New York Times, Wednesday, July 12, 2017

PATRICK: If you wanted to bottle the enthusiasm and effort Elayne put into this puzzle, you'd need a vat! Although the two of us live about as far apart as two contiguous U.S.ers can (she's in L.A., I'm on the east coast of Florida), we were able to meet up in Orlando midway through our collaboration, after a show of hers at the Dr. Phillips Center.

Her act was as brilliant as it's ever been — smart, quick, topical, friendly, and with a good dose of local flavor thrown in. Alas, the meeting was brief since she was jetting off to another gig soon after. The only opportunity to talk came as she worked a table in the theater lobby immediately after the show. It was to raise funds for her non-profit animal rescue and advocacy organization, Tails of Joy.

ELAYNE: When the NY Times offered me a chance to do a puzzle with Patrick Merrell, I thought with joy, "Crosswords With the Stars!" I only hoped I'd be a little closer to being Amber Riley than Kenny Mayne, since incredibly, they gave me Derek Hough. Needless to say, I really can't dance. But, like Derek, the talented Mr. Merrell was patient, kind, funny, wonderful, and the best partner you could ever hope for. We laughed for months, and we hope that joy made it into our puzzle. We hope you enjoy it.

Funny "modern-day remake" theme, classic movies updated using current businesses. It took me forever to figure out what was going on, but then UBER DRIVER (from TAXI DRIVER) gave me a smile.

I wasn't sure what THE ___ DICK was (I really hope they use that as a "Family Feud" survey), but apparently there's a movie called "The Bank Dick"? And Bing Crosby was in … "Holiday Inn"? Huh. Funny, that movie was just in 1979, so I feel like I should know it. Ah well.

ADDED NOTE: Ah, that Bing Crosby movie was in 1942! Now I don't feel quite like I ought to know it ...

I spent a lot of time ruminating on the revealer, GMO POPCORN. Was that supposed to be a remake of some sort of ___ POPCORN phrase? Would have been a clever ending to the puzzle, but alas, I think it's more a "what could we do with POPCORN that sounds modern-day?".

I like in these celeb collaborations when the grid reflects the celeb's life. Love getting SLAY, as Elayne Boosler cracks me up. It would have been neat to turn YAKS into YUKS. But that stupid terminal U would have made 57-Down much less flexible. Drat!

Along the humor line, I smiled at the FIREPLUG clue. If you don't get it, think not about the golf dogleg, but an actual dog's leg … up to the left or right … above a fire hydrant … (sorry, I'm in the habit of having to explain jokes in excruciating detail to my two-year-old).

Pretty good grid, as I'd expect from Patrick, except for one little problematic crossing — UNIVAC / PIMA. Oof. Even for a Wednesday puzzle, I wonder if that's going to give solvers fits. I'm personally interested in tech, so UNIVAC and ENIAC are fascinating to me. PIMA … not so much. Hopefully, solvers will fall into at least one area of interest or the other.

Love the celeb collaboration series, but this theme didn't quite hit home for me. If GMO POPCORN had been replaced with a fourth themer, maybe something involving GOOGLE or AMAZON or something, that would have worked better for me.

(EGBDF = every good boy does fine, a mnemonic for the notes on the lines on a treble clef score.)