New York Times, Friday, April 14, 2017

It's a good Friday indeed when you see your hard work hit print. Almost a year ago I experienced the thrill of debuting a puzzle in the Times, so today marks a satisfying year of causing re-sharpened pencils and whittled erasers nationwide. May there be more to come.

I don't remember much about the genesis of this puzzle, but I do recall the SE falling together nicely, especially BALALAIKA and ARENA ROCK, which are unfortunately rarely found together outside this crossword. What I loved most was Joel and Will changing the clue for HER, lest we forget what we passed up.

Beautiful start to the puzzle, the POT ROAST / ABOUT THAT … / TOUGH LOVE / OTHER HALF quartet is so nice. There's even a TERABYTE running off of it. All of that for just the price of a minor SRS? That's the way I like a themeless to kick off.

Quite a few other great entries too. I like me a TALL ONE especially after exercise (don't judge me!), and I have a curious fascination with the BALALAIKA — Eastern European music can have such a cool sound. Throw in ALPHA MALE, BAD RAPS, and SOUND ASLEEP nicely placed next to CATNAP and that's solid material.

I also liked that Andrew spread his goodies around. Often, I feel like a themeless has all its feature entries concentrated in the corners, and the middle does a workmanlike job of holding the corners together. Nice to get SNOW CRAB, even PARLANCE, EXPEDIA adding a bit of zazz in the middle.

I did have a major pause in the lower left, though. ARIAS crossing ARIOSE felt duplicative, so I looked up the terms. ARIOSE is linked to "arioso," meaning … "like an ARIA." I don't know how many solvers will be bothered by this, but it feels like a big-time no bueno to me. It's too bad, since that corner otherwise is nice and smooth, with the added bonus of WARHOL, SHOCK, and MOSES. It's a relatively big corner to fill, and if there hadn't been that duplication, it would have shined.

The opposite corner demonstrates how tough these innocent-looking biggish corners can be. Given SOUND ASLEEP and RAIN DATE in place, it's not easy to fill that 5x6 corner smoothly — plural ANNAS isn't great, and SOAVE was tough for this wine buffoon. (The latter one probably is perfectly fine, just an oddball for us TALL ONE drinkers.)

Overall, too much crossword glue for my taste, given REHEM, CES, SKAT, HELI, NIE, ANNAS, TEN AM (arbitrary time) — about five is where I start to notice the strain. But there was enough good material that it still was an enjoyable solve — besides that big ARIAS / ARIOSE duplication.