GET OUT OF HERE!

Tony Orbach, of Montclair, N.J., is a construction project manager, saxophonist, and crossword constructor. Today (Dec. 6) happens to be his 59th birthday.

Tony's love of puzzles runs in the family. "My father was a big crossword solver, and as a teen, I would look over his shoulder and help." Once Tony made a Puns and Anagrams crossword for his dad. "He loved it and made me one in return." By "my father," incidentally, Tony means the actor Jerry Orbach of Broadway and Hollywood fame.

I had made a puzzle years ago where the theme consisted of phrases in the form of "___ OF ___," but with the first and last words swapped: one was PARIS OF PLASTER. I remembered that theme recently and noticed that removing the connecting "OF" in some of the base phrases made for a whole new range of meaning changes.

As you can imagine, this is quite a fungible theme — I'm pretty sure there are about a million "___ OF ___" phrases — so, in an effort to winnow down the pile, at first I tried to make them all have some other thing in common, and I wound up with a group of phrases related to woodworking. A few examples were BOARDEDUCATION and TABLECONTENTS. I submitted that puzzle first but a few of the theme entries did not feel quite right to Will — however, the overall idea was acceptable enough to merit a rework, so the published puzzle was actually the second crack at it, and FRAMEREFERENCE was the lone holdover from the woodworking version.

One thing I enjoyed in particular about this version was, the longest entry was one that wouldn't have worked the same way before the age of Netflix and the like. It's always nice to have an opportunity to use a relatively new sense of a word, and sometimes that can be the thing that makes an old theme finally come together. The moral is, don't throw out those partial theme ideas!

Thanks again to Will, Sam, and the rest of the gang for all their input.

By all accounts, I should have disliked this puzzle. It's too simple a theme concept. There are hundreds of theme options, as Tony mentioned, making it too loosey-goosey. I didn't recognize one base phrase (PRIDE OF PLACE). The grid sports only a few bonus entries and a large dose of ugly short bits.

Yet I enjoyed it. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. Tony has somehow broken so many of my mantras about what makes a Sunday NYT puzzle enjoyable.

Perhaps it's the number of themers that hit? I didn't laugh at any, but almost all of them amused. Two archaeologists in a dispute over fossils as a BONE CONTENTION. COMEDY ERRORS as a stand-ups flubs. =] !

Or how so many of the themers flipped word meanings so well? Reading a RITE PASSAGE, from the Torah, during a RITE of PASSAGE. STROKE GENIUS as a swim coach, that's a STROKE of GENIUS.

Was it how easily the puzzle breezed by? Since the theme concept was kindergarten-level basic, I was able to drop in most themers with zero thought. I'm far from a speed solver, and completing a Sunday NYT in about 10 minutes — far less than my average — made me feel brilliant.

I usually complain about 21x21 grids not having enough bonus fill (like DEAR SANTA and MIND BLOWN), but having so much short stuff that I could fly straight through helped make my record time possible. Puzzles should leave solvers with a glow, and this one did.

It's not a perfect solving experience by any means, and not even one I'd give to newer solvers. Aside from all the AGFA AIT (!) BCE DEPT stuff, should general solvers be expected to know ISTRIA? LEKS? R.U.R.? My reaction falls somewhere between LEERY and ICKY.

Still, it's a rare Sunday when an old-old-old theme type amuses me so much. I give Will Shortz a lot of heck these days for not innovating nearly enough in 21x21s, but this one is a checkmark for him. There's something to be said for a simple Sunday puzzle that can make a huge swath of solvers feel great.