New York Times, Wednesday, November 13, 2019

I knew that combining circles with rebuses, as I had to do, would push this puzzle out of a rebus's usual Thursday slot to an earlier day. So it had to be geared to an earlier week entry. I wanted half of each entry to not have a "pop" sound in order to make the puzzle a little more challenging. Because there are so few words that fit the bill, the grid was a workout. The center entry might be unfamiliar to many solvers but was essential to the puzzle. Thanks to Will and his crew for their help in developing the puzzle with their suggestions.

In doing this construction I learned that a grouping of hippos is known as a "bloat" and the answer to the question, "Is the carnival game 'balloon darts' rigged?" - Is the Pope catholic?!

It takes a lot to overcome my rebus fatigue, but the notion of circles representing balloons, popping into POPs? Delightful!

Add in brass-ring quality themers: IS THE POPE CATHOLIC is fantastic on so many levels — so colorful, so fun to say, and rarely seen in crosswords since it's 17 letters. I'm usually not a fan of words hidden in other single words, but APOPLEXY is such a crazy entry. HIPPOPOTAMUSES did make me wonder if HIPPOPOTAMI was the correct plural, and that made me love it even more.

(Thanks to Matt Gaffney for sending me a hilarious Hiphopopotamus link!)

Some problems in the short fill left me with that same feeling you get after losing at the ring toss 58 times in a row, though. It would have been one thing if it were only minor offenders like ACS (no one uses this to refer to multiple air conditioners, but it's easy enough to figure out), ERE and NAE, but PES? SKAT? OESTE?

Take a close look at the slew of themer intersections. IS THE POPE CATHOLIC crosses TOOTSIE POP crosses HIPPOPOTAMUSES crosses RED POPPY, and APOPLEXY crosses POPULAR. So much inflexibility is enough to make any constructor cross. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

As much as I liked Ed's ambitious long themers, a couple of shorter ones like POPPY (instead of RED POPPY), POPPA, POPEYE, POPULI, AIRPOP, etc. would have allowed for a smoother, better overall end product. I appreciated Ed's sentiment, but the notion of POP sounds vs. non-POP sounds didn't occur to me while solving.

Such a beautiful carnival effect — so charming, those circles — representing balloons suddenly blossoming into POPs. My big smiles made it easy enough to overlook the problems in execution.