New York Times, Tuesday, August 22, 2023

So clearly, I was that kid who spent a lot of time listening to his parents' music growing up.

The idea for this puzzle grew out of a different, unrelated money-themed idea I was working on. I stumbled on YOUNG BUCKS and PETTY CASH, quickly added WONDER BREAD, and found a fun revealer in SOUND CHECKS to tie it all together — and then spent an inordinate amount of time searching for another option that fit. Has anyone else in human history ever spent so much time flipping back and forth between the Wikipedia entry about Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame inductees and the Thesaurus.com entry on slang terms for money? I'm guessing no.

I wanted someone with the same cachet as the other three artists, and struggled to find another entry that felt like it was solid enough for inclusion after stumbling through some weak options that I won't even bother to share here. I'd rather have included both a female artist and someone whose music I like much more than Barry White's (with all due respect to the man) — I considered options like (Billie) HOLIDAY BONUS or (Carole) KING'S RANSOM or (Darlene) LOVE NOTES and had to discard them for various reasons — but eventually concluded that WHITE PAPER made for the best, tightest puzzle for solvers. Such is life.

Hope you got a kick out of my NYT debut and, more importantly, hope you all liberally borrowed your parents' CDs like I once did.

Today's Next Level Constructor contestant is a fresh face looking to create wonder among the old guard. Ooh, what misfortune to draw the slang for money category, though. There have been so many plays on BREAD, CABBAGE, CHEDDAR, DOUGH, etc. — make no BONES about it, a new constructor BUCKS the trend only with a massively innovative take.

And that's exactly what Jay did. WONDER BREAD, unfortunately, made a recent appearance relating to money, but Jay cannot be faulted for that. To dredge the muck of money slang and pull up such a tight set of terms related to musicians shows that Jay is one of the YOUNG BUCKS.

Four themers in a tight set are often good enough to gain consideration. To tie them all together with the wordplay in SOUND CHECKS is quite a TENDER touch.

Although PAPER isn't as strong as the others when it comes to everyday money slang, if it's your weakest one, you're doing fine. It's not like having to resort to a GREASE or SALAD.

As for presentation, I froze at FROSE. If only crosswords could accommodate accent marks, I wouldn't have paused for a full minute trying to find my error — FROSÉ would visually have been so much more appetizing. You drink with your eyes, after all. Or something like that.

Otherwise, though, an elevated take on a mature theme. With clean and sparkly corners framing his presentation, Jay is gunning for that Next Level Constructor title.