"Sunday Freestyle XXVIII," by Brad Wilber and Matthew Sewell

Constructors' Comments

Matt Sewell:  It's a great pleasure to collaborate with Brad—we both like the back-and-forth of experimenting with lots of variants in hopes of finding the best possible choice.  Brad always brings a rigorous eye and a deep well of fun entries—I mean, get a load of this grid's lovely middle, which is all Brad (as for me, I brought, uh, SAD KEANU to the party).  I think this was a spin-off from another puzzle we made together, but after many revisions it took on a life of its own.  I hope solvers enjoy the final product.

Brad Wilber:  I think Matt's right, and we had tried to wedge SAD KEANU into the final corner of another themeless, but it didn't work.  We started with it here, and the stack we built, including PAY TOILET, seemed snappy to me.  I remember TEN LONELY GUYS among my mother's 45s.  Its highest chart position must have been very close to my personal cutoff for inclusion in my word list, because research revealed it wasn't quite the megahit I assumed it was based on the number of childhood hearings.  If you can't sing it, I think the clue is well-crafted and gettable!  Yeah, Matt's been producing eminently publishable puzzles from his earliest attempts several years back.  It's probably natural that he would direct some my way at The Chronicle of Higher Education and that we would hit it off as cowriters.  We have many parallels in our work life, our interests, and our puzzle aesthetic.  In between all of our tinkering with grids and preparing submissions, we often laugh together about the foibles of college humanities departments.

"Free for All XXIV," by Brad Wilber

Constructor's Comments

I won't speak for everyone who constructs lots of themeless puzzles, but it seems natural to me to relish fresh challenges within that niche.  David and The Puzzle Society Crossword are trying to dispel some of the unattainable aura of open-grid puzzles—to help midweek solvers give them a new look imbued with hope!  It's important for the art form to have venues that do this, so I was eager to try to achieve gently spicy fill and cluing that mostly offers clarity instead of disguise.

I've had good luck with this grid pattern many times.  My favorite was a Los Angeles Times puzzle that clustered SHE-CRAB SOUP, MEDIA DARLINGS, and DISCARD PILE.  But only a few times have I managed to keep the two vertical 12s that merge with the central stack, as we have here.  The northwest and southeast always take a lot of trial and error in this pattern.  That's the flip side of the initial elation of getting your flashy stuff to work in the middle and in the slightly easier northeast and southwest.