PERSON / PLACE / THING

I remember thinking about nouns being persons, places, or things, and wondering if I could find strings that would contain two-word phrases for all three. My first try with this theme was a weekday puzzle with four 16-letter themers. Will's team liked the theme but not the execution. For instance, they didn't like KitCarsonCityMap because Carson City was named for Kit Carson (hello!) and because the meaning of City did not change from the "place" to the "thing".

It took a lot of digging to find six themers given those constraints but the 21x sizing brought lots of new possibilities into play. The big hangup was finding two-word place names where both words were flexible.

The editor team nixed ALL LEGS initially, but they had a long discussion about it and decided it would be fine with the right clue. ONLY TOO was another borderline acceptable entry that required careful cluing.

I wanted to get some long down action into this puzzle, but the 110 letters of theme material made that difficult to pull off cleanly. I imagine this puzzle will play a little easier than the average Sunday puzzle, which would be fine with me since I'm a lousy solver. DOGNAP was my favorite entry to clue — I think "Grab some chow?" is even better than the one we used, but it had been used before.

I've seen many a "word chain" theme, i.e., linked phrases like (word game) + (game bird) + (bird food) + (food chain) = WORD CHAIN, usually presented all smashed together like WORD GAME BIRD FOOD CHAIN. Important to do something a little different if you dip into this tried and true well. I liked Bruce's extra layer, using PERSON PLACE or THING to describe the three elements composing each smash-up.

Not hard to find theme examples, as you just need:

1. a person with a last name that can be an adjective,
2. a two-word place, with its second word also able to double as an adjective.

THING is awfully broad, so that can be just about anything.

Not much of an a-ha moment, as the title gave away the game much too easily. I was thinking that PERSON PLACE OR THING would have been a great revealer in the puzzle … except that this theme is more accurately PERSON, PLACE AND THING. Which makes it seem inapt. So that tripped me up.

I know, I tend to overthink things way too much. But if Bruce had ditched PERSON / PLACE / THING and instead riffed on some other X, Y AND Z revealer, that would have given me a sharper a-ha.

Not many bonuses in the grid, but not much crossword glue, either. Impressive that I couldn't pick out any real flaw, just maybe a RES. That's amazing for a Sunday 140-word puzzle!

But I would have preferred more WHATNOT and ABSOLUT kind of colorful material — having a handful of crossword glue would have been worth it. As much as I detest inelegant gloop, I do want *some* sparkle out of a Sunday grid, especially for those solvers who don't quite vibe with the theme.