New York Times, Thursday, August 20, 2020

I love me a good tricky "change-the-path-of-an-answer" Thursday puzzle. I realize turn-the-corner puzzles might be a bit played out now, but to my knowledge I haven't yet seen a "wrinkle," so hopefully, this one is a fun twist to solvers.

When making the puzzle, I waffled over replacing 45-Across with MORTIMERSNERD instead of MORTIMERMOUSE. Both references are surprisingly equally dated (Snerd the ventriloquist dummy debuted on the radio in 1936, the same year Mortimer Mouse was introduced in the short "Mickey's Rival"), but went with the mouse because of my Disney love and also the fact that he still appears in shorts and on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse occasionally, making him a bit more accessible to younger solvers. That, plus even to a non-Disney native, it wouldn't be too hard to figure out this character might also have the surname "Mouse."

Also, every time I look at 29-Across, I can't help but read it with an annoyed British accent because of Rowan Atkinson as Zazu the hornbill in "I Just Can't Wait to be King."

There's such a memorable picture in A WRINKLE IN TIME, illustrating how a tesseract works. Grab a piece of cloth at two points far away, and bring them together. Voila, you have a shortcut, with the material in the middle all bunched up! Grant did a great job of mimicking the tesseract today.

If you haven't quite figured out how the themers work yet — it took me a while to see — check out SENTENTALVALUE. That's supposed to be SENTIMENTAL VALUE, so some Thursday solvers are going to try to write the first T as a (TIME) rebus. Not so! Note that there's an I above that first T, an M to the right, and then an E when you move back down. Think of it as a TIME worm inching forward, and it might make more sense.

I love when "hidden words" are in tricksy places, so across WHA(T I ME)ANT WAS is perfect. It's a shame there aren't more phrases that work this way — is there a famous TIM E.? (No.) Will Shortz is generally picky about "hidden words" spanning across all words of a themer, since MOUSE in MORTIMER MOUSE is filler, and I'm with him. In today's case, the trick is so apt to the book that I gave it a pass.

I have fond memories of the book, and the perfect wordplay connection to the tesseract put this puzzle into POW! consideration. Ultimately though, only having one themer where TIME spanned across all words, and too much LOC IES WAL LEU ASEAT, all pretty ugly, knocked it out of contention.

As much as I enjoyed SPROCKET, HOLE SAWS, PH SCALE, PLANET X, fewer goodies in exchange for a smoother product would have elevated this one to POW! status. 71-word (ultra-low) themed puzzles are so hard to execute on with both color and cleanliness.