New York Times, Wednesday, April 18, 2018

BRUCE: This was entirely Pete's spelling brew — I just got consulted on the fill. I had recently done a Valentine's puzzle that utilized stacked central themers in a 16-high grid, so that seemed like a great way to make this difficult construction symmetric. Even so, this was a tough grid to fill cleanly.

PETE: Yeah, I had the idea for the theme, but I had a heck of a time filling the grid. Those three HEX-on-YOU occurrences really made for some headaches. I finally threw it at Bruce who had the brilliant idea to go with a 16x15 grid. That gave it a little more breathing room (if we can all ignore EOUS — as in nausEOUS). Plus the supersizing enabled Bruce to place one HEX/YOU pairing smack dab in the center of the grid. I think that's a nice touch. So, in the end, the grid is 90% Bruce's handiwork. I think I redid one of the corners — not that I made the end product any better, but so that I could say I had a hand in filling the grid.

I PUT A SPELL ON YOU = HEX atop YOU, three times in the grid. Even though HEX and YOU are both shorties, they're tough to disguise, so some nice finds. TOOTH EXTRACTION made me reflexively wince, but it's a solid answer. MATH EXAM probably made others wince, but this former mathlete approved. And CORN CHEX was a good way to finish it off.

EMPTY OUT did a good job of obfuscating YOU, JOYOUSLY as well. They're both long entries, though, and stacking pairs of long theme answers can be problematic. So many pairs of letters to work through!

See: EOUS in top stack, and AIT in close proximity. ESAS / MLLE in middle. BURL / NONU in bottom.

Pete and Bruce made the grid 16 rows high to center MATH EXAM / JOYOUSLY, but I'd have been as happy with MATH EXAM in the center of a 15x15, with something like YOUTH below it. Might have smoothed things out a bit.

Typically, placing long theme answers in rows 3 / 13 (third to last) is the smart choice, giving yourself the most space possible. Here, I think moving them inwards one row apiece could have helped, giving Pete and Bruce more flexibility in filling around all those letter pairs.

For me, EOUS would automatically force me to restart a puzzle. BURL or NONU I might let slide if they were the only offender, but I'd work mightily to make sure there wasn't some better option.

I did appreciate the big corners in the SW / NE. BASE HITS / ASTROPOP / APERTURE, yes! ANIMALIA / TROOPERS / SYNOPSIS, triple yes! That's the way to use those relatively unconstrained sections of a grid. I don't like ENRY much, but I felt it was a price worth paying for the wide-open goodness packed with juicy answers.

I think the best stacked-themer puzzles are ones where you need to figure out the theme in order to finish the puzzle. Tracy Gray had a memorable such one. Finding the HEX atop YOU instances was more of an afterthought for me.