New York Times, Saturday, August 26, 2017

This may be the first time I've so blatantly included an inside reference in one of my puzzles, but there lies CAHOOTS smack-dab at 1-Across, which is also not coincidentally the name of the ultimate team I played with for several years, including when I wrote this puzzle. It would be problematic to shoehorn in an ugly entry for a such a small percentage of solvers, but thankfully the colorful phrase it's commonly used with feels like a worthy way to kick off a puzzle.

The rest of the grid still seems pretty solid, even looking at it again today with fresh eyes. There's a couple of quality stacks and not much dreck in sight. As usual, the editing team did a great job sprucing up a few of my weaker clues, with the fun wordplay at 2-Down maybe being my favorite improvement.

Hope everyone enjoys!

Another solid themeless from Peter, one of the best in the business for my money. I appreciate how he chooses his feature entries not just for how cool they sound or how bizarre they look in the grid, but whether they can take a clever clue. AFTERSHAVE is a snappy entry in its own right, but it's so ripe for tricksy wordplay. [It hurts when you rub it in] had me fixated on various insults. That's the type of innocuous misdirection a great wordplay clue ought to achieve.

I have very high expectations for Peter's puzzles these days, and several entry/clue pairs didn't disappoint. ORAL PHASE! Love it, even more so with the deviously brilliant misdirect in "nursing" — very different than the hospital nursing I was thinking about!

JAY GATSBY as a party host and THE BIG BANG made for terrific entries, too. Toss in some IN CAHOOTS, BASE METAL, HONEY WINE, and that's a solid puzzle.

But even as a chemistry wonk, BOYLES LAW isn't super interesting to me; certainly not nearly as fantastic as the IDEAL GAS LAW. (An old chemistry teacher had PV NRT as his license plate, which I secretly thought was awesome. Especially when he carefully taped in an equals sign in the space!) Still, though, I'm not sure how big a chunk of the solving population would appreciate even the IDEAL GAS LAW. (Heathens!)

And a few other long entries more took up space than shined. KNEEHOLES, for example … that's a real term? (Google says yes.) I appreciated the misdirect toward "office openings," but since I didn't recognize the term, the cleverness got lost on me.

Peter is so good in terms of keeping grids smooth that I was thrown a bit by the ASLAN / LESH crossing — I'm not convinced that ASLAN is a name all educated solvers ought to know. (Even less so for Phil LESH.) I could understand the need to accept this crossing in a more ambitious themeless grid, but it's harder to take in a 70-worder. Just too much possibility for solver dissatisfaction, finishing with an understandable error.

Not up there with my favorite of Peter's puzzles, but still a solid offering.