New York Times, Thursday, April 21, 2022

I'm excited for my NYTXW Thursday debut! First, I'd like to give a big shout out to Loren Muse Smith and Tracy Gray's 2017 puzzle, which I drew inspiration from heavily (standing on the shoulders of giants).

I enjoy puzzles that take advantage of the online solving experience (like this past Sunday's Easter Egg Hunt puzzle on the NYT's xword app that transformed EGG rebuses into images of colorful eggs). So when I thought of this theme, I imagined how cool it'd be for certain black squares to literally eclipse the SUN and then disappear to reveal the SUN rebuses (I'm not an astronomy buff, so I had to constantly look at this image to remember how a solar eclipse actually worked).

I created a list of probably 50+ theme answers, of which many didn't make the cut, including: SAMSUNG GALAXY, EASTER SUNDAY, E PLURIBUS UNUM, MENS UNDERWEAR, LETS UNPACK THAT, and COMES UNDER FIRE. The grid constraints were pretty difficult. I spent days trying to create a grid where the SUN rebuses were scattered randomly — I even created 16x15 and 16x16 versions too — but ultimately found that a 15x15 grid with symmetrical rebus squares yielded much cleaner results.

Even though this is your typical weekday rebus puzzle, I hope solvers still have a pleasant "aha" moment. Thanks to Will Shortz and the editing team for their thorough (and I mean thorough) suggestions that helped improve this puzzle.

Neat grid art, black squares forming sort of an orb in the middle, with the four SOLAR ECLIPSEd black squares orbiting around the perimeter. We've fixed up the grid and answers; see below if you're still confused.

Great touch to make the four special black squares the only loners, surrounded by seas of white. It's so difficult to uncover "letters within black squares" themes, that any factor like this can be so helpful. Even when I figured out 4-D must be SAY(S UN)CLE, I couldn't write SUN into that black square, so trying to piece together MISS(S UN)IVERSE was still tricky.

I also liked that Max made the effort to break SUN across phrases. Not easy to do with SUN — much easier to incorporate it into words like (SUN)NIS and DAT(SUN) — so PLAYER(S UN)ION is a great find.

Some Thursday-level vocab, no doubt. NES(SUN) DORMA could have been NES(S UN)D ORMA (or any string of random letters) to this opera novice. Thank goodness I've done enough crosswords to know that [Random town in Maine] must be ORONO!

ARACHNOID made me pause, not just because I heard my arachnaphobic wife's scream. Arachnid, sure. ARACHNOID ... is in the dictionary.

Speaking of animals, having one crosswordy ERNE might be fine. Not as much with EFTS, too.

It's tricky to grid around crossing themer pairs. Now multiply by that five! So it was great to get some bonuses in ALFA ROMEO. STAYS ALIVE.

Some incredibly difficult spots, especially since you're forced to keep the eclipsed SUNs in your mind during the solve. I also wondered why four SUNs? But I gave that a pass since it reminded me of the incredibly innovative book, The Three-Body Problem.