New York Times, Wednesday, November 24, 2021

I normally don't enjoy themes with circled words spread throughout longer answers. Too often, they're just "hidden," with no justification for why the letters were broken up. So I wanted to try a theme that focused on the "chopping," and a secret recipe seemed like the obvious choice. I first considered mirepoix, but I was concerned it might not be widely known enough. I much prefer this, though, since it has a little twist for the final ingredient (my apologies for the sloppy knife cuts and snubbing of delicious cilantro).

This is a very dense theme with limited flexibility in layout, so it required a few glue-y bits to stitch together. I hope they don't sour anyone's solve too much, and I promise to never put EBOAT in another puzzle.

As always, thanks to the editing team for all their great work.

This recipe worked a lot better than my attempt at making MARINARA. Not only is the "chopping" better represented by separating the letters, but there's a fun change of pace with the LIME aptly squeezed into a rebus square. Yum, PICO DE GALLO!

It is a shame that Brandon wasn't able to include cilantro. Using the search pattern *C*I*L*A*N*T*R*O* (the stars represent "search for anything here"), the only option that was even remotely close was SOCIAL ANTHRO(POLOGY). Some people have a hatred of cilantro, anyway.

It is a tough layout, with all five themers grid-spanners or nearly so. Additionally, Brandon had to make the LIME rebus work with its Down answer. EBOAT definitely gets the stink-eye, but there's also enough DERM PORC PSA SSE that I'd have given thought to rework. I love SUPEREGOS and SPORTS BRA as bonus fill, but breaking up the latter would clean things up to where EBOAT might be more forgivable on the whole.

I felt so obtuse trying to figure out what [More than right … or seldom correct?] meant. Brilliant clue! (An OBTUSE angle is greater than a right angle's 90 degrees.)

Creativity is often finding unusual ways to combine disparate-seeming ideas, and this is a great example of that. Excellent decision to circle LIME, too, which helped me feel like the pattern being broken was fun, not jarring.