New York Times, Wednesday, January 26, 2022

When brainstorming this puzzle, I wanted to make a grid where the theme letters evoke a recognizable symbol or pattern. An eye chart seemed like a good choice since the design itself is the letters, although in a real eye chart the letters start big and get progressively smaller. If I were making this puzzle again, it would be fun to attempt a 21 x 21 grid, embiggening a single E in a 5 x 5 square at the top, then a 4 x 4 F and P, and so on down to single-square letters at the bottom.

Today's layout required left/right symmetry, given the spread of the circles. I'm not usually a fan of quip or quotation puzzles since you have to rely on the crossing answers to complete the puzzle, but in this case, I felt like there needed to be a "why" to explain the eye chart. I settled on the idea that you pass an eye test (and this puzzle) if you get the letters right. Despite the constraints of the circled letters and the three-part answer, I think I got a relatively clean fill, so hopefully, everyone felt like they had a fair chance at solving this puzzle's message.

The editors came up with the hilarious clue for 62-Down. I wish I had thought of it.

I couldn't wait to see what the pyramid of circled letters would spell. This had to be some awesome Pascal's triangle or peg-jumping theme.

E … F P?

T O Z?

More like W T F. But that made me even more curious.

L P E D …

P E F C D.

O K ... Y Y Y?!

Ah! There are repeated Ps and Es. Is "mind your Ps and Es" a thing?

Oh, right. I should read the message … I passed my EYE TEST?

*squinting like I do at the optometrist's office*

I'm usually the one to play the "this would have been awesome if" game, but Jim Horne beat me to the punch today. He had a similar suggestion to Mike's, starting with a 3x3 square of nine Es at the top, with 2x2s of Fs and Ps after that. That would have been fantastic, getting much more at an actual eye chart.

I kept the ball rolling — how about if the lowest line of five letters was fuzzed out in gray! Better yet, what if it contained nonsense characters, a la Hans Moleman?

Jim, the Simpsons infidel, reacted much more with a question mark than a smiley face.

Although the EYE TEST gag didn't land for me, I enjoyed the attempt at something different. More importantly, Michael did a wonderful job of incorporating enough interesting fill to keep up solving interest. BANYAN TREE and PROM QUEENS are top-notch. UNADORNED is kind of unadorned, but along with YAPPED SNEERS there's a lot of sass.