A New Old New York Times Themeless Puzzle

[Grid shot lifted from Diary of a Crossword Fiend]

The good thing about getting a crossword puzzle published in the New York Times is that you get a crossword puzzle published in the New York Times.  It's a big audience, certainly in the thousands, probably in the hundred-thousands (in the millions? probably not), and likely containing a handful of very famous people, by whom I would be completely star-struck if I peeped into their kitchens in the morning and saw them solving my puzzle over cups of coffee.  (Being a huge baseball fan, after seeing Wordplay, I like to imagine Mike Mussina has done a few of my puzzles.)  The bad thing about getting a crossword puzzle published in the New York Times is that the process is l-o-ng.  The turn-around time -- the time it takes from submission to publication -- is at least a few months and often (and in this case) a few years.

In the past, this hasn't been such a big deal.  The solver doesn't know (or care) when a puzzle is submitted and the essential elements of a good crossword puzzle aren't usually that time sensitive -- a good bit of word play in 2015 is still going to be a good bit of word play in 2017, and if a splashy word or phrase doesn't hold up for at least a few years, it's probably not as splashy as you think.  Lately, however, I've been finding the submission-to-publication lag very annoying.  The reason is that about three years ago I started constructing themeless puzzles that were good enough to publish.  I built up an NYT cache of five or so puzzles and now they are starting to run.  (One ran in September, another ran in April.)  This is fantastic, I'm stoked about it, but it would have been fantasticer, and I would have been stokeder about it three years ago, when the puzzles were representative of my current work.  I've really tried to make strides toward improving my themeless puzzles, and I feel like I have, so it's a bit -- I'm not sure what the right word is, dismaying is too strong -- irksome? -- that's not right either, but I'll go with it for lack of a better option -- it's a bit irksome to see work I did when I was very much a themeless-puzzle novice being published today when I've since stepped up my game.

I can't help but focus on the flaws of my earlier puzzles -- the things I would change today -- instead of just enjoying them.  I did it a bit with my last two NYT puzzles, and I'm doing it big time today.  The first thing I did when I saw this grid recently was cringe at the bottom section: REPOT, TSOS, ARBORED, MERLINS (partially saved by Will's Harry Potter clue) all in the same section, with INSTR just a stone's throw away -- that's just shabby fill.  There are many good things in this puzzle too (it did get published after all), but the bad parts bother me more than the good parts make me happy.

And it's not just that I'm being my own worst critic.  I recently had a themeless puzzle run at BuzzFeed that I made just a few months ago that think is superb (seriously, check it out, if you haven't already); it's that I know I could do this puzzle better today, and so it feels as if I'm looking at an inferior version of my work.  And that's a little frustrating.

But, when it comes down to it, nobody but me really cares anyway, so let's do some quick bullet points and call it a post...

• The highlight of this puzzle for me is definitely WIFFLEBALL.  It's a nice lively answer, with a major personal connection, as I spent much of my youth playing Wiffle Ball Home Run Derby.  In fact, one summer, when I was about 14, I played a full "season" of it with my friend Jeff, where we each adopted a major league lineup (he was the Braves; I was the Mariners) and carefully record our stats after each game on his Apple IIe computer (it was old even back then).  Because I'm such a baseball obsessive (have you seen my book?), I would bat from the same side of the plate as the real player I was emulating even though I couldn't really hit left-handed.  Come to think of it, I couldn't really hit right-handed either.  I didn't win very often.

• I got BELLYLAUGH from Jenny McCarthy's book "Belly Laughs," which is currently sitting on my bookshelf.  I'm not exactly sure how it got there, and I haven't read it, but I bet it's hilarious!  I'm being sarcastic, if you couldn't tell.  Jenny McCarthy is not funny... especially when it comes to her "well-researched" views on vaccines.

• Where have you gone, Mr. AYKROYD?  I saw Ghostbusters again recently (still holds up, for the most part), and one thing I was struck by was how much the Ghostbusters smoke throughout the movie.  I don't think that would fly today.  Your protagonist can smoke bad guys without remorse, but he (or she, but mostly he, it's Hollywood after all) can't be shown smoking a cigarette.  It's a bad message for the kids.

• I posit that Queen's ARENAROCK anthem "Another One Bites the Dust" is number one on the "Songs that are Actually Really Good But that You Can't Stand Because You've Heard Them Over and Over and Over Again" list.  Seriously, the bass line is great, and Freddie Mercury kills it on vocals.  If I had never heard Queen before, and somebody played me this song, I'm sure it would blow my mind.  Instead, when I hear this song, I want to blow off my head.  (Not literally -- stop gun violence!)

• I will leave you with the song "Blackbird."  It was originally performed by those Fab Four MOPTOPS and later used in a cover of EAZYE's song "Boyz-n-the-Hood."  It's a fitting way to go out.