EXPANDED WORLDVIEW

My favorite types of Sunday crosswords are those involving some sort of trickery, unusual gimmick, or other "outside the box" features. So of course when I sat down to write one myself, I did pretty much none of that.

Instead, this puzzle is a relatively straightforward theme with a focus on clean, lively fill. It won't wow you with meta-level discovery or a maximally perfect, algorithmic-generated theme set; it simply aims to be fun.

My hope is that for at least one solver (or team) out there, this is the first Sunday puzzle they successfully complete. For the rest of us, I hope you enjoy the fill along the way. If it's not to your taste, there's always the promise of a new puzzle tomorrow. Happy solving!

IN THE RED CORNER: the new American Crossword Puzzle Tournament Champion, Howard Barkin! After recently pulling a stunning upset of the six-time defending champion, Dan Feyer, he's accepted our challenge: to go head to head, mano a mano, against a competitor looking to fry his neurons, to jolt his synapses, to short-circuit his wiring.

The fearsome challenger sits IN THE BLUE CORNER, epic electric energy emitting in a bluster of boastful braggadocio. It's Dr. Fill, the crossword solving computer, birthed by Matt Ginsberg. Not only has the good doctor challenged the reigning champion of the world ... but he's challenged him on A PUZZLE HOWARD HIMSELF WROTE. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet!

The competitors face off, and the bell rings! Howard is off like a shot, quickly filling in the northwest corner, aided by his knowledge of the first theme answer. He heads into the next section ... and the Doctor is done. The final results: Dr. Fill: no wrong letters, finishing well under a minute, even with time alloted to check his answers. Howard: Ah. Huh.

Well, Howard is a better conversationalist. So there.

Congrats to our new ACPT champ! Neat to see one of the top speed solvers diving back into the construction game.

Fun crossword, perhaps some solvers' first completeable Sunday, as Howard mentioned. I like the image Howard gives us, starting with a HOUSE, zooming back to a STREET, a BLOCK, CITY, STATE, NATION, to (GOOGLE) EARTH. Reminds me of the zoom out sequence in Contact, showing us how small we really are. And how nice that GOOGLE EARTH not only ends the sequence with EARTH, but GOOGLE EARTH is a tool that allows you to do that zoom out.

A couple of rough patches, perhaps a little more than we usually see on a Sunday. I tend to gloss over the ETE, HGT kind of stuff, but the plural EBONS and the crossing gluey bits in IDIO / EDUC are tougher to ignore. And AGRIN … because the starting A tends to come in useful for construction, we get a lot of AGLOW, ABOIL, ABED. Not great though.

Still, Howard does well to give us some good bonus fill, from BLOWTORCH to TIME LAPSE to SOAP OPERA to IM A MESS. Even the mid-length BIG GUN and PUTSCH are assets. For a theme that's nothing mind-blowing, I think about six pieces of good bonus fill help create enough snazz for me to be satisfied — Howard's definitely done that here. I really appreciate when a newer constructor takes the care and effort to work in such goodies. I imagine that solving thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of crosswords helps Howard stay in touch with what is "good fill" and what's just neutral filler material.

It's so neat to see consumers of puzzles become producers. Here's hoping we see more from not just Howard, but the other top solvers too! I'm looking at you, David Plotkin and Dan Feyer.