New York Times, Saturday, December 17, 2022

CHRISTINA: Tom and I met at ACPT through our mutual friend Andrea Carla Michaels, and connected over our shared Minnesota roots. We discussed themeless construction, and how sometimes when working solo we end up not knowing when to stop tinkering with a grid — we both had found ourselves frequently not being satisfied enough with a grid to move on to writing clues. My computer is full of themeless grids sans clues!

Collaborations, I have found, are a nice motivation for getting a puzzle over the finish line. We thought it would be fun to team up on a Saturday-level puzzle — the only day of the week Tom was missing to hit for the cycle. I'm excited to share a byline with him as he reaches the milestone!

TOM: Such a privilege and pleasure to team up with Christina! She provided the awesome seed entry/clue in THERMOMETER [Cold shower?], which I incorporated into a grid with the central stagger stack, and we took turns filling sections from there.

We hope the puzzle brought you a smile or two along the way!

Tom, Christina, YOU'RE ON FIRE! There were so many entertaining entries that they eased the pain of having fewer-than-average long entries (only 11, as opposed to roughly 14). WEENIE ROAST, AIR FRESHENER, plus a mini-theme of EMAIL HOAXES / FAN THEORIES / TRUE OR FALSE? Definitely true!

Amazing work in the smile-inducing cluing. THERMOMETER isn't an exciting entry, but [Cold shower?] is Saturday-level punniness. That's shower, as in "a thing that shows."

The clues elevated the mid-length material, too. WINE BAR is already great, and when you play on "ports" as a computer port vs. a dessert wine, it becomes a star. SELFIE as [Something you reach out and take] + AMOEBA as [One confined to a cell?] = chuckles all around.

Even some of the short usual suspects were uplifted by sharp cluing. I've heard a lot of "pitcher" misdirects away from SALE, but [Pitcher's aim?] made me think so strongly of baseball that I couldn't unthink it. And what a great piece of trivia about the YETI. Apparently, you can actually secure a YETI hunting license, YET I still wonder if that's as much a hoax as the YETI.

Notice that if you "flip" the grid (along the NW to SE diagonal), this layout is essentially a standard "stair-stack." The flip gave a fresher feel, moving away from the tried-and-true themeless stair-stack, and it also generated an eye-catching visual. Not sure what the S S in the middle of the grid refers to, but it left me sans souci.

My main complaint was that the puzzle flew by much too quickly. Switching yesterday's and today's puzzles would have made them both stronger, better matching expectations that the NYT Saturday puzzle ought to be the hardest one of the week.