New York Times, Thursday, June 16, 2016

The normal progression for a themed puzzle is that you accumulate your silly little set of theme answers first, and design a grid around them second. Here, besides a short revealer, this grid had no pre-determined answers or structure. There were a lot of options for clue words, and those words could clue a lot of entries. You could take this idea in a thousand directions. The puzzle was my oyster. And I hate oysters.

My vague, initial plan was to have an open grid with longer theme answers. [Cubit, e.g.] = NATIONAL LEAGUER as a grid-spanning 15, for example. While brainstorming through the list of suitable words, though, many of my favorite clue/entry duos were 10s. When I saw that two pairs would intersect, I decided to make MOPE AROUND, COPACABANA, SANTA CLAUS and BLOODY MARY seed entries, and go from there. Symmetrical themers generally went in two at a time.

A minor editing change swapped TRIBE/AEGIS at 10-/11-Down for JOULE/ARGOS. This must have been done to excise the grid's sole I-T sequence (A BIT was at 21-Across). I wasn't sure whether to worry about an I-T in the fill (there are none in the non-theme clues), but if the powers that be found its removal an improvement, I'm glad it was in an easy-to-fix location.

Actually, oysters are OK. It's onions that are abhorrent. Onions, Donald Trump, and selfie sticks. In that order.

I hope people have fun with today's puzzle.

A baffling solve quickly turning into a very entertaining one. I knew something was going on, what with all those starred clues, but I was stumped for a long time. Thankfully, I hit the revealer, piecing together DROP IT. Clever idea, extra ITs in clues making for puzzlement.

I really liked the ones where the IT 1.) totally transformed words and 2.) made for a normal-sounding clue. [Bite down, in a way] for MOPE AROUND is a good example — "Be" is very different from "Bite," and "Bite down" is perfectly innocent-looking. My favorite was [Bar order requiring celerity]. "Celery" to "celerity" is a big transformation, and the resulting clue had no giveaway awkwardness. So many of the 16 (!) starred clues worked so well — [Britain's location] was a close second for me, the "brain" to "Britain" change delicious.

[Pitiers] wasn't quite as nice, since "Pitiers" is kind of an odd word. And [Stick to it] (for KEEP AT) simply adds an "it" as a separate word. The resulting meaning isn't all that different, too.

I was curious why 16 themers had been chosen, especially since there didn't seem to be symmetry involved. Or was there? Yes! I tried highlighting the "themers" to better illustrate Tim's care in placing symmetrical entries, but that looked too busy.

The incredibly high theme density helps to explain a few rough patches, an OBOL here, an OIE there, etc. During my solve it did feel noticeable to get some of these bigger offenders, but looking at Tim's huge construction challenge — 16 themers! — makes me feel like these gluey bits are easily forgivable.

As much as I enjoyed the great quantity of transmogrified clues, it did feel a bit haphazard to hit so many starred clues seemingly randomly throughout the grid. I think I might have preferred the themers to be just the eight longest answers, or even six? Still, such an entertaining puzzle with a ton of clever wordplay in the clues.