Now, this is the way to use long feature entries to your advantage! THEMS THE BREAKS, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, JUST AS I THOUGHT, such colorful, colloquial phrases. Love ‘em all.
(Although, I gotta ding ACCIDENTS HAPPEN for personal reasons since my kids say it even after they do something on purpose. THEMS THE (literal) BREAKS, too.)
Working with three long feature entries is rarely easy, but Damon makes it look almost effortless. Smart quasi-segmentation, breaking up his grid into six chunks while allowing enough entries and exits to each region.
Check out how well he equalized the subsections, too. If someone showed me this grid skeleton for review, I might pause briefly at the NW / SE corners since they're biggish, with two long entries running through them, but I'd say it should be fine. And while AGGRO ETD, MRES, MST, UPCS isn't outstanding smoothness, it's all both solvable and passable.
I wasn't sure how I pulled out OZYMANDIAS. More accurately, OZYMAN … D? something. Still, it made me feel smart, even if I didn't actually know who that was. I mean, of course, I knew it was … a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. I totally didn't copy that straight out of Wikipedia.
When I added BAT FLIPS to our list years ago, I scored it at 60, meaning it's an outstanding entry. Shortly after, I mentioned it to my wife, who gave me the side-eye and asked if it was some lewd gesture, like flipping the bird.
I reduced it to our nominal score of 50.
These days, Will Shortz can be pickier than ever with themelesses; the acceptance rate is about 5%. I can see why he picked this one, chock full of not just solid entries but colorful, long ones. Even if you're a heathen who doesn't know that an OZYMANDIAS is obviously a place for Ozzy Osbourne to give speeches, there's a ton of HEAD TRIP, ACID TEST, EMPTY SUITS to delight. A definite POW! contender.