New York Times, Friday, July 10, 2015

FIBEROPTICS crossing CHARMCITY (Baltimore's nickname) were my seeds for this puzzle. Will had rejected a previously submitted puzzle of mine with CHARMCITY in it, but with feedback that he liked that entry so I decided to seed this puzzle with it. Serendipitously, I was able to use ORIOLEPARK as well, since that relates to Baltimore.

Although it wasn't a seed, I was able to use BEEROCLOCK as well, a term that I first heard from a colleague as he was finishing up his workday. I thought it was a cool term, googled it and found it was probably popular enough to be considered for a NYT puzzle.

When a themeless puzzle goes up to the maximum 72 words, I'm pretty strict with my criteria: no more than five-ish liability entries, and the (assets minus liabilities) should be greater than 10. I've found that if I hit too many gluey answers, that detracts from my experience, and if I don't get enough sizzling answers to outweigh the gluey ones, that also detracts.

Luckily, a 72-word grid usually has plenty of room for good stuff. BEER O CLOCK is a great answer, and the POCKET WATCH / LIONS SHARE / BUGGY WHIP triple is colorful. Because "Hans and Franz" were a big part of my middle-school sense of humor, DANA CARVEY is a standout for me, but I wonder if he'll resonate at all with the millennials doing this puzzle. It's been a while since he's had a hit.

Does his SNL and "Wayne's World" body of work make him a classic? I think we'll have to wait a while to see if the test of time gives him favorable results.

Some liabilities are clear-cut, i.e. things like partials, uncommon abbreviations, etc. that Will points out to avoid in his submission criteria. And prefixes/suffixes like ACRO and IEST are not likely to give many pleasure. How about ARILS? Seems reasonably passable to me, since that word is on POM wonderful packages, but I can see how some would prefer avoiding it. WAAC and ELEC would likely draw some discussion; N TESTS and SCORNER as well.

But BRIC to me feels perfectly fine … since the BRIC acronym for the major emerging market countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) is commonplace in financial lingo. Still, I'd tend to avoid it if possible, as I can understand that very few solvers would figure out [Acronym for the four major emerging market countries].

One helpful point about solving a Barry Silk puzzle is that he usually tries to work in a few Scrabbly letters — JQXZ. I was struggling around the middle until I remembered this point. A square which starts both an across and a down answer is ripe for one of these rare letters, so that helped me plunk in QUARTS for [Ice cream purchases].