I completely failed at "Name that Theme" today. DOGGIE BAG was my first entry, easy enough—probably an animal theme! Except that it was the odd-looking DOGGY BAGS (not to be confused with DOOGIE BAG, what Doogie Howser, M.D. carried around).
BULLY PULPIT slowed "Guess that Theme" further, then sidetracked it. DOGGY and BULLY … are both animal-based adjectives? I knew that DOGGIE BAGs originated as a container to take home bones and such. BULLY isn't related to bull, though.
Or is my overthinking just a bunch of bull? (As always, yes.)
Etymology online doesn't give a definitive answer, sadly. So the theme couldn't be animal adjectives. Maybe it was a repeated letter pattern theme, words ending with doubled-consonant + Y?
KITTY CORNER … no, CATTY CORNER? Looks like both terms are in use. My daughter, an ardent pleader for us to get a kitty, argues for the former.
No victorious fist-pumping moment, given my struggles to figure out if there was indeed more than just a repeated letter pattern theme.
I *think* maybe perhaps sorta kinda ... it's supposed to be all animal-derived adjectives?
In any case, I do like that Alan came up with a novel set of themers. Sure made me think, and that's rarely a bad thing.
The other big factor in my sadly-non-fist-pumping-Monday was the difficulty baked into the fill. Educated solvers should at least be familiar with world capitals, so LUANDA is 100% fair game. When you force newb solvers to additionally wade through ORONO YORBA plus the tough names ERNO GIAN ALBEE, though, that's a recipe for making people walk away.
I'm a broken record, pounding the bully pulpit that low word-count grids shouldn't be allowed if they punish the solver. As much as I like how MY IT'S LATE and MENTORING / DYNASTY spice up the grid, they're not at all worth potentially losing solvers.
Overall, Will has done a great job of welcoming newb solvers into the fold — it's day and night compared to Maleska, who seemed to delight in the insularity of crosswords. I wish Will Shortz would crack down on grids like these. There are a couple of offenders he keeps letting slide, over and over and over again.