New York Times, Monday, May 29, 2023

KATIE: Zach and I had been trying to come up with a fun theme together for a while, but nothing was quite landing. One evening, I was taking my 6 year old through some of her spelling words, which were all -OOSE words that week. I find a lot of inspiration through helping my kids with their homework because seeing things written out in different ways can sometimes trigger an idea or connection that I may not have thought of before. So constructors who have kids, I highly recommend this as an extra incentive to check their homework!

We originally had POOR EXCUSE in the theme set, but Zach (rightly) thought twice about that one because of the Y-sound on USE, and he redid the grid beautifully with HYPOTENUSE instead. Hope you all enjoy the puzzle!

ZACHARY: Katie and I were actually working on a different puzzle when she proposed the -OOS ending concept. I'm happy with the current theme answers; we also tried to work ZEUS into the set, but TEMPLE OF ZEUS and BLOOD OF ZEUS are not particularly idiomatic. We also would have liked to use a revealer — Katie floated END USE, but I thought that focused too much on the long U sound. I also thought we might be able to create a starting OO- theme set with the revealer PRIMORDIAL OOZE, but that didn't quite work out either.

Rhyme generally doesn't pay these days in crosswords since it's a well-worn genre, but if your endings use drastically different spellings, they can still thrill. Great selection of themers, spicing up the finds by incorporating them into colorful phrases like FAST AND LOOSE and WHAT THE DEUCE.

Neat that -EUS is the only spelling Katie and Zachary missed. Absolutely the right call not to jamba something like CULT OF ZEUS into the puzzle.

Fun start to the puzzle, NASA crossing ASTRA. I'd usually avoid the latter in an early-week puzzle, but that's an entertaining pairing. Maybe it's too science-y for some with HYPOTENUSE already in the mix, but my only complaint was that HYPOTENUSE wasn't diagonal, connecting with OPPOSITE and ADJACENT to form a trigonometric picture.

Man, I'm square.

Er, triangular.

Clever use of cheater squares in the upper left and lower right. The second J of JAMBA JUICE reduces flexibility so that extra black square comes in clutch. I'm not wild about newb friends running into NENE crossing MIEN, but it could have been much worse without that cheater.

LAY TO WASTE and STOOD ASIDE are fine long Downs. Nothing spectacular, but they do the trick. I appreciated the efforts to amp up the mid-length fill, SLY NOD and SPOOFS giving some BOOSTS.

There are all sorts of subgenres within rhyming themes, and this one still works well enough.