New York Times, Wednesday, April 3, 2019

This puzzle is trivia-based, but its main flaw isn't trivial.

Last year I started offering crossword construction help to non-male, LGBT, and POC puzzle enthusiasts. I was prompted to do so by some of my colleagues, who pointed out that in puzzle after puzzle I was disproportionately featuring men, particularly white men, in my theme material. Today's puzzle, which I constructed before having gotten that important feedback, is a particularly egregious example.

So, if you identify as non-male and/or LGBT and/or POC, contact me via Instagram (@rosstrudeau) or Twitter (@trudeauross) so we can move the needle on representation in puzz world.

I thought for a long time about how these four SEARCH RESULTS might be related (other than being results of searches, of course). Aren't there thousands of things that have been found over the centuries? Why these four? Why the RABIES VACCINE, not the POLIO VACCINE, for instance? The search for URANUS and not PLANET X? Why not all the finds in chemistry, treasure hunting, lost manuscripts, etc.?

Theme qualms aside, I liked Ross's gridwork. GOES ALL IN is fantastic. Toss in some TUXEDO AMAZON MOO SHU OR WHAT and it's even jazzier. With only minor gluey bits of the ALII ROI UNE ilk, it's well crafted.

I uncovered GIFT GUIDE pretty early and wondered how it could be a SEARCH RESULT … ah! It's so tough to find presents for my niece and nephew. Of course, a GIFT GUIDE would help that constant SEARCH.

Took me all too long to realize that it wasn't related to the theme. That can be an issue with long fill in the across direction. It's tough — URANUS is such a shortie that any long fill will tend to overshadow it. But GOES ALL IN and GIFT GUIDE are such juicy phrases, they'd be tough for most constructors to resist.

It's usually better to work your long fill into the vertical answers, but that's a tough ask for today's layout. Given the awkward length of the revealer — SEARCH RESULTS is 13 letters, forcing black square placements and pinching all the themers toward the middle — it's hard enough to get the grid to work, period.

In the end, I'm okay with Ross's gridding choices, but I'm curious if long down fill could have been possible. Perhaps GOES ALL IN and GIFT GUIDE could have been broken up, and REF and OR WHAT joined to result in some great piece of long fill, resulting in an equivalent amount of zazz.

"List puzzles" tend to feel too loosey-goosey, and I'd have liked an extra layer to tighten this one up. Could have been all major scientific discoveries, all archaeology, all discoveries with the initials S R, all discoveries in an important year, whatever. Any extra layer would have helped the puzzle stand out.