New York Times, Tuesday, November 10, 2020

This puzzle was unusual because all of the theme entries and their clues came to me in a single afternoon session in the sauna. I was playing around with types of wine as a possible puzzle theme when PORT AUTHORITY and its clue "Sommelier" came to mind. I'm a sailor, and I live in Port Isabel, TX, so I think that helped. The other beverage servers and their clues then quickly fell into place. So even though it was around 180 degrees at the time, the theme and clues were "no sweat."

What a fun concept! The broad theme type of "kooky interpretations" — taking a regular phrase and defining it humorously — has been tapped for crosswords so many times that it's important to do something extra. Robert did exactly that, giving his themers entertaining definitions related to people in charge of drinks. Although I've heard PORT AUTHORITY defined relative to a wine connoisseur before, I loved the collection of four apt ones for four different beverage types.

At first, I wondered if GROUNDSKEEPER didn't belong since PORT and DRAFTS hit directly on the drinks in question. Given that I live in coffee-central Seattle, though, it's not uncommon to see coffee snobs tasting grounds, swishing them, rubbing them into their gums, etc.

You think I'm joking.

There are grounds for GROUNDS to be considered even more important than the coffee they brew, so I gave this a pass.

It's a fantastic Tuesday theme. If the gridwork had lived up, this would have been in POW! territory. I do love the bonuses — INDULGE ME and WHAT OF IT are fantastic, and POLYESTER is strong — but SERE is old-timey, desperate crosswordese. Toss in some partials (AT NO, ONE OF), a weird suffix (IOR), tough abbr. (SYL), an initialism that's hard to figure out (SSA), difficult foreign word (AZUL), and you've hit most every no-no called out on editors' specs sheets.

There's almost always a balance, trying for snazz while maximizing smoothness, but with just four themers, it's usually possible to achieve both. I'd have taken another look at the FOUNTAINHEAD / GROUNDSKEEPER overlap, which forced so much unsightliness. Moving FOUNTAINHEAD up one row would likely have helped, creating better spacing overall.

Still, amusing early-week themes don't come around that often, so this one is commendable.