New York Times, Wednesday, January 29, 2020

I really dig the quirky turn this puzzle theme took. After stumbling across themers "CHRIS PINE" and "DONNIE YEN," I found that last names LONG, JONES, and HOPE also fit the pattern "ACHE (for)."

I began by adding "S" to their names because cluing "CHRIS PINES" and "BOB HOPES" could be fun. But changing "JONES" to "JONESES" felt like it broke a tight theme pattern. So I tried flipping first and last names, and ultimately liked the wacky way that answers like "LONG FOR NIA" and "HOPE FOR BOB" look and sound in the grid.

Pretty pleased with clues "Single's bars?" (ARIA) and "Vow to get even?" (IOU). Always love finding fun ways to misdirect solvers on super common crosswordese.

Did anyone else put in GADOT FOR GAL? No? Me neither, ha ha, only a total buffoon would do that!

Who would have thought there would be five actors, each with a last name meaning "want"? What a constructor's dream, to have such a tight set of people, all of whom are crossworthy — and who fit the rules of crossword symmetry!

Will Shortz often shies away from running people-based themes, because they can feel trivia-heavy. If you don't know JANUARY JONES and DONNIE YEN, for example, it's not going to be a lot of fun to uncover these names.

Even if you don't know Yen, though, it's so awesome to see another Asian leading man in the movies, especially in the "Star Wars" franchise. Not that it makes up for the SEA aliens (stereotypically evil Asians) in Episode I, but it's a start.

At first, I wondered if the theme would have been better done in a straightforward way, listing NIA LONG, CHRIS PINE, JANUARY JONES, etc. Then I realized you'd need some revealer to make the concept clear — maybe WANT as the last entry?

Would that make the theme clear, though? You almost need to add (for) after all of them, since JONES FOR is so much better a synonym for "want" than JONES.

So if you're going to add FOR anyway, why not go with Jeremy's kooky approach?

The POKER clue ... you see, when POKER was first invented, chips were non-existent, so people used checkers, and that's why to this day they're often red or black--

Huh? "Checkers" as in "a person who checks"?

I knew that.

(Joel Fagliano is a poker player, so I'd go all in that he had a hand in this clue.)

I noted zero blips in the grid as I went, not a surprise given Jeremy's gridding skills. Smart themer placement, wise deployment of black squares to separate them, and the best of all, the sagacity to stick to a highish word count, not trying to do too much.

Overall, a tidy set of five actors with something fun in common. Enjoyable presentation as well.