New York Times, Saturday, May 2, 2015

GOOGOLPLEX and GOOGLEPLEX were the seeds for this puzzle. My first attempt at pairing these seeds symmetrically in a puzzle used a different grid pattern with the seeds at 1-across and the last-across. That puzzle's submission resulted in a rejection from Will Shortz, but with feedback saying he liked the the pairing of these seeds. So, I decided to try again using a different grid pattern, which was subsequently accepted. I constructed this particular puzzle in December 2013, at that time neither seed had appeared in a NYT puzzle. The puzzle was accepted in April 2014.

This is my type of mini-theme, the GOOGLEPLEX headquarters a play on the number GOOGOLPLEX. I love the quote from a nine-year old, GOOGOLPLEX being "one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired."

Many strong entries in the grid, and I liked how dispersed they were. Most themeless grids concentrate the bulk of their oomph in the four corners, but Barry spreads out the goodness today. It was really fun to drop in GOOGLEPLEX and then saunter my way to MAKE TRACKS before picking my way through ALGEBRA EXAM. Nice to get a constant, steady stream of colorful answers, rather than the concentrated stacked bursts I'm used to.

At the ACPT this year, BEQ and I were talking about borderline themeless entries, and he made a good analogy of tennis judges peering at the line, sticking their thumb slightly one way or another, and finally making a pronouncement. To me, ALL OR NONE and NEAREST EXIT feel like they're straddling that line. ALL OR NOTHING and EMERGENCY EXIT roll off my tongue, while ALL OR NONE sort of fumbles out. NEAREST EXIT is a phrase I hear before during every pre-flight announcement, but it doesn't feel like it quite sings on its own. Personal taste.

Loved the clue for CURATORS, an elegant one-word description in [Exhibitionists?]. And being the nerd engineer, I struggled to figure out what type of technical component [Some cable splitters] referred to. ROOMIES split a cable bill — clever!

Overall, the spreading out of the feature entries made my solve feel like there was so much goodness incorporated than usual. Upon closer inspection, the number of assets and liabilities is roughly on par with other NYT themelesses, so it's interesting to me that this dispersion effect enhanced my impression of the puzzle. I'm curious to experiment with this more on my own.