New York Times, Thursday, May 18, 2017

The initial idea for today's puzzle involved intersecting theme answers: chickens for the acrosses, roads for the downs. That might have worked if I'd been able to find examples of well-known fictional chickens beyond FOGHORNLEGHORN and CHANTICLEER, or well-known breeds beyond RHODEISLANDRED and CORNISHGAMEHEN. A pity, since there are plenty of colorful and evocative breed names that deserve to be better known. (AUSTRALORP, anyone?)

Favorite clues: [Polish target] and [Stable stuff]. Clue I was saddest to see not make the cut: [It's hit by horse enthusiasts] for both 2- and 3-Down.

Given my education and work as a mechanical engineer, I place a high value on efficiency. One implication is that I write incredibly small, so as to save on paper and ink. People make fun of me for that, but WHO'S LAUGHNG NOW THAT I'M ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE WHO CAN EASILY SQUISH BOTH CHICKEN AND ROAD INTO A SINGLE CROSSWORD SQUARE BWA HA HA!

Ahem. Jacob gives us a fun rebus twist, the CHICKEN "crossing" a ROAD in four rebus squares. Some strong theme phrases, CHICKEN OF THE SEA, NO SPRING CHICKEN, and ROAD RUNNER my favorites (jet-propelled pogo stick, anyone?). I also enjoyed the succinct revealer — WHY? — in the middle of the puzzle, leaving the solver to piece together the gist of the theme.

As with most all Stulberg grids, some great bonuses: POLO BALL, BAR EXAM, TRIFECTA, PEN PALS. And as with most all Stulberg grids, nice and smooth. When the only detectable crossword glue is MSGS — and that's a common enough abbreviation — you've produced a top-shelf product. (For me, EST and ESL are so minor as to be ignorable.)

How does he accomplish this? One big reason is that Jacob wisely sticks to a 78-word grid. When you have this much theme packed in — four pairs of crossing answers plus a short revealer — making the grid low-word-count and wide-open is just begging for trouble.

A little bit of magic is that the grid doesn't seem like a 78-word puzzle. Normally, 78-worders feel heavy with three- and four-letter entries, and they feature few long bonuses. But Jacob gave us so many slots of 7+ letters that I got a lift everywhere I looked — a little BAR EXAM here, some MANNERS there, PEN PALS at the bottom, etc. Great work.

I'm still not a fan of rebuses that require so much to be crammed in a single box — four or five letters is my preferred max, otherwise most (normal) people can't fill in the answers properly. But I liked the idea behind this one, along with the Stulbergian execution.