New York Times, Tuesday, June 16, 2020

This puzzle has a few more open squares (72) than a typical 78-word grid, primarily due to the spacing of the four GRAY AREAS. Each of them abuts only a single diagonally adjacent black block. I felt that the gray coloring would stand out better if it were surrounded by as much white space as possible.

Since the theme isn't contained in the puzzle's longest answers, there's a lot more length 7+ bonus material than a typical Tuesday. I'm quite happy with all of it. There are a few clunkers in the 6 and under range, but I think they're reasonable trade-offs for all the fun stuff they enabled.

I hope solvers appreciate the progression of square INCH, square FOOT, square YARD, and square MILE. It's a pretty tight set.

Wow, I just realized that I was spelling GRAY as GREY in these notes [hastily goes back to fix the first paragraph]. Even though GRAY is the preferred American spelling, to me, GREY (the preferred British spelling) just looks better (and is my natural inclination). I blame reading too many books by English authors in my formative years. I recall having armour and colour corrected to armor and color in elementary school.

Finally, although some things in this world are GRAY (or GREY), others are not — like the inherent dignity and value of human life. Black lives matter.

Day 2 of the CUJO (Cracking Up Jim Horne with Overthinking) show!

Jeff: So …

Jim: Oh, this is going to be good. (rubs hands together)

Jeff: Did you find it odd that the (square) INCH is the same size as the (square) MILE?

Jim: Bwa ha ha!

Jeff: What? Is it because you grew up in Canada? Would this have been more accurate using that bizarre metric thingy?

Jim: (choking on his peals of laughter)

Overthinking aside, I enjoyed the stepwise progression, INCH to FOOT to YARD to MILE — each of the measures exactly four letters, perfect for crossword squaring. I thumb my nose at metric system snobs. See how beautiful our totally not wonky units are?

Also elegant: Alex's gridwork. It's notoriously difficult to build around square themers, since they affect four crossing answers and so much of the surrounding region. Aside from the tough NIIHAU and ABSEIL, the grid is amazingly smooth, with dashes of IGUANODON, BEDHEAD, FALSE STEP, HOLD EM, to boot. I like how Alex always says BRING IT ON to challenges.

The theme wasn't an instant light bulb flick, rather a slow illumination of candles: units of measure … going from small to big … in squares … meaning "square" measurements … that's how you measure area … those areas are gray … thus GRAY AREAS. Not as sharp an a-ha as I like, but an interesting set of connections.

In some weeks, I would have given it POW! consideration, because of the superb execution. Yesterday's puzzle was more playfully entertaining, though.