New York Times, Friday, February 10, 2017

When I first made this puzzle (many months ago), I tried to get MENA out of the grid. Then I heard about a movie called "Mena" starring Tom Cruise and coming out in January 2017. So I left it in there and figured I'd ask Will and Joel to run the puzzle after the movie came out, and I'd be the hippest, most current MENA-cluer in all the land. But now it turns out that the movie isn't coming out until September. And also it won't even be called "Mena." It will instead be called "American Made." Score another one for "Actress Suvari." There's a lesson here somewhere about....something.

The original grid I submitted, unfortunately, had a dupe (EAR/DOGEAR), which I didn't notice until I saw that Will and Joel edited the final grid. The dupe's removal caused CAIRO to become the obscure-ish BOITO and ARI to become the prefix-y OVI. Talking to constructors and solvers, I've noticed that dupes and near dupes are an area where there's a good deal of aesthetic disagreement. I'm personally not so bothered by something like EAR/DOGEAR, where the two entries could be clued totally differently. But I know that sort of dupe can be fingers-on-a-chalkboard-level annoying to some solvers.

Looking back at the grid, I didn't intend for the long answers to all feel like they came from the same cultural universe, but they sort of do: one could imagine a DATA SCIENTIST playing MINECRAFT while watching TREVOR NOAH before going to see a JESSE EISENBERG movie. I prefer the opposite: that the long answers in themeless puzzles come from diverse walks of life. But I wound up liking this particular grid the best and how these answers all fit together. Hope you enjoyed the solve!

DATA SCIENTIST as the "sexiest job of the 21^st century" = a great entry and clue combination. Sometimes I get overly excited about a phrase I might seed a crossword with, and I might even finish out the grid before realizing that it can't take a very good clue. "Uncanny valley" was one like this — neat phrase, bizarre idea, but how are you going to clue it? DATA SCIENTIST, with its fantastic clue, makes for the type of seed I love.

Strong gridwork. Kyle does use a 72-word grid — the max allowed for a themeless — which often comes with fewer long slots than I like. But Kyle employed some very long entries, JESSE EISENBERG, DATA SCIENTIST, ILL DRINK TO THAT!, which helped the puzzle feel meaty.

Nice work converting some of the mid-length slots into assets too, TRUST ME and JOE COOL in particular. Even BEDREST and TOUPEES are fun. Most every long or medium slot is used wisely, except for DIAPERED. (Given my toddler and baby, maybe I'm too deep into the literal crap to appreciate that one.)

I did wonder about featuring two long proper names — it can be rough on a solver if you don't know who the person is, giving you at best a "meh" when you finally get the answer. But JESSE EISENBERG has had multiple starring roles, and TREVOR NOAH hosts "The Daily Show," so I think they're way beyond the threshold of crossworthiness. Still, I had so much more fun solving DATA SCIENTIST than JESSE EISENBERG.

Great work on short fill; a sign of skilled craftsmanship. I did hitch at BOITO and LENI. BOITO is famous in opera and thus (I think) crossworthy, but thank goodness Kyle ensured all the crossings were fair. LENI … perhaps if this had been a title character? It stuck out as the lone iffy-feeling entry. (Some might cringe at JAMA, but given that my wife is a doctor ...)

If you're going to go to 72 words, you have to make your grid virtually flawless. Kyle executed well.