Andrew Zhou author page

Simon LEBON was an ENGINEER? Cool! I'm AL SET. Wait. NO SIDE?

What the …

Jim and I debated whether we should highlight the hidden answers or not. Ultimately, we decided we didn't want to onslaught of WHAT THE @#$! DO THOSE NUMBERS IN PARENTHESES MEAN, YOU #$@#! DUMB MORONS?! emails.

We'll probably still get them.

It's not hard to dig up TESLA, NOBEL, EDISON (all in reverse, of course), but there's a four-letter backward engineer somewhere in the fourth themer? I was tempted to not highlight it and see how much consternation that would cause.

(My first career was as a mechanical engineer. I got called "backward" more than once, by business folks who rationalized asking for the impossible by saying that it was strictly a business decision. There were some choice four-letter words involved.)

Curious choice to give BELL the nod over Henry FORD and something like HYDROFOILS. If only Edsels had been seacars — driven by OCEANAUTS — maybe they wouldn't have been such a flop.

I enjoy seeing a constructor's personality come through in a puzzle, as long as it doesn't interfere with the solving experience. Andrew is much more cultured than me.

Wait. Than I? Then myself? Bah!

MESDAMES, it was no surprise that Georg SOLTI showed up, as well as a fancy GELEE. Unfortunate to have a couple more tough propers in APOLO and GREGG to water down the SOLTI experience, and some STE ETTE TYE to add to the gel of E-glue.

I did enjoy many of the bonuses, though, BEEF RIB something I will THUSLY NOTA BENE.

As an engineer at heart, I love the REVERSE ENGINEER concept. I don't agree with the decision to run this on a Thursday, artificially making it harder by using a bizarre numbering scheme in the clues. The theme naturally wants to be on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, with the engineers highlighted. What gives?

Must have been a business decision.

Such an eye-catching grid pattern! Is it a starship? Ions floating around (those big black pluses and minuses)? Whatever it was, it fit well with my sense of Andrew as an artistic creator.

Constructors using a huge swath with the center typically try to separate it off from the corners, making for easier construction. Not today! Andrew left himself so many outside connections to make. It's so challenging since there's no breathing a sigh of relief once you figure out a central section — it easily might not connect up with one of the corners, and then you have to iterate.

I loved SIMONE BILES featured front and center. But I CAN SEE THAT if you're not an Olympics fan or a gymnastics fan, the entry won't do much for you. Your loss, because she's the epitome of badassery! What I wouldn't give to be half as strong as her.

A trio of squarely Saturday-ish entries; I think some are more satisfying than others:

1. SYNFUELS. I hadn't heard the term before, but I liked piecing it together. Portmanteau of synthetic fuels? Sure!
2. XERISCAPING. A gray zone for me, considering the R crossing in ROES. I debated XERISCAPING vs. XEDISCAPING, but of course, DOES don't have antlers. (Okay, I had to look that up.) I'm glad to have learned the term XERISCAPING now, especially considering global environmental issues, but I wouldn't say the term delighted me in my solve.
3. SIROCCO. I had looked this up a few months ago as I was creating a puzzle with a tough pattern to fill, something like S?R??CO. I read the definition and dismissed it as a possibility — seemed too esoteric. Thinking about it more, it is an interesting term, like a haboob or something. Again though, not sure it's going to delight solvers in the way GARLIC BREAD might.

It's tough to stitch together an audacious grid like this without some ANON ESTE NES SSE kind of stuff. That said, I appreciate it when constructors make an effort to shoot for the starships. Er, stars.

★ It's such a shame that David Steinberg's puzzle was so recent — and so beautiful! I don't know much about art, but I loved learning about it through David's diagramless.

This particular painting has such an interesting story and message behind it. It's a fantastic blend of art and logic — it's obviously a pipe … but the caption begs to differ. I love me a good paradox!

Although my wow factor was diminished because David's puzzle was stuck in my memory, not nearly as many people do the variety puzzles, so I'd bet most solvers will still have a neat experience as they read up on the painting. Or, if they already knew about it — fine, I'm an art dummy, are you happy? — they can appreciate how closely the shape of the pipe is mimicked by the circled letters.

I also liked that Andrew included the "explanatory" quote: "it's just a representation, is it not?"

I admit that I don't fully understand that, but the notion behind it amuses me.

