New York Times, Thursday, February 11, 2021

Looking at the puzzle through new eyes (it's been more than two years since I made it), I especially like the ELF-ELF from ELVES example as neither TWELVE nor STEPS appears in the grid. It feels more elegant than the others since EFFECT, TABLE, and NAMES are unchanged. That said, DIE-DIE from DICE is especially nice (!) as adding an internal consonant is an unusual plural construction. I also like that each of the plurals is formed differently (consonant change plus an extra vowel and consonant, consonant addition, single vowel change, and double vowel change).

I enjoy seeing how the editorial team massages the cluing. Some clues make it through unchanged, some are tweaked, and others are completely redone using a different sense of the word.

A few clues I miss:

• GORE: ["The Thing" thing] became [Feature of a creature feature, perhaps]

• DRAWER: [Chest chamber] became [Part of a cabinet]

• MOM: [Ewe to me, if I were a sheep] became [May day celebrant]

• IS IT ART?: [A question of framing?] became [Question one might ask when looking at a banana taped to the wall]

On the other hand, I really dig the playfulness of the revised version of IS IT ART?.

Notably, the theme clues also received a more straightforward treatment from the editors:

• COME[DIC E]FFECT was [Routine justification?]

• TW[ELVE S]TEPS was [Way to keep dry?]

• COF[FEE T]ABLE was [Remote location?]

Perhaps that's to ratchet down the difficulty?

Oh, I get it! COMEDIE DIE EFFECT is when Bill Burr goes onstage.

So much for comedic effect.

I liked the play on "hidden plural expressed as two consecutive singulars." I feel like I've seen this several times before, but after ten minutes of searching, I couldn't pull one out of my cheek cheek. (I did find one that used a repeated instance, and a similar notion that blew me away; Paolo so creative!)

I found it curiously hard to enter the themers. Even though I knew TWELFELFTEPS had to be "twelve steps," it's so difficult to visualize the hidden ELVES without it written somewhere. NAMANMANAMES was even worse, what with yet more repetition in "name names." The result is so dastardly nonsensical, like something out of the Muppets.

As always, solid gridwork from Alex. Neat to get a MAHARISHI, APPARATS, some BABY FAT, you BETCHA. These aren't entries you see every day, and I appreciate that.

I didn't have that much fun overall since it was hard to imagine where the hidden plural should fit, but I admire the creativity. Great clue for ACORN, too — "in a nutshell," indeed. Now that's comedic effect!