MAGAZINE RACKET

Sam Ezersky, 26, is the digital puzzles editor of The New York Times. He also edits the daily Spelling Bee. This is his 38th crossword for the paper.

On the day this one runs, he himself will be running the Brooklyn Half Marathon — the first time he's ever done this distance. He says, "Hoping solvers won't be struggling on Sunday morning as much as me!"

The "letter/phonetic change" pun puzzle has eluded me for too long! As a solver, I grew up delighting in gems like USE THE FORCEPS LUKE and PIZZA RETREAT, but never found myself interested in brainstorming any myself. I wanted every last theme I created to feel unusual, or at least technically intricate. After all, as a constructor, I'll always be most drawn to crosswords in a challenging sense — can I pull off such a crazy theme idea based around this one example? Can I pack a wide-open corner with all this jazzy fill?

Today's puzzle is the result of dialing things back a notch, while still staying true to my quirks. It occurred to me one day that there were plenty of words like JACKET, BUCKET, TICKET, etc., and so I simply pursued a way to create punnery around this. I'd wanted to make a pun theme forever, but the set of examples needed to really sing. It took a bunch of imagination on the cluing side to make this a reality in my mind, along with the desire to pack in as much content as possible — wouldn't it be weird if I only had a small selection of -CKET examples? Too much theme tends to cause filling troubles, so I knew what I was getting into … but hey, constructor quirks.**

We talk a lot these days on the editorial team about what makes a good pun, and everyone's mileage varies; for me, though, it all comes down to whether or not I can imagine the punny phrase used in a goofy, real-world, outside-of-crosswords context. There's "crossword funny" — i.e., okay, you've found that adding a few letters can make something wacky — and then there's "dad joke funny." My goal is to impart the humor of the latter within the constraints of the former. At its best, it leaves you with both groans and ahas. My fingers (and words, of course) are crossed.

Enjoy my latest for The Times, a privilege as always!

**P.S.: Bits of fill like EATS PALEO? PRE-WEB? File these under "constructor quirks," too. My style is to err on the side of peculiarity over boredom, any day of the week.

We've had many plays on ET over the years, The French Connection is one of my favorites. There was another play on ET = French word for "and," and since ET is an easy digram to work with, I've solved many ET additions and subtractions. I enjoyed that Sam tried to elevate today's offering by only using -CKET endings. I don't know exactly how to classify it, since at heart it's still an ET addition, but I like the effort to add an elevating factor.

None of the themers made me laugh, but LIKE A MILLION BUCKETS appealed to this b-ball nut. What, no love to the ageless wonder, LBJ, who at 37 nearly led the league in scoring? And who singlehandedly handed my fantasy team a week's loss (our long blight on a first-place season, woo hoo!)?

Curious about what other CKET transformations are possible? Use our Replacement Finder. Put CKET in the first box, and ET in the second. Sam covered most all of the useful ones. (Things like THICK to THICKET aren't as interesting, because THICK is too similar to a dense THICKET.)

Awesome way to kick off a puzzle, [Make a bust, say] making me drop in ARREST. D'oh! Make a sculptor's bust. Nice to have a few of these spread throughout, like a POEM having both stressed feet words and rhythmic meter, and a NOMAD covering a lot of literal ground.

A few tough parts, like XYLEM crossing IBEX and DSL, along with oddly singular DRIB and KUDO, and FRONT OF THE PACK wanting so badly to be LEADER OF THE PACK. Impressive that Sam was able to flesh out enough base phrases, though.