New York Times, Wednesday, July 27, 2022

I'm thrilled to be back with another puzzle, and this time it's a light-hearted theme that might (?) give you the motivation you need to clean out your closet.

I've always had EMPTY SUIT and STUFFED SHIRT stored in the same corner of my brain, as they feel silly and visually evocative in similar ways. I thought it would be fun to build a theme around them, and started by adding SCAREDY PANTS, which brings to mind the delightful SpongeBob SquarePants. GOODY TWO SHOES was also in the mix for a while, as well as a series of possible revealers that never quite hit the mark. A big thank you to the editorial team for suggesting that I drop the revealer and look for additional examples, which led me to a pair of shorter finds. BLACK HAT is a fun one, evolving from its roots in Western flicks to become a current term in cybersecurity.

I like to give each of my crosswords a title, and for this one, I think "Does It Spark Joy?" sums things up nicely. Hope you enjoy it!

Cool collection of metaphors following the (adjective) + (article of clothing) pattern to label a person. Most of them are super evocative — I'd be happy to see entries like SCAREDY PANTS, EMPTY SUIT, and STUFFED SHIRT in a themeless.

TURNCOAT stuck out as not like the others, since it's the only single-worder. Also, TURN isn't as clearly an adjective.

I was only vaguely familiar with the term BLACK HAT. Makes me uncomfortable, given how the term originated — whiteness associated with "purity, cleanliness, and moral righteousness." That has so many more implications than simply being a goody-two-shoes. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

The themer lengths are so tough to work with, the middle 9 kicking of the inflexibility by forcing triplets of black squares on either side. Then, the two 12s can only go into rows 4 and 12, further putting on the squeeze by forcing yet more black squares.

It is true that SCAREDY PANTS could be right justified (STUFFED SHIRT left), and the two of them swapped. That's still only four possibilities, though.

Given all the constraints, some beautiful gridwork. Wise choice to leave a big 4x7 chunk in the largely unconstrained lower left and upper right, which saves black squares to can be deployed elsewhere, especially in that theme-packed middle. What with BLACK HAT, EMPTY SUIT, and TURNCOAT crammed together, escaping with only the tough foreign vocab ETOILE and OMNIA is a win.

Although there were a few blips in the theme set, I still thought it was a crossworthy concept.