New York Times, Friday, September 18, 2020

ANNE: The two main seeds for this puzzle were BEYONDMEAT and NETNEUTRALITY. Both of them seemed vaguely topical, but hopefully not so much as to be outdated by the time the puzzle would be published. (We did not realize ahead of time how important WiFi and meat substitutes would be in 2020...)

DANIEL: It's always a little bit strange to have non-symmetrical seeds, since you don't get the equality of constraints on both sides that you get used to in writing themed puzzles. Funnily enough, though, we actually struggled more with the SE than with the NW. In fact, Will requested that we try to refill the SE. It was a bit of a challenge, since Anne was home when we initially constructed the puzzle, but she was in college by the time we had to redo that corner. I'm sure remote construction is another thing that has seen an unexpected rise recently.

ANNE: I remember Daniel calling me to re-clue the puzzle one night, and when I got off the phone with him, my roommate gave me this strange look and said, "What on earth were you talking about, and since when have you been into K-pop?"(This was for our original clue for IDOL, although that has since been changed.) Trying to clue a puzzle can lead to a pretty weird-sounding conversation, I guess.

DANIEL: It was a bit funny for me to see HOMEPLANET show up again in one of my themelesses. I guess the point is that I've scored it high, and it has common letters. Anyway, last time I clued it "Corellia, to Han Solo", which I thought might be too specialized. I was gratified to see that they kept the clue, but this time, I probably pushed my luck too far when I tried "Dathomir, to Darth Maul". Understandably, the editorial team rejected that clue (even Obi-Wan thought it was Iridonia), and moved the Star Wars to the clue for 45-down.

What a neat DNA pattern in the black squares! I appreciate seeing something fresh in a themeless grid.

The unusual layout is difficult to fill since the southwest and northeast corners contain pairs of long answers crossing each other. It's not as hard as when you're intersecting triple-stacks of long answers into another, but it's still no mean feat. That NE is dynamite, NOT A HOPE echoing EXTREMES, running through CHE GUEVARA and HOME PLANET. Throw in CAT CHOW, and that's a winner.

I liked the SW as well; YOU BET I CAN exhibiting that I DARE SAY daredevil attitude toward eschewing themeless layout norms. I didn't love ONE-SEATERS, though, as I'm not into racing. I bet it did a lot for NASCAR fans, though.

I enjoyed getting some echoes of Anne and Dan's previous work, some of their personal tastes shining through. HOME PLANET and the REBEL clue (about "Star Wars") were obvious enough connections to LAND SPEEDER, and NET NEUTRALITY echoed the social justice lines of YELLOW VESTS.

As I've mentioned before with Dan's puzzles, the gridwork is strong (aside from a couple of oddballs in PETARD ARTE ARGENT), but I'd like to see more time spent in the cluing arena. I didn't have as much fun solving this one as the grid quality might predict, because so much of the cluing was straightforward and even dry. Windflower = ANEMONE, Occident = WEST, Silver = ARGENT … not much life there.

A strong grid is a must to get a themeless acceptance, but it's clever stuff like "pat on the back" for BURP (as in the verb) that makes a themeless solving experience brilliant. I push co-constructors to write at least ten of these wordplay gems in any themeless puzzle, knowing that at least half won't quite make it through the editorial process, so solvers will still be treated to five.