New York Times, Saturday, July 18, 2015

I revisited this grid off and on for about eight years thinking my ever-growing word list would help out. Then I finally decided to focus my effort and seed the grid with various entries at 4-Down containing common ending letters: S, R, E, T and N. The left side — and minor variants — is what emerged. The right side presented a much easier task... even with thematic content at 24-Down.

Wide open puzzles like these will have their share of awkwardness, which I'm sure others will discuss. But solvability inevitably comes down to packing a high percentage of familiar words in each quadrant. Common words can be clued in many different ways, and I like to give the editor the flexibility to adjust the difficulty level of these to meet solver need. Will always has a knack for smoothing things out with his adept clue revisions.

It's rare to see a Joe Krozel that's derivative of something else. I appreciate how he strives to always do something different. Today, we get a wide-open grid at an astonishingly low number word count: 56. There have only been a few of these bad boys in the history of the NYT crossword, done by a very small number of constructors … dominated by Joe Krozel.

I like the mini-theme, a clock face displaying ONE THIRTY. It wasn't as much of a COME HERE RIGHT NOW YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS feat, but it was pretty cool to recognize a minute and an hour hand formed out of black squares.

This grid layout requires Joe to work in a triple-stack, and the three grid-spanners aren't bad. None wowed me, but ECONOMIC DECLINE tickled my finance interests. Like with most triple-stacks, there were some compromises in the crossing answers — it's unfortunate to kick off the puzzle with the odd RESP abbreviation, and CDI is pretty random. I also would have liked more sizzling answers somewhere in that half of the grid, as ANATOLIANS, SALAMANCA and AURICLE didn't do that much for me.

I was more impressed by the lower right. It is a more isolated section thus relatively easier to fill, but it is also a huge swath of white. I really appreciated the color of THE MAGI, I CAN RELATE, DOME CAR, and even AS STATED ain't bad. I'll take an esoteric STROPHE for all that good stuff any day. Plus, with only ANA and DYER being the most minor of blemishes, that section stood out.

Since there have been a handful of these ultra-low word count puzzles now, their impact isn't as great for me. I still do get a small wow factor, but I think that will diminish as we see more. Now, if we see an ultra-low word count puzzle chock full of stellar material and very little glue …