New York Times, Thursday, April 12, 2018

I like rebus puzzles, both solving and constructing them. This one went from theme idea to submission without too much of a struggle. All the theme entries are the same as in my first version except FISHBOWLS was originally at 39-Across.

I'm really happy with the theme entries, a couple of which came from the XWord Info list and Jeff's list. My wife and I had recently streamed SAUSAGEPARTY so that fell right into place. TEAMCREST was a Hail Mary pass of trying different combinations of words that end in AM with those that start with C. if I remember correctly there weren't many more if any cable channel trigrams that were workable acronyms and not abbreviations such as SHO. I guess I could have expanded to 4 letters with ESPN, but I would've had to find a crossing for the unappealing CATCHESPNEUMONIA, (is there one?).

Thanks as always to Will, Joel and crew, and thanks to Sam Ezersky for incorporating my clue change for 42-Across, which I mentioned to him at this year's ACPT, where he was the constructor of the final puzzle. Hope you liked this one.

Jules does something exceedingly well today. Usually, rebus squares get placed into the longest grid entries, and then the crossing entries are made short to facilitate grid construction. BET might turn into ABETS or BETAS in the crossing direction — pretty dull.

Not today! Jules manages to get four full pairs of great theme answers, DREAM CATCHER / TEAM CREST, UGLY BETTY / GLOBE THEATER, WISHBONES / DASHBOARD, SAUSAGE PARTY / GENIUS AT WORK. Eight fantastic answers!

(SAUSAGE PARTY was hilarious, but man oh man was it raunchy! Highly recommended, but prepare to wash out your eyes afterward.)

These four pairs of long crossing answers, plus the CABLE BOXES revealer, take up a huge amount of real estate. It's tough to build around so much theme material, but Jules did pretty darn well.

The only thing I ask from short fill is to not stand out as inelegant. I didn't care for the ILE / ISLE dupe (yes, they're clued in different ways, but I can't help seeing the French ILE = ISLE). And the random letter string TUV is bad. But that clue! [iPhone 8?] = the letters TUV on the 8 button on an iPhone. Doesn't make TUV a desirable entry, but it excuses it a teeny tiny bit.

I did find it a bit strange that IN A PIGS EYE didn't have a rebus — usually, you want all your longest entries to contain rebuses, especially in the across direction — but I gave it a pass since Jules already had so many long themers.

This ___ BOX concept has been done many a time, i.e., PO BOX, JACK IN THE BOX, HAT BOX. Tried and true notion, repetitive, but I appreciated the careful execution.

I also appreciated Will running a solid Thursday puzzle — one with a toughish theme, worth working hard to uncover — for the first time in weeks. Rebuses are a bit overdone these days, but they still provide a fun solving challenge.