Alex Silverman Pens Crossword Puzzle for the NY Times

Today's New York Times ran a crossword puzzle created by Alex Silverman. A Times "Wordplay" piece about the puzzle said in part,

Beatles songs are a lovely way to start the week. Alex Silverman appears to be making his debut in The New York Times today with a theme that reconfigures songs by the FAB FOUR as the favorites of people for whom the songs would be appropriate.

I was impressed that Mr. Silverman was able to stack these songs — we have two double stacks, an additional 15 stretching across the center and a shaded revealer at 32- and the end of 35-Across — although I also felt that it didn’t quite have that Monday smoothness that I appreciate in, say, a Lynn Lempel or Andrea Carla Michaels puzzle. (You see me looking at you, northeast, don’t you?) I had BIOME instead of BIOTA at first, neither of which felt like a Monday word. I wasn’t thrilled with L BAR crossing NBAER. I wish the grid didn’t begin with an abbreviation like SYST and end with NEUR and ERNS.

In a Facebook comment about the puzzle and Times's thinking about it, Silverman wrote, "The blog posters talk about this as being my 'debut' puzzle--which I suppose it is, but I have no idea what I would do as an encore.