Even though all those circled letters plus the themers added up to a ton of constraints, I appreciated that Andrew worked in some fine brushstrokes: HUMAN RACE, MARS ROVER, DOG TREAT, CAGE FREE, FUEL TANKS. I didn't get QB RANCH at first until I (head slap) parsed it to Q BRANCH. I thought as a huge Bond fan I knew everything there was about the series — apparently not!

I bet Daniel Craig would be a good quarterback.

I do wish that the full caption, CECI N'EST PAS UNE PIPE, had been underneath the pipe so as to better copy the painting (even if that meant not using the quote). And a connect the dots from A to B to C would have been easier to follow, especially if you didn't already know C E C I N E S … what a confusing mess of letters.

But overall, I liked Andrew's take on the famous painting almost as much as David's.

So many crosswords have been built around the four seasons. A pleasant surprise to see an execution I've never encountered! I had fun trying to guess the theme during my solve, giving up before I allowed myself to read the revealer.

Then I had more fun, trying to guess what the revealer meant.

SPRINKER sort of sounds like "spring"? I can buy that. SOMER- = "summer," sure.

(OTTOM-) = "autumn"? Maybe if you cock your head and wince a bit.

(WIND TUR-) = "winter." (squinting, squinting, wincing)

So, a mixed bag. Still, an interesting concept that made me think.

I mostly liked Andrew's execution — super tough to work with five themers, the middle being an uncooperative 13 letters, the others also making trouble at the awkward lengths of 12 or 13. Check out how the themers ALL force black square placements on the edges of the grid. So unpleasant for constructors, taking away so much flexibility.

Interesting choice to run a 15-letter piece of fill down the center. I like THREE RING BINDER. I did wonder why it was thematic, though. (It isn't.) I'd have preferred placing a black square at the E of BIDE and first I of IBIS, which I think would have allow some cleanup on aisle ONEA STE SIG. But I can respect the decision.

The real sticking point for me was the ORU / TORII crossing. I learned ORU (Oral Roberts University) from crosswords. My wife, who is much, much, MUCH MUUUUUUUCH smarter than me (and better at crosswords, among many things), once asked me what the hell a TORII was. (I was surprised, since I've been to Japan a lot for work and seen many a TORII, but I think her reaction is probably more common than mine.)

An early-week crossword needs to be conquerable, to set up the solver to ultimately beat the puzzle. I think this type of crossing is ripe for feelings of defeat. That's a bad thing.

Overall though, I enjoyed the novelty of the concept as well as the execution — especially given the level of difficulty — albeit with a couple of reservations.

★ Just when I think I've seen it all when it comes to "words hidden in phrases" themes, something innovative crops up. Kudos to Andrew for doing something new with it — finding words like LAMB inside phrases is one thing, but finding connected word pairs like LAMB / ASS is on a different level!

Great revealer in ANIMAL MAGNETISM, too. I've seen this phrase used in a couple of crosswords now, and it's cool to get so many different interpretations from different constructors. It would have been incredible to get theme phrases that had the male / female animal-specific terms, like BULL / COW or COCK / HEN, but I imagine that's impossible.

I did wonder if this would have made for a better weekday (15x15) puzzle than a Sunday, as the theme was straightforward once I figured out the gist. But there's something nice about a straightforward Sunday puzzle once in a while — I imagine that some (many?) novice Sunday solvers breathe a huge sigh of relief when the theme is something they can easily understand.

I also thought Andrew did a great job in executing his grid, going down to 136 words to give solvers an extra challenge ... WITHOUT COMPROMISING MUCH to accomplish this. To work in bonuses like NINJA LOANS, STAGE NAME, IMPROVISE, PAW PRINT, NEW MOON, etc. with just a smattering of ILO, DCI, GAOL, LITRE, TAE, is fantastic work. I did worry at first after encountering both ILO and DCI right off the bat, but thankfully, that didn't persist.

I think Sunday constructors need to earn their right to work with sub-140 word puzzles, as a great majority accept bad compromises to dip into those difficult waters. I'd give Andrew that green light based on his standout execution.

Not a mind-blowing theme, but I enjoyed the added level of complexity in the "words hidden within phrases" genre. Along with sharp execution featuring great bonuses in the fill, this one gets my POW!

BY GEORGE, it's theme entries that are "things written by a person named George." Fun idea. I liked the consistent cluing style of "year of work" + "last name" + "type of work." STAR WARS was an obvious one for this sci-fi ubergeek, and I even recognized MIDDLEMARCH — nice touch to feature a woman in what would otherwise have been a male-dominated puzzle.

