New York Times, Friday, November 27, 2015

Looking at this puzzle again with fresh eyes, I'm very happy with the dozen 10-letter entries wrapping the edges. That holds true even though the NE quadrant was reworked during the editing process, which knocked out my initial seed entries. It'd be preferable to have gotten a few more exciting answers extending off those stacks into the puzzle's center, though thankfully nothing ugly had to be forced in. BACKPAGE is probably my favorite, yet BIGTOES might be evocative enough to help people stay from their third pass at Thanksgiving leftovers. (It will not deter me from embarking towards a tryptophan-based coma, however.)

Themeless puzzles come with the expectation of difficult, misleading clues. Typically in such cases, a country followed by "cabbage" in a clue hints that the answer will refer to currency. In the case of 22-Across, it's literal cabbage! It's a fun misdirect to include such feints among the scads of legitimately tricky clues.

Colorful and clean grid. It starts as a standard layout, with triple-stacked 10s in each corner, but Peter goes one step further by weaving in a few more long answers. As with any Wentz puzzle, there's a ton of strong entries, my favorite being the ones that feel like fresh, grid-seeding ones: STIFF DRINK, AD AGENCIES (both in the same stack!), BREAK RANKS.

Peter does such a great job of selecting colorful entries that are amenable to clever clues. AD AGENCIES is already a fantastic answer, but [They get spots out] makes it stellar. ("Spots" referring to commercial spots.) Makes for a great a-ha moment upon figuring it out.

That top right corner is so beautiful and snazzy. STIFF DRINK / NO SIREE BOB / AD AGENCIES, with FRESHENS and DENTYNE running through it all is so impressive. (If only FRESHENS and DENTYNE had been linked by clue!). Even more impressive is to do it all with just the minor KBS (kilobytes, usually just seen as kB). Love that corner.

I enjoyed this puzzle more than an average Friday themeless, but I have such a ridiculously high bar for Peter (who for my money is one of the top five themeless makers today). I get spoiled by seeing so much fresh, snazzy new material in his puzzles that getting AVERAGE MEN in the SW is a bit of a letdown. AVERAGE JOE sounds so much more snappy.

It's totally ridiculous to nit-pick about a single entry being a bit neutral though. Any themeless so cleanly executed — what other liabilities are there besides KBS? — with great material like AUDIOPHILE, VOODOO DOLL, ENGINE ROOM with its nod to Star Trek's Scotty, READY SET GO with a devilish [Starting line] clue, etc. is way above the general average.