OH, FOURPEAT'S SAKE!

Alex Bajcz, of Morris Plains, N.J., is an assistant professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Drew University. He studies how and why plants produce fruits — he says he's one of the few biologists who gets to eat his research. The name "Bajcz" is Hungarian. Since that's difficult for American tongues, his family pronounces it "badges."

This is Alex's sixth Times crossword and second Sunday.

This puzzle idea came to me in a very meta way — from solving an NYT puzzle! Specifically, Friday, July 3rd, 2020, by Hal Moore, which featured ROMA TOMATO at 18-Across. As I filled in that entry, I was struck by how off it felt because of that string of letters (OMAT) repeating in the middle, even as it was split between two words of (presumably) distinct origins.

My favorite puzzles highlight and exploit quirks of the English language, and this felt like just such a quirk, so I went hunting for more variations on it. I have no idea, now, how I found as many as I did (they are, as you'd imagine, rare, so far as I can tell!), let alone four matching pairs, but I remember finding the RegEx features of XWord Info to be very helpful. I'd love to hear if anyone can think of others!

On the constructing side of things, I think the main issues came in the NE/SW, specifically 33- and 61-Down. As soon as I had answers that worked in those tricky spots, I think the rest of the fill clicked pretty quickly. With this puzzle, I embraced a mantra of "cheater squares as needed" from the outset in a way I had really never done before — consider me a convert because they definitely helped clean up the fill here, especially in the N/S central areas.

The other thing this puzzle has taught me — to score proper nouns a little lower in my word list than I might otherwise. It is not lost on me how many of them there are in here! They creep in, one by one until you step back and realize you're inundated with them! Lesson learned there.

The thing I'm most proud of with this puzzle is the title — it came to me immediately and still makes me laugh!

Sometimes a title is so perfect that I have to tip my hat. Playing off "For Pete's Sake," using "four-peat" (think "threepeat" plus one) is brilliant. Kudos!

Repeated sets of letters is a well-trodden theme trope, so you have to do something wonderful to get over the bar. Repeating four letters is better than three, but I liked Tracy's execution better. Shading the 4x2 set of 8 squares today produces more of a "huh" moment, especially when the title gives away exactly what's going on.

A co-constructor and I have a puzzle waiting in the queue with the same basic idea — different presentation, though — also using NO MAN IS AN ISLAND. Hopefully, Will spaces it out from this one. I wouldn't mind even waiting a year, so recency doesn't reduce the impact.

I was plus/minus on a couple of the themers, especially those that felt like they were stretched, so this could run on a Sunday. (My co-constructor and I held to a 15x15 because there weren't enough great options to do a 21x21.) I'd have pushed back on BAHAMA MAMA MIX and ROMA TOMATO SAUCE hard, maintaining that if there weren't enough great long ones (there aren't), it wouldn't work for a 21x21. Trouble is, it's not interesting enough in this presentation for a 15x15.

Solid gridwork from Alex. Not a ton of bonuses, but not much short glop, either. When a theme isn't that interesting, I usually prefer that a constructor pushes to incorporate more long bonuses to keep solvers' interest. Although, I can certainly see that if the Sunday puzzle isn't exciting, it should be painless.

The title is fantastic, so it's a shame the puzzle didn't live up to that initial bang. This theme might have been interesting back in 2015, but the NYT has to push harder, figuring out better ways of soliciting stronger Sunday offerings.