(George Eliot was Mary Anne Evans' pen name.)

DECISION POINTS didn't come easy, nor did MY SWEET LORD, but they do seem crossworthy. (The latter more so, after the melody came back to me.)

Working with an eight-letter revealer can be surprisingly tricky. That's because revealers usually are best placed at the end of a puzzle, in row 13, forcing a big white space on the opposite side. Check out the roughly 6x5 chunk of space in the lower left — not easy to fill such a big swath well.

Andrew wisely added a cheater square in the very lower left (note: some editors hate this aesthetic), but these two corners still are the toughest part of the puzzle to fill. The lower left is pretty good, with just the tough IONESCO (not to be confused with ENESCO) and the odd UPCAST.

The opposite corner … SHA is a minor ding. ESL is okay. ACHESON crossing CHABAD crossing DOHA, though. Oof. I think all world capitals are fair game. But I don't know if it's fair to expect solvers to remember the spelling of Dean ACHESON's name, or to know the CHABAD organization. That crossing could be a killer for some poor solvers.

There's also more crossword glue than I expect from Andrew's work, ARIDE, YOO, ETTE / ATTA. That's because of the high theme density though — ETTE and ATTA are directly attributable to having to work with the ends of RHAPSODY IN BLUE and DECISION POINTS, for example. Perhaps one fewer themer would have been a better trade-off, although RHAPSODY IN BLUE is peskily an even number of letters, so it can't go in the middle of a 15x15 grid.

Overall, a neat concept. I might have given it the POW! if all the themers felt more like master opuses in the vein of STAR WARS. (Thank goodness THE PHANTOM MENACE is too long for a normal crossword grid!)

It's A RECIPE FOR DISASTER … using phrases that contain a word common to recipes … and that mean generally bad things? That didn't feel tight enough for my taste. I appreciate the STIR, MIX, BEAT, POUR, CUT, SERVE order — akin to brownies — but BEAT A DEAD HORSE is gross in this context, while MIX ONES METAPHORS is more quaint.

Huh.

Pushing that all aside, the grid is executed very well, not surprising given how good a constructor Andrew is. He puts on a clinic for making a smooth Sunday 140-word puzzle. It's such a rough task (which is why some other editors allow up to 144 words, making the job a ton easier).

You're always going to have some themeless-esque big white spaces in a 140-word Sunday puzzle. What separates the great grids from the clunky ones is 1.) developing an intuitive feel for how big a white space is too big, and 2.) doing a ton of testing to figure out where one's long fill can go without causing too many problems.

Andrew did well in the upper left, for example. It's not easy to work in two long slots up there, but THIRD BEST and COSECANT do a nice job. They don't shine as fill, but they have so many easy-to-work-with letters that Andrew can escape with hardly a blemish. (PIMA might be hard for some, granted.)

Another nice area is the PASHAS / OCTAVES / UNAWARE section. Look how well Andrew blocked it off from the rest of the puzzle to make it doable. OCTAVES is the only snazzy entry there, what with its great misdirectional [Scales span them] clue. But such a clean, professional result.

It's a tricky business. It's inevitable that you'll need some long fill in a 140-word puzzle, and it's so hard to place these entries without causing problems in the short fill.

Great execution in this grid. I wish the theme had grabbed me better, especially without the eew factor of BEAT A DEAD HORSE within a recipe.

Often, themelesses featuring a lot of 15-letter entries don't have a lot else to talk about. I like Andrew's innovative layout, spacing out his 15-letter entries so the rest of his grid can breathe and shine. He weaves in an impressive 12 long entries — so hard to do when some of them are grid-spanners.

I loved QWERTY KEYBOARDS and its clue. That QWE* start is so odd, and what a great misdirect, referring to "power output." This still confused me even after I got the answer. I finally realized the clue meant that the top of the keyboard — the top line — could be used exclusively when typing the words "power output." Clever!

BRITISH INVASION was nice too. Oldie but a goodie. DESI ARNAZ too. And the pairing of DRIVE TIME and MASERATIS was fun. I like it when a themeless constructor can generate associations between adjacent or crossing answers.

Not as much a fan of EXERCISE SCIENCE and EDITORIAL WRITER. Both are legit, but neither sing to me. Interesting terms to look up, but I doubt either will stick in my memory, not like QWERTY KEYBOARDS. In themelesses featuring 15-letter answers, I want those feature entries to shine. The north half of the puzzle, that was the case, to full effect. The south, not so much.

