New York Times, Saturday, June 13, 2015

BRAD: The seed entry at 57A (SHRINK RAY) was in an early draft of the grid that appeared on 2/21/15, but I pulled it out of there when the stack you see here presented itself. The editorial tweak to the clue eases up considerably on the original [Facilitator of filmdom's "Fantastic Voyage"], but it makes sense looking at the general degree of difficulty in that corner — Doug's great clues for DENVER, ART FORGER, SOUTH POLE, my definition of REGIFT, etc.

We started the opposite corner with EXOTIC PET, and it was cool to have several Scrabbly entries settle in around it. Totally random that UNIBROW has made its way into 3 or 4 puzzles I've been involved with…I'd better take care not to develop one. I still have a few clues for it in the bag; the one here is Doug's, who I feel had a particularly inspired day when he sat down to work on this set (SWINE!).

DOUG: Brad mentioned that SHRINK RAY came from a draft that looked quite different by the time it was accepted. We've become quite adept at repurposing discarded entries, and sometimes we're even able to build a grid around an orphaned stack. I like to think of our grids as starfish. Because you can whack off an arm and use it to grow a whole new starfish. That really works, right? I think so, but bear in mind a lot of my starfish knowledge comes from comic books. Starro the Conqueror is one of my all-time favorite super-villains. (You think I'm joking? Look him up.)

A great puzzle from some of my favorite people in crosswordland. Always a treat to get a Wilberson themeless, usually a range of entries going all the way from erudite to hip. That upper left corner, with a Riemann ZETA function (an elegant math function) crossing a football TAXI SQUAD, exemplifies what I love about their co-constructions.

Interesting grid today, with far less long slots than average. The upper left and lower right feature the standard triple-stacks of longish answers, and both of them are beautiful. They contain six excellent answers, and five of them felt super fresh. (SOUTH POLE I've seen a few times in themelesses, but it's still quite a good entry what with its nice [Lowest point?] clue.)

Where this diverges from usual themeless layouts is that there are fewer 8+ letter slots — only 10. This tends to make me worry that there won't be as much stellar material as I like, but Brad and Doug make great use of their seven-letter slots, with SYNCHRO, REGIFT, and UNIBROW. And it was amusing to see STAN LEE clued with respect to his Marvel movie cameos. He's such a visionary … and such a terrible actor. Yeesh.

Along with some supporting sixes — the interesting-sounding UBANGI river and the trivia of multiple FERRETs being called a "business" stood out to me — it makes for a count of roughly 13 assets. That's not a sky-high number, but it's fine as long as the liabilities are kept to a minimum.

And cleanliness is one area that Doug and Brad excel at. The top left stack only needing the minor glue dots of WIS and ETD, the lower one nearly perfect (SAS doesn't bother me, as it's a major airline), and what else? "AMY'S Kitchen" makes tasty, reasonably-healthy frozen food, so that's minor to me as well. Maybe GOOS, as it's an odd plural.

Overall, a great mix within the grid entries, something for everyone. I'm not usually very good with the upscale references, but I did enjoy learning more about Mahler's quartet of OBOES in his "Symphony of a Thousand" (which Jim tells me is not often performed because it's so expensive to put on) and the fact that there's Le Cordon Bleu as well as Cordon Bleus, the distinguished chefs. Along with some great clues like [Pen set] = SWINE, this one was a real treat.