New York Times, Saturday, February 25, 2023

I'll be at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year and I hope to meet as many of you amazing puzzle people there as I can. Please come say hello. I fight against my introverted nature in such situations and a little help is always appreciated.

I beg your indulgence in giving a huge thanks to my wife Beth and my kids Tyler, Trevor, David, Anna, and Chloe. Beth is my heart's center and despite not being into puzzles, she has supported me every step of the way as I Google strange things and torment her with groan-worthy clues. I've got four adult kids and one about to level up to adulthood this summer. They're incredible humans, and getting to know the adult versions of them is a new horizon in parenting that I cherish.

Speaking of parenting, I contributed to a top-notch puzzle pack for charity called Grids For Kids. Donate $10 to a child-focused charity and get a pack of 25 outstanding puzzles. Visit gridsforkids.com to learn more. Also stop by gridtherapy.com and solve my independently-produced puzzles. They come in at a trickle these days, but it's still going. Beyond that, I'm still working my day job as a clinical psychologist. You can check out my practice at trentevans.com for more information.

As far as today's puzzle goes, I hope you enjoyed it. The only thing I can tell you about it is that my aim was to have a pretty wide-open center and try to check off Saturday in my pursuit of hitting for the cycle. Four down, three to go. Have a great weekend!

This grid pattern reminds me of an explorative set of themelesses by David Steinberg. All of them had central parallelograms, the first with a wide one, another that was more sectioned, and yet another tuned in with learning gleaned from his prior work.

Trent's parallel splash into paralellogram themeless world more than GETs ER DONE — five strong entries across the middle, especially for those hold 'em players out there. (RIVER CARD is slang for the final card, coming after "the flop" and the "turn card.")

There's not much running vertically through these marquee entries that's exciting, but there's nothing gluey, either. Such a smooth solving experience.

Like in some of David's works, the corners of Trent's creation are sectioned off, the NW and SE especially so. It was much easier to flow into the other two corners, and I appreciated the amazing color in the upper right: IT WASN'T ME / SO I GATHER / HIDEY HOLE paints quite a picture.

Sectioning presents such trade-offs. I'd love more flow heading into each of the four corners, but letting a constructor work on a subregion independent of the rest of the grid can result in greatness. I'd take READ ALOUD / TRIAL DATE / HAND MODEL any day for the price of some bottlenecking.

Nice results in the heavily choked-off corners, too. I doubt those giant 7x5 chunks would be possible if Trent opened things up, like moving the black square below YIELDS up one and the black square below ON TOE down one.

It's frustrating to get stuck in an isolated corner of a crossword, but if it's going to happen, I want subsections as strong as each of Trent's.