A notable aspect of Andrew's puzzle is how smooth it is — this usually isn't the case for themelesses featuring uber-long entries. The grid is constrained all over the place, with those 15s and 10s and 9s interlocking, creating so much rigidity and inflexibility. But Andrew scoots by with just an outdated QWEST (now CenturyLink) and Sydney OMARR, plural RENES, RAH.

Well, there are the oddballs: OSIER, KITER, NATAL. Hmm. Each is reasonably fine on its own, but as a group, they didn't leave me with a great impression.

Some of that overall smoothness of fill may have come at the expense of snazzy entries. I wonder if EXERCISE SCIENCE and/or EDITORIAL WRITER could have been replaced with snappier entries if Andrew had allowed a little more crossword glue. Ah, the eternal trade-off.

Yay for the Q in LGBTQ! I had been wondering when it'd finally make its debut (past just LGBT).

Pig parts hidden within phrases. Some delicious (*rim shot*) finds, LARD in POPULAR DEMAND a great discovery — it's difficult to stretch non-short words (four or more letters) across a phrase, so I liked this one a lot. BACON across NBA CONFERENCE is also an interesting find, not at all easy to work with that five-letter BACON string, but NBA CONFERENCE isn't nearly as snappy a phrase as POPULAR DEMAND in my eyes, though.

Everything was tied together with the revealer NON KOSHER (and HALAL as well). I hitched a little when I uncovered that, as I was expecting something PIG related. I do like being surprised by revealers, but this one felt slightly off. I'm still trying to think of another revealer that would have tickled me more — if only THE INSIDE PIG or PIG ACROSS were a real phrase. (Doesn't it seem like PIG SPREAD should be a real thing?)

Andrew's notion of themers reflecting worry about whether or not something contains pork is so much fun. I wonder if the clue for NONKOSHER could have conveyed that notion, somehow.

Andrew is so good with his long bonus fill. Today, he uses the approach I favor, relying heavily on long down answers that are spread out and staggered as best as possible. To get AMOS N ANDY / PIN NUMBER / PINOCHLE / TRADE WAR / MARKSMEN / MINNESOTA / FIELD MICE is quite MAJESTIC.

There's usually a cost to incorporating such a huge assortment of strong bonus fill, but today it's only the very small price of a little AER, AFIRST (feels like a six-letter partial), SOTS (outdated term). It's clear to me how much Andrew must have worked on each section of the grid, tearing out a long down answer if it forced him to complete a region with something unsavory, and trying something else. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Ugh, not a fan of the BOYS clue. Yes, BOYS will be BOYS is a common saying, but it's invoked as an excuse for so many things. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Overall, some really nice "hidden words" finds, with a revealer that didn't quite hit for me. But excellent gridwork, as per usual for Andrew.

I generally dig Andrew's classical / fine arts-tinged voice, and there are some great entries along that line: WAX POETIC crossing ANCIENTS and BOETHIUS (I was supposed to read the Consolation in college, and got about 0.5 pages in), AUTOTUNE, even STREISAND with the great clue — Nixon sure was paranoid! Along with the fun INANIMATE OBJECT and YOU'VE BEEN SERVED, there was a lot I admired.

A couple of entries made the puzzle less enjoyable for me, though. I generally think some people take crossword puzzles way too seriously, but WOMANIZING sure left a bad aftertaste for me. I'm not sure why that is — perhaps because I have a daughter now? I think puzzles should first and foremost be fun, and it's hard for me to see WOMANIZING as fun in any way.

And as much as I love SHOCK JOCK as a vivid term, pairing it with WOMANIZING was unpleasant. Throw in OCTOPUSSY, which is a great entry on its own, and it felt like the puzzle was trying too hard to be provocative.

Construction-wise, I like Andrew's effort to do something different, concentrating his black squares in the middle of the grid, which really opens up the corners. Very difficult to fill a region cleanly when it has so much white space.

I really enjoyed the upper right from a technical perspective — once you run INANIMATE OBJECT and WAX POETIC through the region, it's tough to get colorful entries without using gluey bits. ANCIENTS is usually a neutral answer for me, but having BOETHIUS right next to it does wonders for it. And I don't mind ROTC, IBAR, or ROCHE at all, since they're all real and common words. (Granted, my last careers were in engineering and pharma.)

