27D. “Paramount requirement?” refers to the movie studio, not a relative measure of importance, and the requirement is a SCREEN TEST.
49D. I thought “Where early tablets were first unveiled” was a very fun clue for Mount SINAI. It refers, of course, to the Ten Commandments, not to iPads.
54D. Ah, PONG. I remember when my father brought home an early Atari console and we carved out a spare week or so to play a game. It took a week because, unlike most sports, the rudimentary “ball” — I think it was really just a large pixel — took about a half-hour to make it across the screen once you hit it with the “racket,” which was really a single line of pixels. Then — and this is the exciting part — your opponent would struggle to move his or her line of pixels to where the ball pixel was supposed to go. I say “struggle” because most people had never operated a home video game at that point. Occasionally, someone was able to bounce the ball pixel off the side of the screen, and that was considered Olympic level playing.
Constructor Notes
One of the great things about themeless construction is that it offers the freedom to experiment with grid concepts that don’t work within the limitations of a themed puzzle.
As a solver, I dislike grids where black squares seem like they were just placed randomly because they turned out to be most convenient for the constructor, which can blunt the aesthetics and the flow of the puzzle. So I’ve challenged myself to start working within much tighter constraints.
I decided to make a grid from only straight blocks of three black squares each, with the additional requirement that these blocks cannot touch each other, even at the corners. In addition to having visual appeal, this loose layout also helps ensure that solvers can progress smoothly from one area of the grid to another. This design has only six long entries of nine to 12 letters, so the main imperative on fill was ensuring that the 22 mid-length slots really brought a lot to the table. As someone working in the A.I. space, I’m delighted to be debuting 34-Across.
Hope you all enjoy!
Don’t Fear the Fridays: About the Easy Mode Newsletter
Christina Iverson, a puzzle editor, will send a weekly Friday crossword with more accessible clues right to your inbox if you sign up for the Easy Mode newsletter. This extra bit of goodness is for those who would like to try the Friday puzzles but have heard all about how hard they are.
Take a look at the difference between the regular and easy-mode clues below. The links are a small sample of the clues from this Friday’s puzzle. When you click on them, you will see the version that will run in the regular puzzle as well as the easier version.
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