New York Times, Monday, May 27, 2019

Ironically, in a puzzle about lots of choices, theme entry lengths of 14,14,14,11,11 left me scrambling for options to make this work. I never like dropping down to a 14x15 grid because it makes for fewer words and more short words, but that seemed to be my best option here. I tried adding REPORTS FOR WORK and going to 14x16 with six theme entries, but that was too clogged.

My original puzzle was accepted with SERBO-CROAT vertically in the upper right, but after acceptance, I played around with the three letters I had to cross and eventually came up with TURBO-BOOST, which was not in any word lists. Way more pop! I emailed the idea to Will on a Sunday evening, and he wrote back an hour later:

Thanks for the turbo-boosted version of your MULTIPLE CHOICE puzzle. I like it!

As long as you're revising the upper right, I'd suggest you also revise the upper left:

This avoids the weird and iffy BACO, the obscurish MARM, and the pileup of exclamations UH-OH, AHA, and OH ME. Also, to avoid the obscure GAR in the lower-right corner, I'd suggest making this TAR.

So this puzzle was partly constructed by Will Shortz! Did he use any of that new-fangled construction software? I'm betting not.....

This puzzle might be a bit crunchy for Monday solvers, both in terms of theme and vocab, but to shade or circle the ORs would totally kill the aha moment for more experienced solvers. If you had to check the reviews to find out the theme, I suspect you're not alone.

The timing of this puzzle is nice, because the Toronto Raptors are finishing their best season ever, and last week beat the 76ers (Joel Fagliano's favorite team) on a buzzer-beater in game seven of their playoff series. The final dramatic shot bounced FOUR times on the rim before dropping through. Ouch — sorry Joel.....

ADDED NOTE: The TORONTO RAPTORS just made their first NBA finals! Good timing.

MULTIPLE CHOICE — interpreted as "three instances of OR"?

Huh.

The best crossword themes are consistent, tight, and have a beautiful revealer to tie everything together.

• Consistent? Each phrase has exactly three ORs. Check!
• Tight? How many other triple OR phrases are there? I could only find INTERIOR DECORATOR (too long), FOR BETTER OR WORSE (middle OR isn't hidden as part of another word), REPORTED FOR WORK (would duplicate the FOR in WORD FOR WORD), MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR (too repetitive). So, check!
• Raison d'etre. If the answer to "why three ORs?" is "because that was what created consistency and tightness," that's not good enough.

You'd think two out of three is fine, but that last one is the most important of the three.

Today's theme does work as an average idea, but what if MULTIPLE CHOICE had been interpreted as things like:

• APPLE ORCHARD [Choice between fruit and veg?]
• LABOR POOL [Choice between work and play?]

Much more playful and interesting.

Thankfully, Bruce's smooth and colorful grid — just a TSO as crossword glue, while achieving some fun TURBO BOOST, TORCH RELAY, SPATTER — made up for some of the ho-hum feeling of the theme concept. Pulled up the product into a decent early-week offering I'd hand to a newb.