New York Times, Friday, December 20, 2013

I tried something different on this one. Instead of seeding the puzzle with longer entries, I locked in quality 3- and 4-letter entries (ATE, ASH, MUD, EAR, etc.). This method ensures smooth shorter fill, and, if you work at it long enough, quality longer fill, too. If you fill 3x7 or 4x7 sections the other way around, it's too easy to fall in love with one or two great answers propped up by junk. So ... yeah. FILL. It's all about the fill.

Ian was my assistant from fall 2010 through the spring of 2011. Over the years he's turned into a crackerjack constructor. Easy, medium, or hard — any difficulty level is fine for him. Superclean constructions, too. In this grid I like MAN CAVE, MUG SHOT, USO TOUR, CROPLAND, SAM ADAMS, HOT TUB, IT WORKS, YES MA'AM, GAS MASK, and ED HELMS. And that's just in the Acrosses!

Another beautiful construction from Ian, the first constructor to earn his second POW! during my iron-fisted regime of terror. Er, happiness. Same difference. Almost all themeless puzzles require trade-offs, with snazzier entries or lower word counts coming at the price of ugly fill. Today's is a beauty, a huge amount of lively long fill and almost nothing by way of subpar answers. Almost Berryesque, I daresay. Sacrilege, I know!

When Ian sent his commentary, I thought at first he was joking. Start with the short stuff? And fill in the longer stuff from there? Ha, that's funny! And then I started to wonder ... is this madness, or genius? (Such a fine line.) And to my surprise, Ian said indeed, he was being serious, trying a new approach to minimize ugly short fill. Heck, if the long fill is so nice with such a minimal amount of dreck, maybe he's onto something.

The only hiccup I saw was in the SW corner, with VAYA/VARIG/AGITA. I had to look up the last two, and was glad I did, as they seem like pieces of information I ought to have in my knowledge base. I knew VAYA (con Dios) from spending way too much of my 20s steeped in King of the Hill episodes when I could have actually been doing something useful (like watching Simpsons episodes). If a solver hadn't been exposed to KotH though, Dios help them in the VAYA/VARIG crossing.

One issue I had was it was over too quickly. Perhaps I'm simply on Ian's wavelength, but my solving experience flew by. I would have liked more wordplay clues like "Touch-type?" for BRAILLE (brilliant!), and it felt like too many clues were leaning too far into the straightforward side (SEATBACKS and LEATHER seem ripe for clever wordplay clues, for example). Oh well, if nothing else the variety in difficulty level is good. Great work from Ian today!