New York Times, Monday, December 10, 2018

57-Across seems like a good enough segue as any, so here's an old anti-joke about jungles.

It's high noon in the Amazon jungle, and the heat is inescapable — a sweltering, thick soup of hot air all around. The monkeys lay still on their perches, fanning themselves with palm fronds, lazily napping because it's all they have the effort to do. The jaguars search the high tree branches for a cool breeze, looking for any reprieve from the crushing humidity and suffocating heat. The alligators sit submerged in the river with just their nostrils above the surface, unwilling to let any other parts of their bodies touch the hot air. The capybaras roam the jungle floor, hunting out shady glens but finding no escape from the humidity. The jungle is, for once, quiet — the chirps, the roars, and the howls have all been silenced by the overpowering heat.

On the shore of the river, one hippo turns to another and says, "You know, I just can't get it through my head that it's Thursday."

I love the creativity in this theme. As a writer, I hear THE PLOT THICKENS all the time, yet I've never thought about it as a plot of land literally thickening — from bare DIRT to some GRASS to a BUSH to a full JUNGLE. I wasn't able to figure out what was going on until I hit the revealer, and even then, I had to think about it. I enjoy when a Monday puzzle makes me work a little.

I did wonder if it was a "proper" order of growth. I'm not enough of a botanist to know if all the themers coexist in one region? BUSH made me think of African or Australia climates, whereas JUNGLE felt different.

Some research shows that there are indeed areas where all four are found. So my initial reaction was likely due to my cultural bias (read: being a dumb American).

I would have loved some smoothing in the gridwork. Monday ought to be super-newb-friendly, and I have doubts about RIATA, MTIDA, UANDI. I'd expect an educated solver to know what a lasso or a lariat is, Mount Olympus, and perhaps I LUV U too. But any of these toughies in the grid might trigger that "I have to know trivia to do crosswords?!" reaction we want to avoid.

Moving the black square above UANDI could have helped — the U?N?? pattern doesn't have nearly as much flexibility as ?U?N?? (TURNER, PUNNED, LUGNUT, GUNNER, etc.)

Overall though, I appreciated the originality of the theme, as well as the great bonuses in CARPOOLER and WENT ROGUE.