New York Times, Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Second puzzle! Glad to see this wasn't blind luck. I was listening to Taylor Swift's then new album 1989 (fantastic album, for what it's worth), and I thought it would be cool to turn her last name into an adverb and clue the phrase as Taylor, swiftly. I then started looking for other celebrities with adjective last names and found the set JAMESBLUNTLY, HOWARDSTERNLY, and GLENNCLOSELY. Joel and Will suggested I clue them as Tom Swifties and the puzzle was born. The puzzle needed significantly less editing than my debut, which I was happy to see.

Thanks as always to Will and Joel for their insight. And Taylor, if you happen to be an avid reader of online crossword blogs, I wouldn't object to some backstage passes the next time you're in Boston. Just saying.

What a fun idea! I like Tom Swifties, but when they've been so overdone in both real life and in crosswords that they run the danger of feeling bleh. I appreciate Ryan's different take on the theme trope, expanding it to full-name celebs. The cluing — done in a Tom Swifty-esque way — is what makes the theme work for me. Given GLENN CLOSE's iconic role in "Fatal Attraction," thinking about her getting a little too close was fun.

I used to listen to HOWARD STERN — my twin brother was once interviewed on it! — so linking STERN to a STERNLY-issued warning was also fun. Great stuff.

JAMES BLUNT wasn't as familiar to me as the others, but that's not a surprise given my horrible pop music knowledge base. It would have been great to get EMILY BLUNT in there to make it two men and two women, but perhaps JAMES BLUNT is more famous? Tough to judge. And JAMES does have that relatively rare J that can make crosswords more interesting.

Love DEAL ME IN as a bonus entry. SPORADIC and OFFLINE are good too. It would have been nice to get maybe one more pair of long downs, but these themers are of "awkward lengths," in that they force placement of several black squares immediately. Makes it much harder to work in high quantity and quality of long fill.

A couple of hiccups in the grid. Some of that is to be expected, especially in places where themers and long fill answers mesh together — EAP and INTER is a prime example, with that east section fairly constrained.

But avoiding DREI should be easier in a relatively flexible section like the lower right. Along with HARRYS (plural name), REG, UNI, ONS, DO NOW, it felt just over the threshold of too much. I'd have liked to seen rework to smooth it all out a tad.

But it's hard to argue with an early-week theme that tickles, and this one gave me a lot of smiles.