New York Times, Friday, July 16, 2021

SOPHIA: While bored in an online class last spring, I texted Kyra to ask for a good themeless seed entry. She suggested 33-Down, and thus this puzzle was born. We locked in the bottom half of this puzzle early on, but the top half went through several iterations before this final submission.

As usual, it was a blast to collaborate with Kyra — she's incredibly talented at both grid construction and writing clever clues, and she even puts up with my insistence on adding extraneous Disney references to all of our puzzles.

KYRA: Now that our online classes are over, Sophia and I need to find a new time to work on our collabs together! I loved making this one with her, and we're excited to do more together soon.

This is such a useful themeless layout, allowing for a balance of decent solving grid flow, and potential sectioning for constructors. Once you figure out something that seems workable in the center region, you can work independently on each of the four corners. It's always easier to break down a problem into smaller chunks, so going from one giant 15x15 grid to four 8x3s makes construction so much simpler.

Sophia and Kyra did a fantastic job of squeezing every drop out of those precious long slots. ICE DANCE / MALLRATS / PLAYTEST = three colorful, multi-word phrases. AEROSMITH and CLEOPATRA aren't multi-worders (editors tend to favor these over single-worders, since they tend to be more interesting) but what great clues. AEROSMITH and Disney? An odd pair, that! And [Last of the Ptolemys] felt like it had to be some sort of RAMSES II or THUTMOSE I. Nope, a neat piece of trivia about the one-time Queen of Egypt.

ZOOM-BOMB hopefully will be something we can all look back and laugh at down the road. It's a fresh, topical term. Though I always wonder, how is it possible? No one's ever ZOOM-BOMBed in when Jim and I are chatting. Not that anyone would want to listen to Jim erupting with laughter as he takes in my peculiar observations …

I hadn't heard of MOMFRIEND. To me, it implied a parent who's trying too hard to be a friend to their kid, all the while failing at their momming job. But no, it's the friend in the group always acting like an overprotective mom. Now I'm curious what a DADFRIEND would be. (Do yourself a favor and don't Google it, at least not without a porn filter on.)

A couple of clues nearly went over my head, incredibly tricky for a Friday:

• PDAS: does anyone remember the Palm Pilot these days? Using "Palms" is tricksy, indeed.
• There's a Ford INDY car? I figured it had to do with the INDY 500; Ford sponsors cars for that. After Jim's cackling subsided, he explained it was a movie vehicle, for Indiana "INDY" Jones. I knew that.
• "Roll player" is a great repurposing of "role player" — I didn't even notice the spelling change. I wasn't sure what a PIANOLA was, but after looking it up, I appreciated that of course, a player piano would play a (paper music) roll.