New York Times, Monday, January 25, 2021

ACME: Although we rewrote this (several times!) over a year and a half ago, I'm thrilled with the timing of the publication as I've been living for Jan 20th to shout the reveal from my rooftop!

KEVIN: I'm going to address the elephant in the room head-on. This puzzle contains the phrase YOU'RE FIRED, which is a phrase that 45, i.e., the most recent former occupant of the White House, used to say on the television show "The Apprentice." This puzzle is running five days after being "fired," and a new president has been sworn in.

Someone somewhere in the crossword blogosphere will complain that the puzzle is political and that crossword puzzles shouldn't be political because they're supposed to be "fun" and unbiased. They're wrong for two reasons.

First, they're wrong because the timing of the puzzle is coincidental. It was scheduled before the NYT noticed its timely significance.

Second, they're wrong because a crossword puzzle is a work of art, and art absolutely has the right to be political. Books, paintings, and songs can be political. So can crossword puzzles.

The timing of this puzzle delights me, and here's why: 45 was the worst president ever. It's hard even to know where to start with this guy's faults, but in case you slept through the last four years, in case you've forgotten the horrors he wreaked on our country and the world, I have not.

For these reasons and many more, I say to 45 that I'm ecstatic that YOU'RE FIRED. I didn't plan for this puzzle to run on this day, but I'm delighted that it did. If anyone in the crossword blogosphere is upset by this, I DON'T CARE.

Such high marks for technical excellence! I usually find some aspects to nit-pick in both Acme and Kevin's layouts and gridwork, but not today. Themers positioned perfectly, even shifting ANKLE BOOT to the left to avoid an awkward letter pattern where BAGEL sits. (??G?K is terrible, so the shift avoids that problem.)

Almost every Monday puzzle should contain exactly what this one does: super-smooth short fill (minor UNE and odd A AND M aside), a few long bonuses (REDBIRDS, DOG SAT, NO CUTS!, and that's DOES LAPS, not DOE SLAPS), along with fine grid flow. I might have tried for a little less segmentation between the upper right corner and the diagonal swath, but that's more a wish list item, not a problem.

Sometimes constructors accuse me of holding them to too high a standard; five themers necessarily come with trade-offs. That might be the case with hard constraints — extra Xs or funny letter patterns — but in general, if you're not executing to today's standard, you have to work harder.

Well done, Acme and Kevin — I wonder if there's some interesting synergy here between your two construction styles?

So why no POW!? Because if I were the editor, I wouldn't have selected this one. Not because of any political sort of reason, but because I want puzzles to delight. Uplift. Create a temporary bubble of happiness in people's lives. While I can admire the technical merit, riffing on YOU'RE FIRED during a time of generational-record unemployment feels cruel.

I admire the clever hiding of CAN, AXE, SACK, and BOOT's meanings. Such a downer, though. I get that some folks will celebrate the irony of Trump's "firing," but that delight is more gas pouring onto our national dumpster fire.

Now look who's a downer! I'll leave you with cute deer instead. No slapping, I promise.