New York Times, Wednesday, June 23, 2021

A pretty straight-forward theme today, but hey, once you notice that the name MICHAEL CRICHTON has the word CIRCLE in it backwards, the only thing to do is to make a puzzle.

Thanks to the editorial team for keeping so many of my clues — love to see those references to The Little Mermaid, Mario Kart, The Lorax, Audre Lorde, and crusty bread — and for sending me on a journey to answer the very important question "What can be plump, anyway?" A non-scientific sample of my friends concluded that things that can be plump include seals, beanbags, dumplings, and lips. We all agreed that apples cannot be plump. My friends could not reach consensus on whether peaches can be plump, but I'm glad the editorial team sided with me. What do you think?

And though it's spelled differently, I hope this puzzle will give some solvers cause to start thrashing and singing: "Her boyfriend / He don't know / Anything about her / He's too stoned / Nintendo / I wish that I could make her see / She's just the flavor of the weak."

Enjoy peach season, northern hemisphere solvers!

Fantastic find, upside-down CIRCLE inside MiCHAEL CRICHTON. It's hard enough to discover a five-letter word spanning across parts of a phrase, so a six-letter one is like an order from the great goddess Crucivera to make a puzzle around it.

Something fun about I HAVE NO CLUE being a themer, too. I have no clue … OR DO I?

Wait. It does have a clue. But somehow this feels sort of meta-theme related ... self-referential?

It is true that I usually have no clue.

I did have much more than a clue about the theme, unfortunately about a minute into my solve. [Author of "Jurassic Park"] at 3-Down led me to immediately fill in MICHAEL CRICHTON. I enjoy playing "Name That Theme," so brainstormed for another minute before wondering if the revealer would be SHAPE UP. Felt like the puzzle might be irrelevant.

But no! Glad I continued, because Kate did a fantastic job peppering in spicy entries everywhere. All-Down themer layouts often lack pizzazz, because it's hard to work in long Acrosses without them looking like themers. With those telltale circles though, even this anal technician had zero wonderings if UTAH STATE was thematic. That entry, plus SEA GLASS, Kate's hilarious PLUMPEST musings, and HOT SECOND make for a hot quartet.

Working in CHATTY, VAMPS, STROLLS, SHUT UP makes it far from HUMDRUM. This is a fantastic example of fill elevating a solving experience.

I did find it odd that OVAL didn't break across words — Will Shortz rarely allows this, since the other words in the phrase don't pull any theme weight — but what a colorful entry, FLAVOR OF THE WEEK. It's so fun that I might even prefer it over FILL A VOID, which does adhere to Will's criteria.

It's a shame that none of the other SHAPEs are as long as CIRCLE, since four-letter "hidden words" don't seem nearly as magical. Excellent work overall though, Kate's gridwork giving a huge added lift.