Solution to Evan Birnholz’s Sept. 6 Post Magazine crossword, “All-Around Player”

• 1A: [*“The Cider House Rules” author] is John IRVING.
• 7A: [*Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, 1970-1973] is John DEAN.
• 11A: [*Vietnam vet of film] is John RAMBO.
• 16A: [*“All the King’s Men” actor whose surname is a country] is John IRELAND.
• 31D: [*“Full House” actor] is John STAMOS.
• 84D: [*MVP of Super Bowl XXXIII] is John ELWAY.
• 127D: [*“Imagine” singer] is John LENNON.
• 173A: [*SNL star whose epitaph says, “I may be gone, but Rock and Roll lives on”] is John BELUSHI.
• 172A: [*He signed the act establishing the Library of Congress] is John ADAMS.
• 171A: [*“A Foreign Affair” actor] is John LUND.
• 170A: [*“The Centaur” novelist] is John UPDIKE.
• 143D: [*“NBA on NBC” theme composer] is John TESH.
• 97D: [*“Alien” co-star] is John HURT.
• 58D: [*Former Jethro Tull keyboardist] is John EVAN.
• 27D: [*Real name of the Lone Ranger] is John REID.

There are instructions at the top that read “Reading clockwise from top left, the circled squares will spell out an actor born on Sept. 6 and his apt TV role.” The first letter of these Johns, beginning at 1A and moving clockwise, spells out IDRIS ELBA / LUTHER. Idris Elba plays the detective John Luther, so he’s the other John in this puzzle’s “John” wall.

Since I’m a lifelong NBA fan, this is an idea that I’d been holding onto for a few years, but wanted to wait until John Wall’s birthday fell on a Sunday. You might be wondering why I made the grid so huge. That was a much more recent decision. It’s entirely due to the extra IDRIS ELBA / LUTHER element, which I threw in because I figured not everyone would know who John Wall is. I went looking for other men named John born on Sept. 6, but arguably the most famous of them was the 18th-century scientist John Dalton. I wanted someone more current than that, so when I found that Idris Elba was born on the same day and that his character’s name was John Luther, that was enough for me.

Of course, I found out the hard way that trying to spell IDRIS ELBA / LUTHER with the last initials of other famous Johns constrains you in a very big way. I needed a famous John U., and John UPDIKE is probably the best option for that. I needed a couple of John I. names, and I felt John IRVING and John IRELAND were my best options there. Even my John E. options outside of John ELWAY were pretty limited. John EVAN’s name makes me laugh, not because he shares my first name, but because Evan is the Welsh form of the name John, so he’s essentially John John. Anyhow, I found that the only way I could fit in all of these names symmetrically was to expand the grid, and I had to expand it much more than originally bargained for. There was no way I could make those names in the corners intersect, either, which meant I needed extra space for those corner black squares.

Hopefully, as big as the grid was, the puzzle itself wasn’t a big challenge. I tried to clue it easier than normal.

What did you think? (And happy birthday, John Wall and Idris Elba.)