I love me a PB themeless roughly once a month, every one doing something different in grid layout. We have a "topologically similar ...
read moreI love me a PB themeless roughly once a month, every one doing something different in grid layout. We have a "topologically similar grids" feature (hit the "Analyze" button below and scroll down), and it's no surprise that there are no similar grids in our database. I love that drive to innovate.

So glad Will ran this one on a Saturday instead of Friday! In general, PB's puzzles are more Saturday-difficult than Friday-easy-breezy for me, since he uses such devilishly clever wordplay, obfuscating answers so much. I love it when [Something work-related] turns out to have nothing to do with corporate work, but artistic works in a COMPANION PIECE. But having that great entry/clue pairing in such a wide-open space made it so difficult for me to crack.
I did enjoy that top, once I eventually got it. I wasn't sure what MOMMIE DEAREST was, but apparently, it was quite a thing back in 1978. I wasn't sure who Christina Crawford was — heck, I'm barely familiar with Joan Crawford — but I bet people of an older generation might think this entry a total gimmie.
Very unusual for PB to allow such segmentation in one of his grids, the black squares chunking the puzzle into a top, middle, and bottom. It's not the worst kind of segmentation — the connections in the NE/SW are slightly more open than the very choked-off tunnels in the NW/SE — but I didn't care for the choppy nature of my solve.
Also unusual to see STETS in a PB. I can just see him at his computer, wringing his hands, wondering if he could allow such a minor ding past his sky-high standards.
And the puzzle did have an older feel to me, what with MOMMIE DEAREST, the discontinued LESABRE and XTERRA, and ROSEANNE. But given that there are likely a lot of older solvers out there, it's good to have a puzzle targeted there in a while.
Impressively clean 62-word puzzle, albeit with a few more liabilities than PB usually allows. The wide-open nature of the top and bottom made them two incredibly tough workouts.