PREPOSITION PROPOSITION

Bucket list item achieved—I've got my first NYT Sunday puzzle! Yay!

I don't know about other constructors, but I can't "force" a good theme out of me. I have to be lucky enough for one to "come to me," and thankfully this one did. It was inspired by WALK ON WATER, which felt worthy of building a puzzle around. After batting around some ideas, I somehow noticed that WALK ON could become WALK-ON, which changes its meaning in a way I liked. So, I hunted for other, similar phrases, and when I realized I had found at least nine, I had to make the scary decision: whittle, or go for a Sunday puzzle? I guess I chose correctly!

Because my themers were short and easy to arrange, the grid design and filling went (for a Sunday) pretty smoothly. The SW fought with me, but I ultimately won out. MISSES A CUE was a big help--I got it from XWord Info, I think!

By far the biggest challenge was the NE corner. Originally, I had EAT SUPPER at 13-D, which allowed that corner to fill easily. Will didn't enjoy this phrase though, so I had to try doing without it. That proved tricky; the first several fills all introduced dupes—sometimes, even three or more! The dupe Gods seemed determined to get me. I'm bummed the final fill has TRISTE, BAL, AT A, and APEAK in the NE, since that is more "glue" than I would normally allow myself, but I'm still pleased with the zippiness I was able to get into the long fill overall. I hope everyone has fun with this one!

PS. See if you can think up any good theme entries like mine with these phrases I couldn't use: TIE-IN, LIE-IN, COME-ON, MAKE-UP, TAKE-IN.

I stared at the title for a long time before staring the puzzle. How neat, that PREPOSITION and PROPOSITION are the same except for that third letter. I didn't quite figure out how it applied to the theme — prepositions joined up to produce kooky themers — but I suppose you could call a theme a "proposition," as in a "plan of action."

I enjoyed most of the themers. STAND-IN LINE as a delivery from an understudy felt clever. PULLUP STAKES as the wager for an exercise bet, too. PUT-ON NOTICE as a [Scam alert], too! I was surprised at how different these common phrases became with just that slight hyphen/space change. Amusing theme.

I was glad to read Alex's note, as that NE corner stuck out to me, too. Here's a case where going to 142 words could have been a good option. I do like PINCH RAN and ANTI RIOT a lot, but breaking those up into two words apiece would have allowed for some cleanup on aisle APEAK. Probably would have allowed Alex to upgrade TOSSES TO into something more sizzly, too.

I thought Alex did a nice job with his fill, except for all those prepositional fillers. For a theme based on prepositions, where you're already going to have some UP / IN / ON / TO dupes, having more of the SHAKE UP / UP ONE / PUSH IN / OD ON / FLIES TO / TOSSES TO is less than ideal. That kind of fill is neutral at best in average puzzles. But here, not only do they muddy up the theme a bit, but there's just such a huge quantity of prepositions floating around.

And GOOK. Yes, it's clued as GO OK, but come on. Seriously? NO NO!

But I enjoyed the theme, those seemingly innocent hyphen changes creating huge and entertaining shifts in meaning. A sharp theme can almost always overcome a couple of infelicities in grid execution.