Adding-letters themes live and die by the humor they generate. PLAYFUL DEAD, now that's both living and dying! Such a funny phrase, bringing up visuals of zombies playing soccer with one another's heads.
I enjoyed Ricky's themer choices. There are a lot of -FUL words out there, but not many of them change meaning when you remove those three letters. HATE to HATEFUL or JOY to JOYFUL isn't going to wow anyone, for example.
There was one themer that didn't work as well for me, though: AWFUL SHUCKS. It brings up funny images of a farmer ripping off husks willy-nilly, but the phrases didn't hit my ear right.
Get it? Ear?
As in EAR of corn?
No?
Aw, shucks.
Why did it bug me? The grammar is so much more tortured than with the others. DEAD, BEAR, TEST are all clearly nouns. SHUCKS isn't. The dictionary does say that "shuck" is a noun synonym for "husk," but if you have to look it up in the dictionary ...
Is anyone still using AW, SNAP! besides us wanna-be-cool-youngsters? That could have led to a football clue involving punting problems.
Decent gridwork, ending up with a reasonable balance of color (NEWSFLASH, MEET CUTE, FRUIT FLY, PAN SEARED) and glue (AERO ATAT INDO ONA OOFS RAH). However, with just four themers of 11 12 12 11 letters, sparkling color + cleanliness should be possible. It's a matter of taking more care(ful) care in choosing long downs that better facilitate squeaky-clean short fill.
I didn't know FONSI, but one of my favorite YouTubers constantly says, "Alexa, play Despacito." I still don't know what that means, but somehow it still makes me smile every time he says it. I did wonder if it could be Luis FENSI, not knowing if the outer edge of a golf clue was a TOE or a TEE. A more straightforward clue would have been better there.
Overall, a strong example of an adding-letters theme. I wouldn't have thought that such dramatic changes were possible with +FUL additions.