GO UP IN SMOKE

Grant Thackray (rhymes with "daiquiri") recently moved from Oregon to Los Angeles, "hopefully to find a job in animation — either storyboarding or character design." He got started constructing crosswords after seeing the 2006 documentary "Wordplay" and thinking "I could do that." The idea for this one came while he was restocking wood for a campfire.

It's Grant's ninth Times puzzle and third Sunday.

This puzzle has had the longest gestation period of any I've published so far. I came up with the idea while (as Will's blurb mentions) preparing a campfire at the summer camp I worked at on Catalina Island in the summer of 2018. I submitted several different grids to the puzzle team, completely starting from scratch each time, until they finally found one they liked. One earlier version I submitted had MONSTER MANUAL as a theme answer (a book any "Dungeons and Dragons" nerd would be familiar with), but Will thought it a bit too obscure for a keystone answer, which is fair. See if you can figure out how it would have worked with this theme, though!

This puzzle also ended up with a handful of interesting answer pairings completely by chance, such as 34-Down and 58-Down almost making a famous book title, 25-Down and 36-Down being right next to each other, and 125-Down and 3-Down mirroring each other, creating my favorite fashion accessory. I'm glad they kept the clues I wrote for 5-Down, 43-Down, and 44-Down, but those smarty pants at the NYT came up with some pretty good ones of their own, such as at 55-Down. I also was very interested to learn a new fact that I could clue for the oft-seen answer at 120-Across. Take a look next time you're having one — who knew!

RISE FROM THE ASHES is such a great revealer phrase, ripe for all sorts of potential crossword themes. Jim Horne and I decided to highlight some grid squares below to make the execution more apparent.

Both of us were misled by the first themer, since ARSON from JOHNNY CARSON is fire related. I was so convinced that the risers would all be similarly related, that I stared at RETNECBA / ABCENTER for a full five minutes, performing mental anagrammatics to make out what the fire-related entry could be. Things get all jumbled-up in a burning fire, right?

Go ahead, UNLEASH the HOGWASH TALKS TRASH on me. I deserve it.

Although, I still cling to the belief that a fire can BETRANCE people.

There were some impressive finds, especially the longer ones. HOGWASH to HOGWARTS HOUSES is fun, and JOHNNY CASH sharing so many initial letters with JOHNNY CARSON is neat.

I also appreciated a few bonuses dotted throughout the grid, which helped me get over the puzzlement I kept struggling with, with respect to the theme. LATE GREAT is a great phrase. Fun to have HERMIONE echo HOGWARTS HOUSES. And toss in SPELL CASTER, too! That one was especially enchanting, given its charming clue, referring to "one who casts charms."

"Lead-off selections?" confused me for a hot minute, but in a similarly fantastic way. Try pronouncing it as "led," and you'll see why an ERASER fits.

Similarly, with NAMED. I stared at [Going by], wondering why "elapsing" might equate to NAMED. Ah, that's "going by," as in "Jeff tried to go by the nickname ‘El Jefe' but no one was betranced."

Tantalizing concept, with so much potential. I've talked to at least ten constructors about related concepts, playing on fire, phoenixes, and more. This one didn't wow me, but maybe the impact would have been stronger without the confusion of ARSON right off the bat.