New York Times, Friday, November 1, 2013

This grid design owes a debt to a 2008 Barry Silk puzzle run in another venue. I rearranged the black squares in the center to form two mini-staircases of the longest entries in the puzzle. I liked that they were all different lengths (9, 10, and 11 letters). I've used this pattern a few times in both a 68-word version and a 70-word version, but I think this was my first instance working with it.

Plugging in possibilities from my list of seed entries, hoping to stack them, TORT REFORM and CLAW CRANE slid in. VELVET ELVIS and FALLEN HEM also worked on the bottom. For some reason, E.L. DOCTOROW was not in my word list at the time, and I kept that in, only later discovering it's not a new entry in the least. Something else might have popped more. There are underwhelming spots in the shorter fill, but the 8s are not bad and both Will and I especially liked "I'M RUINED" at 58A. JILTEE from the unabridged Webster's kind of saved my bacon in the SE, but I used the first clue that came to mind and I see Will left it in.

As with all of Brad's themeless puzzles, this one is jammed with lively vocabulary. My favorite entries here are BLUE CRAB, LOW-FAT, OIL SHALE, TORT REFORM, PATRON SAINT, E L DOCTOROW, I'M RUINED, BEER CAN, LBJ RANCH and SMELT ROE. That's a lot of great stuff.

Good workout today from one of the themeless masters. Some fantastic answers packed in the grid today, VELVET ELVIS being one of my favorite entries in recent memory. I'm constantly impressed by how many new and fresh entries Brad consistently incorporates into his puzzles.

Novel layout today, with a minor ding for the grid being somewhat segmented (easily separable along the SW to NE diagonal). Generally speaking, a puzzle shouldn't be able to be split in half by the addition of a pair of black squares, because it leads to a less integrated feeling for the solver. In this case, I felt like I was solving two separate mini-puzzles. It's a minor issue, though.

The NE corner was almost impossible for me, finally getting LBJ RANCH with a hail Mary, a flurry of typing in random letter sequences at the eleventh hour. LBJ RANCH is one of my favorite answers in the entire grid, especially given that wacky LBJR sequence to start it, but that corner also contains JILTEE, my least favorite entry. JILTEE is most definitely a word, but not one I imagine many people would use in real life. The fact that LBJ RANCH starts with four consecutive consonants makes that corner's construction very difficult. Brad did well to save it, but as always, almost every audacious piece of fill comes with a trade-off.

Finally, some great clues. A beautiful one for BEER CAN; nice misdirection toward a bar tab when the clue actually refers to the BEER CAN's opener tab. I also really appreciated the clue for TORME, which brought me laughs as I pictured Mel Torme singing to a fat-lipped Kramer. I think good crosswords ought to both entertain and uplift, and that clue certainly did both for me.

Now if someone would just work FEATS OF STRENGTH and AIRING OF GRIEVANCES into a crossword. Sadly, they're probably not gridworthy. Nor is SPONGEWORTHY. Sigh.