New York Times, Friday, May 2, 2014

In my Twitter feed, fellow puzzlemaker and UNH alumni Mike Nothnagel is always retweeting posts from the website at 35-Across. Lookee here. It's fifteen letters long and I got a snappy clue to hide the capital letter. That makes BEQ happy. And a happy BEQ means, he's going to be making puzzles. Technically, an unhappy BEQ is going to be making puzzles because it's my job, but whatever.

For whatever it's worth, speed solver extraordinaire Stella Zawistowski suggested I use 1-Across sometime. The fact that I managed to get a boss clue for it as well, even better.

Some beautiful stuff from the master today. FIVE THIRTY EIGHT is a great entry in itself, but BEQ's awesome clue makes it really shine. That and CLICKBAIT (when advertisers pop up racy pictures / headlines in order to draw in gullible readers, unlike me) gives the puzzle a really fresh, recent feel. Classic BEQ. His puzzles do a lot to make the NYT feel up-to-date.

Huh? Whoops, I'm back. No, I didn't click on that lurid picture! Ahem.

One notable aspect of the grid is that BEQ doesn't just stop at four sets of triple-stacked 8's or 9's like most themeless constructors. Not only does he incorporate FIVE THIRTY EIGHT straight across the center, but he crosses ANOINTED ONE and appropriately CROSSED EYES through everything. Instead of being able to work with four mostly separated corners, everything is interlocked. Change one of your ANOINTED ONE type answers and the ripple effect is devastating. It's a wonder BEQ got everything to fall into place.

Not only did he get everything to stitch together, but he also managed to work in some nice little details. The crazy letter pattern MLKJR crossing another crazy one, JLO? Don't mind if I do! What a great way to spice up a grid.

With such an immensely constrained grid, Brendan ends up with ADAYS, ATIME, RESEWN, LATH, none of which by itself is too bad. But all taken together, it feels a little heavy. And I really liked INSOMNIAC and FACES OFF, but some of the other long stuff (OUTSPOKEN, HENRIETTA) were a bit workmanlike in comparison to the juicier entries. And VARDALOS feels a bit dated since that movie was such a long time ago. As I've mentioned before, I tend to focus a more critical eye when a master builder is up to bat. It's probably unfair, but expectations are expectations.

Finally, two clues I really liked. [It's by no means a long shot] is fun for PUTT (never mind that some putts can be awfully long — I'm about (ahem) 50% on a one-foot putt). And I often balk at straight-up trivia, but I really liked [Skateboard trick named after its inventor] for OLLIE (when you jump up so the board kicks into the air with you). Some pieces of trivia I find tedious, but this (to me) was not one of them. I always wondered why skaters called it an Ollie. Fun to read up on Alan "Ollie" Gelfand.

Statistician Nate Silver of FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.com famously predicted 49 of 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, and then 50 of 50 in 2012. The blog name comes from the number of electors in the U.S. electoral college.