Great work in the lower right, too. SCREEN TIME is a snazzy answer along with USB PORTS, and it's all held together like magic, no sign of even minor crossword glue. Bravo there.

Not as much for the lower left. A little OPE, OYEZ, ZEES, ERNE would be about my personal limit for most themelesses. To have them concentrated accentuated their presence.

Overall, nice gridwork along with some great feature entries, but I personally came away with an icky feeling.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" interpreted literally. How cool that GOOD INTENTIONS is 14 letters long — the perfect length to have it run diagonally down the puzzle … leading to a HELL rebus square!

Strong gridwork. It's always a challenge to incorporate diagonal theme answers, so one going down an entire main diagonal of the grid is tough. It's even more difficult when you challenge yourself with 6x5 corners, as with the NW and SE. I was absolutely sure there would be compromises in one or the other, or they'd be filled with bizarre answers. It's just so hard to escape a corner that's so big AND constrained by a diagonal answer without any compromises.

I should have remembered how solid Andrew's gridwork is — NO FEAR indeed! Getting some RAISING HELL / SEASHELL + BOSNIA and COLOSSI in the SE is fantastic work. ANODIC isn't fantastic in the other corner, but everything else is so smooth. Tough not to love MAISIE Williams in her strong-girl-kick-butt GoT role.

The other corners are well-done, too. Love getting some stacked answers in a themed puzzle! Andrew could have easily put PAVED ROAD / ST BERNARD in row 3 / column 3, and then broken up some answers to make a 76 or even 78 word puzzle, so I love his drive to give us so much long fill. ROB REINER, OPEN RANGE, GREEN PEAS all added to the quality of my solve.

The only hesitation I had with the puzzle is that it felt kind of thin, theme-wise. The three themers are spaced out well, covering most of the grid, but with only a 15 / 9 / 9, that's much less than we usually see. So it felt half-themed, half-themeless to me; sort of trying to find its identity. Sure would have been great to get a SATAN around HELL or some other little bonus to flesh out the concept.

Overall though, a whimsical interpretation of the quote and a neat visual, with really strong grid execution.

Fun idea, playing on phrases starting with a single letter. VITAL SIGNS is clued as if it were a long form of V SIGNS (winning symbols). ONION RING shortened to O-RING, GUEST SPOT to G-SPOT, etc. I don't remember seeing this exact concept, so it was fun to get something innovative and new. Very rare for me.

I did wonder what the "shortening" really meant, or how accurate it was. This would have been a mind-blowing puzzle if O really was short for ONION, for example. And I also wondered why Andrew chose TAPAS BARS for T-BARS rather than TIKI BARS, TACO BARS, TOOL BARS, TOFFEE BARS (besides having to fulfill crossword symmetry, of course).

But it's pretty hard to find so many examples of this kind of "shortening." There aren't a lot of phrases that are an expansion of O-RING besides ONION RING; same goes for V-SIGNS and VITAL SIGNS, etc. So overall, an interesting idea.

The grid is really, really well filled. Andrew has seven (!) mid-length themers — hard to cram all of them in, period. Nice crossing of QUICK TIPS / ONION RING and GUEST SPOT / TAPAS BARS to create good spacing, and excellent overlapping of VITAL SIGNS / GUEST SPOT and ONION RING / BLINDSIDES. Impressive layout of the grid's skeleton.

Given so much interlock / overlap, I would have expected 1.) not a lot of bonus fill and 2.) a bunch of gluey bits strewn about. Incredibly impressive to work in SPIKE LEE (a "Mississippi MASALA" tie-in would have been awesome!), SPAMBOT, and even BONZO, OPTIMAL are nice. All that with just a LAIRD, and even that I don't have much a problem with since it's a real-world word. Perhaps too much reliance on Greek letters — TAU, RHO, SIGMA, even ETAS — but overall it's a real feat of elegant construction.

Love seeing something new and different on a Thursday.

Triple-stacked 11s are tough — there are so many crossing answers you have to be careful of. Too often, they result in so-so long answers, or pretty iffy crossers. I really like Andrew's bottom right corner, that triple of HOMO ERECTUS / INTAKE VALVE (yay, mechanical engineering!) / MYSTERY MEAT really singing. AMTS is really the only gluey bit in there, and it's minor. (And if you don't know JONY Ive, you ought to. He's the longtime Apple design guy, largely responsible for the look and feel of the iPhone in your pocket.)

