New York Times, Friday, August 26, 2016

I was worried when I began this puzzle that the SUPERFOOD fad was just that: a fad. Fortunately, we can't seem to get enough of putting kale where it was never meant to be. I'm talking to you, kale cookies and kale chips. I recommend listening to comedian Jim Gaffigan's take on kale if you haven't.

Recently, I submitted a puzzle to Will that was themed with SUPERFOOD. It contained entries like BIG MAC, DR PEPPER, and BLOODY MARY clued as if they were superheroes. Alas, DR PEPPER, who cripples cities with his sneeze ray, will not be gracing your morning paper anytime soon. But maybe Marvel will bite…

Anyway, I'm happy my clues for MECCA, CLEOPATRA, and CLOSE VOTE stayed. I'm a big fan of adding trivia to crosswords since they are terrific platforms not just for testing knowledge, but also providing new knowledge. Let's just hope this election isn't as close as Hayes's in 1876!

Andrew does a nice job of using his longer and mid-length entries. In particular, so many good 7-letter ones: TED TALK, STOOGES, HAT TREE (with a great clue misdirecting toward bowling), DROP CAP. And my favorite, KOI POND! That's a great conversion rate, a full half of his mid-length material standing out. It's more common to see the neutral STEAMED kind of mid-length material, so bravo!

Good work on the longer material too. Andrew takes great care to squeeze all the juice out of his long slots, PINTEREST, SUPERFOOD, ATTACK ADS, ANTITOXIN, CLOSE VOTE, etc. really working well. Only CONTAINER felt a little flat, especially since its clue [Cup or bowl, but not a plate] didn't seem particularly clever or playful.

So that's a lot of great material packed into a 70-word puzzle. However, there are dabs of glue holding it together here and there, as is often the case when so much snazzy material is put into play. I don't mind two or three minor bits like ESTO or PCT, but ADEE is a pretty noticebable glob. Common prefixes or suffixes like NEO or IST are almost unnoticeable — ADEE on the other hand … what else does it stick to but "chick"?

And ENOUNCE is a word. It's in the dictionary. But how often is it ever used in real life? "Enunciate," yes. ENOUNCE feels more like it's taping the NW corner to the rest of the puzzle.

T TEST … I used to be a statistics TA, so T TEST doesn't make me blink an eye, but I have heard solvers complain about it. If you're not a statistician, that first T would seem awfully random, like all the various B STAR, C STAR, S STAR, etc. type answers. I'm totallt fine with this answer, but I can understand how others might not be.

The bar for themelesses is so high these days — so many people submitting them because it's hard to come up with good themes — and it's even higher for 70 or 72 word puzzles. I would have liked a little fewer inelegant gluey entries, but overall, there's so many great entries that they help to make up for them.