FRIDAY PUZZLE -- This is Jacob McDermott's 12th puzzle for The New York Times, and his fifth Friday grid. My typical approach to solving themeless puzzles is to slowly chip away at the shorter answers until the longer ones become clear, but for this crossword I had mostly the opposite experience. Answers to 17-, 27- and 37-Across, as well as to 10-, 11- and 23-Down, came to me freely, but many of the four- to six-letter entries caused me to feel a bit of angst. I put the puzzle away and came back to it a few hours later, and suddenly everything just fit together.
Tricky Clues
14A. While the clue [Drive around the office?] may recall a certain grisly moment in "Mad Men" to some, in this case the answer is WORK ETHIC.
19A. The [Fake account] here is not a bot, but a LIE.
20A. This is a fun cryptic-style clue: The [Dead ends?] are DEES, the letters on both ends of the word "dead."
37A. Mr. McDermott highlighted this answer in his notes as the "seed" entry. Constructors commonly use this term to indicate the first big entry (or entries) in a themeless grid, but it is also fitting given the clue in question: The [Plant eater?] is a VENUS FLY TRAP.
40A. Think like SpongeBob here: Your [Prepared statement?] is 'I'M READY.'
52A. I don't think the clue [Doesn't exactly ham it up] is a particularly difficult one, but the answer, UNDERACTS, feels a little crunchy to me. It slowed me down a lot in that southeast corner.
15D. [Back in the race?] solves to ENDORSE, not "re-enter," which is what I wrote in (heh) first.
Constructor Notes
The seed for today's puzzle was 37-Across. The clue-and-answer pair randomly popped into my head one day, and I had the presence of mind to write it down -- a process that was refreshingly screen-free. Take that, A.I.!
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