COURT JESTERS

I played basketball in 7th and 8th grade. Coming from a small school full of Jews, it was a wonder the team didn't win a game in two years. As perhaps the shortest, least athletic Jew on the roster, it's also a wonder that I failed to score more than 7 points in my rookie year, or 6 during my second campaign. To the relief of sports fans everywhere, I hung up my spurs before high school, confident there weren't many no-look passes or buzzer beaters in my future.

The idea for the twist for NOTHING BUT NET, this theme's seed, came from the part in "Forrest Gump" where Forrest and Lieutenant Dan haul in garbage when they're first attempting to shrimp.

My original draft had PERSONAL FOUL in BUZZER BEATER's place and MARCH MADNESS at 116A, as a themer/revealer. That setup seemed OK, but I was a little worried the revealer was superfluous (something I got creamed for last time). OFFENSIVE REBOUND ("New lover taken to spite an ex?") sure would have been nice to include somewhere (tough with an unpaired 16!).

A few wonky comments:

1. J could've been shoved into MA? / ?EW for the pangram, but that wouldn't have justified MAJ.
2. My knees start wobbling by the third rung on a stepladder, so it's great to see an acrophobia shout-out in 88A's new and improved clue. The clue kinda reminds me of "Lost Horizon" (lovely book).
3. ALECTO (toughie) could've been ELECTS, crossing M/COEN and HSN. One of the things, however, that the inimitable Joe Krozel inculcated me with was the desirability of limiting boring propers, both from a cluing standpoint, as well as from a solver's perspective. Here, ALECTO is fairly crossed, and in the aggregate results in one less name, so it was my preference. For this same reason, MIKE and TONY are clued as non-propers.

I've also been lucky enough to work with Jeff on a couple of things, and he too is an invaluable font of wisdom. Seeing his notes every day, I always ask myself WWJD? But, as a LOX-loving non-Gentile, the J stands for Jeff, and not Jesus.

As a huge fantasy basketball fan, I loved this puzzle. I'm sure there will be solvers who don't care for it — I pitched this same idea to Rich Norris at the LAT a few years ago, and he rejected it because things like DOUBLE DRIBBLE wouldn't be familiar enough to enough of his solving population — but my guess is that it'll be accessible enough to a big chunk of NYT solvers.

Plus, March Madness is coming up, people! If you don't know your POINT GUARDs throwing NO LOOK PASSes to sharpshooters hitting NOTHING BUT NET, you don't know what you're missing.

I liked the wacky definitions, most of them funny enough to give me a smile. NO LOOK PASS clued to an acrophobe's nervous journey through the mountains was really amusing. Again, it's going to be tougher for people who don't know what NO LOOK PASS really means, but again … March Madness is almost upon us!

I thought Tim's execution was super solid, too. It's normal to have a few gluey bits in a 140-word Sunday crossword — almost impossible not to — so to keep it to short ROI, AZO, ATTS stuff is really good. And it was so nice to get bonuses like NAMEDROP, MARS BARS, even ATOMIZES, OLD PRO and POW WOW. NOT SO BAD, I DARE SAY. (It's like Tim planned that, isn't it?)

Tim and I have worked on a puzzle or two together, and he knows some of my eccentric hobbies, so it was awfully fun to see Charles GOREN, "Mr. Bridge" in the grid. You had me at GOREN!

And the cluing was really fun. It only takes a handful to really pep up the Sunday crossword, and there were many more than that:

• An AIRPLANE as a "runway model"
• A SNAIL as a "mobile home resident"
• CHAD hinting at the "fallout" from the 2000 election, i.e. the HANGING CHAD

I tend to get bored by Sunday puzzles (due to my short attention … something shiny!) but this one kept me highly entertained until the end.