MAKE THAT A DOUBLE

I was first introduced to crossword puzzles in college when my friends and I would attempt to solve the NYTimes Sunday puzzle collaboratively, lingering over Sunday brunch in the dining hall, procrastinating instead of studying.

A decade later, by then fully accustomed to spending my Sundays with the NYTimes, I had this great idea (IMHO) for an essay that would have been perfect (IMHO) for the "Hers" column that ran weekly on the very last page of the NYTimes Magazine. But I knew that being published in the Magazine was a ridiculous fantasy, so I didn't even write the essay, let alone submit it. Well, it turns out that this dream actually did come true — I just had a few of the details wrong. I had imagined the wrong genre, and I was off by one page! (I'm excited — can you tell?)

But I will KEEP IT TOGETHER.

As I composed this puzzle, I set certain constraints on myself. First, I absolutely wanted to keep FITBITS and NITWITS. I liked the way their pairs of ITs were so tight, they were fun words, and FITBITS hadn't been used yet. They did, however, force pairs of longer theme answers to be only one row apart, with the IT locked in a fixed location within the longer words.

Also, I didn't want IT ever to be "it", except in the reveal. So the shorter answers that crossed the long theme answers couldn't be, for example, GOTIT or ITSME. That ruled out a whole lot of options.

I hope that these touches added some elegance to the puzzle, and perhaps some fun to the solving process. I am certainly delighted to have spent a Sunday morning with you, and I hope that you have enjoyed the company!

Ruth's Sunday debut! KEEP IT TOGETHER gives us a rationale for a rebus puzzle smashing I and T together, and the title, MAKE THAT A DOUBLE, tells us that each themer has two IT rebuses. Although there are a ton of phrases with two ITs in them, I thought Ruth did a great job selecting really strong ones. CREDIT OR DEBIT, INITIATION RITE, LITTLE WHITE LIE, PATERNITY SUIT, etc. — all of them sing, not a one falling flat.

It's pretty tough to work in more than seven longish themers into a Sunday puzzle, but Ruth manages to get in eight by working two in vertically. That threw me off at first, since it kind of muddled the fact that each themer has two ITs in it. It would have been great to run every one of the eight themers horizontally, which would have made the puzzle's consistency really shine. As it was, I got a little confused seeing some vertical answers like FITBITS and SECURITY DEPOSIT having two ITs, but others like LOITERER only having one. Easy to figure out the thematic consistency post-solve, but it would have been nice if it had popped immediately.

It took me a little thinking to make sense of the revealer and the title, but I like the dual nature of having one give a rationale of why it should be a rebus, and the other explaining why there are two rebuses in each themer. It did feel a little odd that KEEP IT TOGETHER didn't have two instances of IT, though. And it seems like MAKE IT A DOUBLE could have made an apt appearance somewhere in the puzzle itself. How cool would it have been if those two phrases crossed each other — at an IT rebus square!

Some really nice fill, kicking off the puzzle with ALLCAPS, ROOFTOP, LOWTECH, ARSENIC all in one corner. I wasn't hot on the cost of ATH, CFCS, ETES, NER, CENE, though. Thankfully, the rest of the puzzle was cleaner, and even included great stuff like COLD COCK and JOCULAR, TV HOSTS and BUST A GUT. Added a lot of sparkle to the solving experience.

And I hadn't realized some of the nice touches Ruth constrained herself to — upon second glance, it was pretty cool not to see any I-Ts as the word IT. Those little details are appreciated.