New York Times, Wednesday, February 20, 2019

This puzzle has a pretty unusual set of theme entries: two 12's, two 13's and two 14's. The sensible thing would be to blow it up to a Sunday size, but the theme felt thin for that, and the next best entry I could think of was BUTLER AND O'HARA. So after much fiddling, I managed to make it work without too many cheater squares. The revealer EDU was completely serendipitous.

I hit EDU early on in my solve — seemed like an odd place for a revealer (pointing to the fact that the starts of the themers are names of schools). Gave the game away even before it began.

But wait! This is a Walden. He comes up with some of the most creative ideas in the crossworld. What if … THE ENDS OF THE THEMERS ALSO HAD SOMETHING IN COMMON! There was bound to be a SECOND revealer down at the bottom!

Took me a while to figure out, but here it is: OIL.

Do you see it?

I'll give you a moment.

WESSON is a cooking OIL. When you JOSH, you might be using an OILy tone. BEANS are cooked in OIL. English DUCHESSes often make their money from OIL.

Et voila! Or should I say, et v-OIL-a!

I almost had you, didn't I?

I enjoyed this theme, but the implementation less so. No doubt, stacking long themers — like BROWN AND SERVE and DUKE AND DUCHESS right atop each other — is a construction feat. And there weren't nearly as many compromises as I would have guessed. Just INDS / TUES / RES in that top stack is great work.

But all the machinations to get everything to stack, plus working around six themers, took up so much real estate that there was no room for a well-placed revealer. For a theme like this, you need a revealer, or you risk too many solvers not figuring it out. Saying the a-ha before the puzzle even starts saps away all the fun.

And DRAKE AND JOSH didn't do anything for me — old Nick show that lasted for only four seasons? Why not eliminate it, sticking to five themers, laid out in a more traditional way, with EDU down at the bottom? Or better yet, some sort of SCHOOL revealer. How about running four themers vertically, and finish it off with a flourish using HIGH SCHOOL (get it, the schools would literally be high in the puzzle?) as a revealer?

I did like the "tightness" — amazing that Byron found so many "(school) AND X" phrases. And I appreciate efforts to break out of traditions, as they tend to become ruts. They don't always work, but creative layouts like this do help spur on the evolution of crosswords.