New York Times, Saturday, February 20, 2021

Hi again everyone. It's still a lovely, pinch-me-is-this-really-happening moment to be published overseas, and more so to be making my first appearance at the crunchier end of the week. I hope this first themeless finds you well.

The seed entry for this grid was the central IT'S A YES FROM ME. For some inexplicable reason, it's just one of those random phrases I quite like. The symmetrical crosser SECRET SERVICE is hardly a humdinger, but immediately appealed to my (more default) cryptic constructor brain. As it turns out, my original clue ("Bond with colleagues as a group?") didn't cut the mustard, but I like the "Protective suits?" replacement we now have. A number of other clues were changed/tweaked throughout, mainly I think to move the whole thing firmly into Saturday territory. On first review of the proof, the puzzle seemed quite tricky to me, so I'll be interested to see how people fare with it.

Elsewhere, welcome back SKEE-LO, the mere mention of whom will always connect me to a certain time, place and people. When we got cable TV installed in our flat at uni (a real novelty at the time, trust me!), "I Wish" was all over the 3 music channels we spent far too many hours watching. That song and endless, peak-era episodes of The Simpsons ... happy days.

Stay well and I hope you enjoy solving.

ALICANTE = "Ali, can't he?" I see what you did. That's some SECRET SERVICE level work there.

What a great central marquee, SECRET SERVICE evoking such vivid imagery. [Protective suits?] is fun wordplay, too, riffing off a protective (hazmat) suit. I especially appreciated that the plural "suits" made me drop an S at the end. You got me, sir!

For the longest time, I had BATWOMAN, thinking that the long down marquee answer must be "___ VIBE." I enjoyed reminiscing about one of the iconic clues of the ground-breaking 1996 Schrodinger, where BAT and CAT were both "black Halloween animal." Got me again!

I had tough time up in the NE, only being vaguely familiar with AKON, SKEELO, ALICANTE. Great job with the clue for AKON, giving confirmation in the form of AKON to AK(R)ON. It'd have been great to get some similar confirmation with SKEELO crossing ALICANTE, though it could be argued that SKEELO is well-known enough in rap circles and ALICANTE does have a population of 300,000+, so expecting people to know one or the other might be fine.

I'm often plus/minus on trendy portmanteaus, but FREEGANS makes me laugh; a punny play on "vegans."

I didn't know ROSTEN, but the crosses are fair. Interesting to be called "the Jewish James Thurber."

People often ask me what differentiates a Fri from a Sat themeless. As Will Shortz says, he simply wants the Saturday to be harder. Today's nearly crushed me — you could make a case for even more crossings being devious. If you don't know the slang CRAY (I usually hear it as "cray-cray"), ALICENTE / CREY might look equally valid.

Great clue for CAR HORNS, that's they're often "hit in traffic." I especially like that this clue reminds me of one of the silver linings of quarantine: never being caught in traffic. These days, fun reminders to count my blessings are even more appreciated than usual.