New York Times, Thursday, May 2, 2019

My original idea for this crossword was to juxtapose opposites in the theme entries — such as the pair that ended up in the crossword, for instance… But the answers were quite long, and in the end, after going back and forth, on and off, with the original idea, I settled on just one pair and made the answers ‘tighter' with rebuses.

I'm glad the editors liked the final idea well enough to make me work at improving the theme answers and the fill, over many, many iterations! I learned to appreciate what editing means for this one, although I had a worrying moment, with a "near puzzle-killer" of a word. I saw no way to remove it without losing the "theme" theme answer… But it was eventually downgraded to "reasonable thing for a cultured person to know." Phew...

ON AND OFF hinting at two rebus squares next to each other. Sort of an ON / OFF switch!

Sort of.

I wish there had been a sharper a-ha moment, with the revealer slyly giving a rationale for why ON and OFF should be right next to each other. ON AND OFF could have just as easily explained: "phrases that contain one instance of ON and then one of OFF, not necessarily adjacent."

Ooh, here's a clever idea: ON AND OFF so aptly describes a rebus ON in the across direction … which changes into an OFF rebus in the down direction!

(That implementation would have been perfect for ON OFF SWITCH. Writing that down in my notebook of ideas…)

(D'oh! Already been done. Scratching it out...)

Although the revealer wasn't as spot-on as I would have liked, I did enjoy uncovering those dual rebuses in the four phrases. The four great phrases, mind you! CARBON OFFSETS gets a lot of buzz these days, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN feels classic, IMMIGRATION OFFICE solid, and PERSON OF FAITH to round it out. A ton of color from these themers; nice variety.

It was pleasing that two of them broke in the *ON / OFF* pattern, while the other two used *ON / OF / F*. Most solvers probably won't care, or even notice, but I thought it was an elegant touch of symmetry.

It's so hard to work with a big number of rebus squares. Average for a rebus is five or six, so ten is a tough ask. It's even harder when rebus squares have to work with each other. I like what Julie did with OFF TONE — neat solution for a tricky region.

It's also so hard to accept KUNST as a valid entry — talk about deep into foreign languages. But thankfully, there was only some OBJ, AERO, PERI elsewhere. If you can ignore the glaring KUNST, it's a good grid.

I think you could eliminate KUNST (and still have a good grid) by swapping SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and IMMIGRATION OFFICE. But it'd be a complete rework. Probably worth it, though ...

A better rationale for why ON should be next to OFF, and some cleanup in the grid, and this would have gotten POW! attention.