With just 12 entries of 8+ letters, it's important to nail each and every one of them. (Sure, the seven-letter entries like HELLION and BITCOIN can add color, but it's not easy to do.) I liked a lot of the fresher material like AIR HOCKEY and LABOR POOL, but ONION ROLL and ORANGEADE feel a bit stale to me. And a LASER PEN … is that better than or different from a LASER POINTER? Even after researching it, I couldn't say definitively. So definitely agree with David.

Nice and clean short fill. EDH sticks out as the only gluey blight in my eyes, but then again, it's cool to have something that's represented by the curious letter "ð". SAR is apparently the "Sons of the American Revolution" — pretty minor though.

A bit too overtly raunchy for my taste, but I'm sure it will appeal more to David's teenage demographic.