New York Times, Monday, July 20, 2020

My jumping-off point was BACK TO THE FUTURE. It's my favorite movie, and I wanted to feature it in an NYT puzzle. It's been used three times before, once riffing on PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE and twice in puzzles where it's entered backward. But no puzzle had ever included it in a RIGHT/LEFT/FRONT/BACK sequence using phrases of the form direction/two-word preposition/the/final word, where each preposition is different. Aha! That's my hook!

To obey regular crossword symmetry (i.e., 180-degree rotational symmetry), the first and last theme entries must be the same length. So step one was finding a phrase of the form RIGHT XX THE XXXXX.

XWord Info has a great tool for finding such patterns. Entering the regular expression ^right..the.....$ on the Finder page — or just a normal search for right??the????? — returns three possibilities: RIGHT ON THE MONEY, RIGHT TO THE POINT, and RIGHT IN THE LURCH. The third one, however, is not a standard English phrase. It's crossed out in the search results because it's a nonsense thematic phrase from another puzzle (a play on LEFT IN THE LURCH). Of the two remaining expressions, RIGHT ON THE MONEY is the liveliest.

The LEFT and FRONT phrases also had to balance, and I found the best pairing at length 14 (the aforementioned LEFT IN THE LURCH plus FRONT OF THE LINE). From there, it was smooth sailing (with an emphasis on smooth since early-week puzzles need fill that's familiar to a wide range of solvers).

Great example of consistency, all four phrases in the form of (direction) + (two-letter preposition) + THE + (word). Nice touch that Alex didn't repeat a two-letter preposition, ON IN OF TO all having their places.

Places … it would have been a great touch to orient all the themers vertically, with FRONT and LEFT on the left half, RIGHT and BACK on the right. This would have given this puzzle so much more raison d'être. Consistency is a fantastic thing, but not if it's only for its own sake. It felt so odd to get RIGHT on the left-hand—

What? I'm the one that's odd, not the puzzle? Hmm. Yes, the odds of that are right on the money.

I loved the way the puzzle started, that line from Ogden NASH hilarious. Rhyming rhinoceros with "prepoceros" … I'd listen to way more rap if lyrics were as clever as this.

Not as hot on AMIABLE crossing AMIE, entries sharing etymology. There's no hard and fast rule against this, but it doesn't seem that different from using, say, H BOMB and A BOMB or SAND and SANDY in the same puzzle.

I love bonuses like NARWHAL, FERRARI, IN TRUTH, FLU SHOT, HAND VAC, ICE CUBE, ACE HIGH, although I'd sacrifice a couple to eliminate the newb-unfriendly entries ETTE and LEHI. These aren't terrible, but seeing [Esoteric Biblical region …] can give a newb a reason to put down the puzzle.

A shame that the directions weren't placed in their respective directions. That could have made for a TOP OF THE LINE theme. Overall, though, a fine Monday offering with an impressive number of colorful bonuses.

Jeff Brumley is the famous bass player from the band Rise Up. (Full disclosure: I happen to know him personally.) In response to Mr. Chen's write up, Mr. Brumley sent us a video link along with this comment: "You wanted more rap involving a rhinoceros? You got it."