New York Times, Thursday, May 4, 2023

I'm not sure where the idea for this puzzle came from … maybe changing TONI to RIGATONI. But the fact that CAPITAL could be crossed with GAINS in the middle of the grid suggested there would be enough room working around the sides of the puzzle for all of the themed answers I wanted to include.

After I submitted the puzzle, I was asked to change the answer SERIO to SASSE at 22-Across, easy enough to do. But I wanted to write a clue referring to the fact that all the letters in his FULL name could be spelled using only the letters in NEBRASKA, his home state. Since BEN wasn't yet an answer in the grid, I redid the lower left corner and, in doing so, changed 54-Across from YIN to BEN.

Sometimes it's worth extra work to add a really cool clue.

Who doesn't love discussing CAPITAL GAINS? Nothing like long-term gains taxed at such a meager rate, not to mention that they're offsetable by long-term capital losses, so if you time your equity sales …

Right, this kind of talk only gains me losses.

CAPITAL GAINS … or CAPITAL LOSSES? Wait, don't leave; I was talking about the puzzle, not the financial concepts! Is it that MOS has gained QUITO to become MOSQUITO, or that MOSQUITO has lost QUITO to become MOS? That's the eternal question for this theme type.

I loved the TIM(BERLIN)ES to TIMES find. I had a vague recollection of seeing BERLIN as a hidden word, but the fact that subtracting it leaves behind a valid five-letter word is a so cool.

I would have appreciated BA(KING STON)E even more, but David beat me and a friend to the punch — we featured this in an upcoming Sunday puzzle. QUASH you, David!

Audacious choice to stack MOS(QUITO) / (RIGA)TONI and (PARIS)HES / L(OS LO)BOS. (LBOS = leveraged buyouts. I would happily blather on for hours about LBOS, and then you'd be TO(O SLO)W to TOW me away.) David had some flexibility, able to mix and match the four entries, but the fact that there are 24 possibilities (4x3x2x1 = 24) hardly means that any one of them will produce silky-smooth results. HOB ENO STS sogs things up, but SOG ONI is a reasonable result.

I used to want to challenge solvers to the brink of frustration — people should earn their victories! — but these days, I much prefer erring the other way. Although starring the six clues would have made it (too?) obvious what was going on, it would have increased the proportion of solvers achieving a fist-pumping a-ha moment.