New York Times, Tuesday, March 24, 2020

As happens so often, the "seed entry" for this puzzle didn't end up in the final product. This started with AVOCADO TOAST, clued as "Celebration of a healthy fat source?" but as I found more puns in the celebratory area, it became clear that I needed to stay in a strict party-synonym place for the theme to work cleanly. Huge thanks to Andrea Carla Michaels for her advice on this theme set last summer! Great to see it come to fruition here.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle, and got a kick out of the TRIED ON JEANS row :)

Just because Jim Horne and I are both sheltering in place doesn't mean that we can't yell into our TV phones at each other!

Jim: (wincing) You don't have to yell into your computer from two inches away.

Jeff: Oh. Sorry. How'd you magically get inside my TV computer monitor, anyway? And what's with TV RECEPTION?

Jim: You might not remember, but a TV is an outdated device used to display programming such as sitcoms—

Jeff: I may be a moron, but I'm not that old. I mean … I'm not that young. Wait. (brain overheating) I'm trying to say that I remember TVs, but I'm also older than a lot of the kids these days, so what I meant to say was …

Jeff: I'm a moron.

Once Jim and I got past the first theme entry, we both enjoyed the concept. My inner (and outer) nerd was delighted by a TRIG FUNCTION being a gathering of mathematicians. That entry won Olivia a POW! all by itself. I've used many a MEDICINE BALL but never thought of it as a party for doctors. And I'm married to one! A doctor, not a medicine ball. Just to be clear.

When an idea spurs me on to search for other examples, that's usually a sign it's a winner. I couldn't find many other theme options, which indicates that it's a tight theme. There was only one that could have worked: SOUND MIXER for us Puget Sound folks or CEMENT MIXER for construction workers.

There was JEFF SESSIONS, but no one may know about the top-secret society known as the Joint Jeffiez Jamz. This paragraph will self-destruct in five seconds.

It's a shame that TV RECEPTION wasn't buried in the middle of the grid. It didn't work as well as the others, because who besides me thinks about TV RECEPTION (the antenna I plug into my computer doesn't work as well as it used to) these days? Minor point, though.

I almost didn't give out the POW!, because the gridwork was far from smooth. It's tough to get past a pile-up of ENTR ETH GTE INE REL RRR TOI and the plural MARYS. And while EEG ENT and TSP are usually fine, they multiplied the feeling of this product still being in process. The root of the issue is in grid design, with the long acrosses mucking things up. TRIED ON, ALTER EGO, AGNOSTIC, I RECKON are all great bonuses, but they make gridding so challenging.

I appreciate Olivia's audacity, giving us STEROID, BRASSIERE, GENDER GAP, and BIG CAT as well. Trying to work in so much long fill — both across and down — is flying too close to the sun, though. It needed another round of revision, with major redesign, to better serve newer Tuesday solvers.

Overall, the theme was so delightful that my human side overcame my robot's technical analysis.