New York Times, Monday, May 5, 2014

I think this puzzle started out without anything particular in mind — just playing around with terms meaning "zero" or "nothing." Discovering wurlitZER Organs gave me the slant to take. And linking the theme to Seinfeld — with the reveal a fortuitous 15 letters at that — was my definite aha moment. The crossword gods were smiling.

I thought this would be more fun without circles, requiring solvers to figure out, if they hadn't already, why the puzzle was "about nothing." So I submitted it with Wednesday-ish clues. Will had other ideas, though, and said he wanted it for a Monday with circles. Which meant reclueing. For a Monday level, I tried valiantly to get rid of ANKH in the grid, but it wasn't gonna happen.

This was one I especially enjoyed doing. I hope you all enjoy the final product.

Not much that I like better than a Seinfeld reference. A puzzle about nothing! Great idea. Lynn, the master of Mondays, gives us themers with synonyms for "nothing" hidden within four phrases.

And what beautiful phrases! "Words hidden within phrases" type themes often depend on the quality of the theme answers, and Lynn has chosen some stellar ones. I know it more as "The Mighty Wurlitzer" but WURLITZER ORGANS Googles nicely. TRINI LOPEZ wasn't familiar to me right away, but he should have been (chalk one up to the giant hole in my pop music knowledge base). Add JOHN ADAMS with a nice piece of trivia about the White House, finish it off with a LAUGH TRACK, and you have some snappy entries.

Fill is quite nice too, as I would expect from Lynn. Even with five themers, Lynn does a great job of laying out her skeleton and taking full advantage of her 7's: SQUIRMY, BURRITO, TIN MINE, OLE MISS, LACONIC. What a fantastic array of mid-length fill. And to pull it off with just an ALG here, a TPK there, with the assorted MON / AMT / INIT stuff is aces in my book.

Ah, the punchline. As with any joke, the delivery is key. I recognize that ITS ABOUT NOTHING is a direct quote from the man himself, George Costanza, but it felt off to me. The puzzle themers "contain nothing" but aren't really "about nothing." I know it seems semantic, but I thought it could have packed more punch if the revealer had been something to the effect of NOTHING IN HERE (is there a snappier way to express that?) or if the themers had all been slang terms for nothing, like BUPKUS / GOOSE EGG / BAGEL etc.

Final comment, the clue for USB felt off to me (ADDED NOTE: Jim pointed out that it's actually precisely accurate. I say, what does he know? Given that he works at Microsoft. And programmed the original Freecell. And is high up in the Windows 8 chain. Ah. Right.), which is unfortunate as 1-Across often sets the tone (consciously or subconsciously) for the puzzle. First of all, I wasn't sure why it needed the (Abbr.) tag, since PC already indicated an acronym or shortening. And more to the point, a "USB PORT" feels more like a "connection means" to me than just "USB." Alternately, [PC connection standard] would have felt better to me. Again, it's the fault my linguistic anality (and the eensy weensy fact that I was approximately 0% correct), but I stared at the NW for way too long before moving on.

Very tough puzzle for a Monday, but in a good way. Nothing esoteric, lots of great fill, clean, and the snazziness was most welcome. Well done.