The opposite corner is pretty good too, especially BAMBOO SHOOT over I MEAN, REALLY. The latter is even nicer because its implied comma gets stripped away by crossword convention, making it harder to uncover. (I didn't know what a BARREL CHAIR was, so it didn't do a lot for me, but at least it's readily inferable.) Here, we do see some stress in the grid, especially with TYRO, a bit of old-school crossword glue. I think OLIN is perfectly fine, as Ken and Lena OLIN have been reasonably big stars. OLAN is tougher to judge for me — "The Good Earth" has been on many reading lists, but OLAN is no Scout Finch or Hermione, IMO.

I enjoy seeing the diversity within themeless patterns. Typically, constructors using stacked 11s would separate them as much as possible from the rest of the grid, but Andrew goes big, running both EUGENE LEVY and DOLITTLE through the bottom right. Not easy to do at all, as that can fix so much of a corner rigidly in place, causing compromises. Again, it's the upper left that feels a bit of strain with BARIC (not super common, yeah?) but that's pretty minor.

I also liked that Andrew took advantage of some of his smaller slots, MCCAFE, TAX TIP, AD EXECS, PERIWIG adding to the quality of my solve. A NOTCH was the only real sticking point to me, as that feels like it violates a cardinal rule of the NYT crossword — no partials greater than five letters. Still, there's enough snappy material packed in that I imagine Will bit the bullet and let it by.

★ One of the best aspects of working with Jim Horne on XWord Info is discussing puzzles. We often have a very different take, and sometimes he completely changes my opinion with thoughtful reasoning. It was only through some back and forth with him that made me realize there were enough things about today's puzzle that I loved; well worth the liabilities. Overall, it's POW material.

The concept will be rough for non-musicians, as the idea hinges upon knowledge of the chromatic scale. Each note can be described in two different ways, i.e. G sharp is equivalent to A flat. If only it were consistent all the way up! There are a few notes like E and F which are only a half step apart, so E sharp is not equivalent to F flat … but to F natural! Confusing, isn't it?

What finally flipped my thinking was Jim's visual interpretation (see the answer grid below). I can often take care of grid fixes, but this one was beyond my capabilities. I love the way it looks, so elegant, much more so than writing F NATURAL all into one little square — where I already had E SHARP already written.

I did have some issues. ENHARMONIC describes perfectly the idea of one note described in two ways … but it's in such an odd location, just off the centerline of the puzzle. That would have been perfectly fine if the symmetrical entry had also been thematic, but STORE SIGNS doesn't relate.

I also liked the presence of MUSICAL NOTE, but TWO TONE CARS didn't do it for me. I can see how it hints at the concept of a single tone being describable in two ways, but it doesn't feel very apt.

There was a little bit of crossword glue needed to hold things together (RESOAK, I see you), but that's not surprising considering three pairs of long crossing answers. And some great fill in FANGIRL, CURE-ALL, FELLINI, QUIT IT and I ROBOT really enhanced the solve.

So all in all, a great idea and a lot of colorful phrases overcoming the problems I had with it.

ADDED NOTE: Astute reader David Jones noted (pun intended) that STORE SIGNS actually hints at a box "storing" a musical sign. Subtly clever!

I think I sometimes underestimate themelesses featuring grid-spanning entries. I tend to count an asset as one point, no matter if it's eight letters of 15. Today's GO INTO OVERDRIVE and NO MORE MR NICE GUY felt like they should count for more than just one point apiece — both gave me a burst of "hey, cool!" when I pieced them together. I'll have to rethink my internal scoring system.

There wasn't a lot of other long material, but NO LOVE LOST, ALOHA STATE, even PANOPTICON added to the quality of my solve.

I did hitch upon solving the duo of WONDERBRAS / UNLADYLIKE in a male constructor's puzzle. The latter especially — a debut to the NYT — gave me a strange vibe I couldn't quite explain. They're not crass in the way that I found PLAYBOY MANSION / TOPLESS DANCERS to be. So I was extremely glad to read Andrew's thoughtful commentary — nice to hear his take on the charged nature of UNLADYLIKE and how WONDERBRAS empowered Herzigová.

I like SETH MEYERS as a comedian, and he gets millions of Google hits due to his SNL and his Late Night gigs, so he seems worthy of being a feature entry in a themeless. But this puzzle had so many other proper names that all in all it felt like too much. INGA. CASS. KIROV. AILEY. ROREM. TSO. OHARE. LYLE. LE CID. HAYS. AGRA. I like some proper names in a puzzle, but too many and it starts to feel like a trivia match instead of a crossword. Most entries are significant enough that NYT solvers really ought to know them, but some seem debatable.

