New York Times, Monday, July 23, 2018

I have a few confessions to make about this crossword:

1. I didn't know ORDERS OF THE DAY until I looked it up because I needed another theme entry.
2. I had to look up PERSON OF THE YEAR to be sure that is how TIME referred to their annual honoree. Especially given that in 2017 (and 2014, and other times) the award went to multiple people.
3. My first version of this puzzle had the theme entries closer together, which was harder to fill. I only moved the entries farther apart when Will's comments on my second version made it clear I couldn't fill the puzzle cleanly that way. See Deb's Wordplay article for a more thorough confession about my problems there.
4. Yeah, DID TOO is making its NYT debut today. Another playground retort no one asked for. DID NOT has appeared twice in the NYT, but both are pre-Shortzian and neither is clued as smack talk from a pre-teen.

Given all that, despite this crossword's theme, I have no expectation of getting PUZZLE OF THE WEEK. Disappointment of the Day, maybe.

I enjoy tight theme sets, and Todd did a great job of identifying four "X OF THE (time period)" phrases. Better yet, he got them in increasing order, from MOMENT to DAY to MONTH to YEAR. Almost perfect!

It would have been perfect to swap out the MOMENT phrase for an HOUR one, but the only possibility I could find was MAN OF THE HOUR. That would work, if it weren't for the pesky crossword gods and their symmetry regulations (MAN OF THE HOUR, at only 12 letters, wouldn't balance PERSON OF THE YEAR). Curse ye, oh mocking black and white deities!

It would have been too similar to PERSON OF THE YEAR, anyway. And SPUR OF THE MOMENT is a snazzy phrase. So I like Todd's theme set a lot; likely the best one available.

(ORDERS OF THE DAY wasn't as familiar to me, but it's well supported by the Goog and Robert's Rules of Order.)

Rarely a lead-pipe cinch to work with four super-long themers. I appreciated the long fill bonuses in IN THEORY and NO HITTER — beautiful selections.

GUN USERS … is that a real phrase? I suppose so, but isn't it usually just "hunters" or the like? I don't imagine people go around saying BOW AND ARROW USERS or SLINGSHOT FIRERS.

And the short gluey bits, SEM ESS OLA IER AFTA IN YOU. I did like that most of them are gettable, especially the partial IN YOU. But there's way too much to consider this an elegant grid.

See that set of three black squares below the end of ORDERS OF THE DAY? For a theme set like this, I usually find that it's better to move those up two rows. That causes a huge cascade of changes, but it does avoid problems in the tricky NE corner Todd had to deal with (see: IER).

Overall, a strong theme set. Another round of revisions on the grid could have helped out, though.