New York Times, Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Today's theme was inspired by (warning: mildly NSFW) this scene from the 2003 superhero smash X2: X-Men United. The original idea was that the magnets in the grid were so powerful that they were pulling the letters I, R, O, and N out of the theme clues... like this:

9D: D_d CP_ __, say
10D: _ce c_eam c__e type
28D Del_ve_y _f tax payme_t
29D F__st, t_ a seama_

So you'd have to suss out that those clues were for the base words, PUMPED, WAFFLE, FILING, MAIDEN... and then tack on the 'extracted' IRON letters in the grid, stuck to the magnets.

Ultimately, the editors felt the quadruple dupe (qupe?) of IRON was too easy for such a late-week cluing gimmick (and I don't disagree), so it'd be better to just clue the theme entries straight and run it earlier on. That said, I'm still proud enough of this weird little idea to talk about it here!

A few other random thoughts:

• App/web solvers get a bonus grid art treat today. But paper solvers of my last puzzle got to physically cross their Ts in the clues with their pens/pencils. So we're even.
• Making the magnets fully free-floating forced a grid with lots of mid-length fill. That, plus my original plan for this to run later in the week, is why you've got trickier stuff like SESTET and HIDALGO in there on a Tuesday.
• I'm grateful that the editors kept my original cluing angles at 27A, 41A, 12D, and 56D.
• Thrilled to have worked in an anagram of my son Miko's name at 57A.

And as always, if you want to commend, complain, or collab, my dms are always open.

Oh, the irony of this puzzle!

You have to have a good reason to break a crossword rule and an even better reason if you're going to break two of them. Why unchecked letters? It's elementary; the two circled letters spelling out F E, the chemical symbol for IRON. Perfect.

No duplicated words within a grid? It is fitting that today's two magnets attracted a pair of IRONs apiece.

I didn't buy the second rule breakage as much, though, since it was so repetitive to uncover all those IRONs. Would it have been better ... to use themers that started or ended with FE instead? That would have eliminated the dupes, but I'm not sure solvers would have even noticed why a BUTCHERS KNIFE or a BANK SAFE would be stuck on.

Perhaps items that typically stick to magnets, like NAIL POLISH? FDA FILINGS? Again, that would have gone over some solvers' heads.

I love me some grid art, especially built out of black squares, and the horseshoe magnets are distinctive. I didn't find myself magnetically drawn to the execution because of the IRON overdose, but it's a reasonable choice that more solvers are likely to appreciate.