A couple of clues that are likely to stump some (they stumped me!):

• How is AGRA an [Indian drawer?]? Think about "drawer" as "something that draws … tourists" (and then groan)
• TOED apparently means "driven obliquely," as in a nail.
• "Tennie" is slang for a singular SNEAKER, as in "tennies" (aka "tennis shoes") for SNEAKERs.
• ITT Tech might not be as famous as Cal Tech, but Google shows it's quite a sprawling for-profit institute. Plus, Caltech is usually represented as one word.

Loved the clue for ASH — [Camel droppings?] as in "droppings from Camel cigarettes." Hilarious!

★ I loved this concept, AUTOCOMPLETE interpreted as AUTO-COMPLETE. Just delightful to scratch my head, knowing that SOLAR PLEXUS had to fit in somehow but unsure how to accomplish that. Great finds in KATHIE LEE GIF(FORD), SOLAR P(LEXUS), HELP ME R(HONDA), ANNO DO(MINI).

I unfortunately didn't care for STRING T(RIO), as it 1.) wasn't a general car make like the others (Kia is the make, Rio is the model — what, no SLOVA(KIA)?) and 2.) I grew up playing cello in STRING QUARTETS. I can't remember ever playing in STRING TRIO — classically, it's so often two violins, a viola, and a cello. STRING TRIO is a valid thing, but to me it's just not nearly as strong as the others.

BELON(G TO) was also weaker in my eyes, as I felt like that entry didn't match the snazziness of SOLAR P(LEXUS) and the others. And as Andrew mentioned, the mix of makes and models felt inelegant.

That said, I still loved this idea and most of the execution. It would be so cool if electronic solvers had the LEXUS automatically filled in upon entering the SOLARP string!

Pretty darn good execution, too. I liked getting FAN CLUBS, SPONGE BOB, and especially TOPIARY. [Clip art?] might be one of my favorite clues of the year. Nice to BEEF UP the puzzle with a dash of long stuff.

Some will grumble about the ENIAC / NOYES and HOLI / ILE crossings. The ENIAC was an important part of computing history, and NOYES is a famous author, so that one feels perfectly fine to me. Having a lot of Indian friends, I'm very familiar with Diwali, but HOLI is tough. I had to concentrate on that one square, wondering what the Marquises were. Thankfully, only ILE looked reasonable, so in the end, I thought it was fair, too.

A few minor hiccups in choice of themers for me, but a huge thumbs up to such a cool idea, well-executed.

★ Really dug this one. I like odd grid patterns, and this one has a cool-looking middle. Slant-stacks (answers on top of each other but shifted) are easier to create than straight-up stacks because the ends have fewer constraints, but they're still hard. And running EIGHT long answers through them — that's notable.

Now, Andrew doesn't have a huge number of long slots in this grid — just 13 that are 8+ letters long — and most of them are located in that tough-to-build middle section. With only 13 long slots, it's important to me to get most all of them converted into great material. Andrew delivers, with KICK ME SIGNS and BARREL ORGANS my favorites.

The only one that's neutral in my eyes is SOLVENTS, and even that could have been made into an asset with a more interesting clue. With a more esoteric chemistry answer like ENOL or AMINE, you need a straightforward clue. SOLVENTS I think is well-known enough to be fair game for a clever clue, though.

I think a great puzzle should have (assets minus liabilities > ~10), so did Andrew hold his liabilities to three or less? EROO sticks out like a sore thumb, an inelegant suffix. Hard to avoid in that tough south section, what with BEDTIME STORY, ALPINE LAKE, and DENSE FOG bordering it. But other than that … SSA is minor (Social Security Administration), and AGE ONE is iffy to me. It is an important age milestone though, so I give it a pass.

Some might complain about NIQAB — I plunked in HIJAB as I think many will — but I like how these ported words have multiple acceptable spellings.

The NW corner, which was too sectioned off from the rest of the puzzle for my taste, had the one real worry for me. As I was solving, I had 14-A [Toughen] as ?NURE. I was rooting so hard for it to be the spelling I knew from before I started crosswords: INURE (not ENURE). Whew!

Overall, enough assets to overcome the small number of liabilities, plus a cool-looking grid. A great solve.