New York Times, Monday, April 3, 2023

This theme type is often called a "vowel movement," where a series of words can be spelled with all five vowel sounds in rotation.

I'd been impressed with other constructors' vowel movements in the past, marveling at their satisfying simplicity. Creating a theme like this seemed easy enough… Yet after weeks of unsuccessfully trying, I wondered if I'd ever produce a solid vowel movement myself. All my initial attempts stunk and were, quite frankly, very sloppy.

So I pushed to achieve tightness in my vowel movement, settling on two word phrases with the rotation in the second word. Usually I make all my puzzles on a laptop, but when a strong vowel movement just wasn't emerging, I decided to work it out with a pencil. There was a point where I thought it shouldn't be this hard.

But then came that explosive moment! When I finally hit on the vowel movement you see today, I couldn't hold it in any longer. After it was fully out of my system, I did a quick check, pushed that fateful button, and—whoosh—it was sent off to the New York Times.

I often think about crossword themes like seats at a bar and hope that with my vowel movement, this stool wasn't already taken. Luckily, when the editors got a whiff of it, they were extremely pleased.

Now do I think this will be the absolute best puzzle you solve all week? Probably not… but I'd settle for number two!

It's unusual to have a vowel progression focused on short vowel sounds, because long vowel sounds make it so much easier to realize what's happening. I enjoyed the change of pace ... PACE, PEACE, PICE — dammit!

This genre is so well-mined in crosswords that it takes something extra to help a theme rise out of the muck ... MACK, MECK — blargh!

Drastic spelling changes can help, although that's a double-edged sword. I tend to field many "what is this theme?" questions for some big VMs. Without a revealer to explain what's going on, you depend on your five words to get the idea across.

A more straightforward approach like PACK animal, PECK on the cheek, PICK six, POCK marked, PUCK handling makes the theme abundantly clear, but it's so dull that solvers would pack it in.

Lewis Rothlein and I tried to do something completely different in this genre, riffing on BLANDER, BLENDER, BLINDER, BLONDER, BLUNDER. Although not a blunder, it was blander than I'd hoped.

Mondays rarely bring wordplay joy in clues, so I was ecstatic to be treated to a POGO STICK as a device for someone who's "hopping mad." My kids are yo-yo mad right now, and I fear the emergency room visits when POGO STICK mania arrives.

I usually don't notice (or care about) abbreviations in a grid, but an editor recently asked me to reduce my usage, as they can be seen as inelegant. TLDR, with a plethora of IPOS IPA OMG INPJS SCOTUS CIA DKNY, I can see the point.

Although the theme didn't wow me, David did so well working in SPIN JOB, SUNDIAL, DR SEUSS, YOGI BERRA bonuses for those tired of this AbstEmIOUs genre. And his comments always crack me up!