New York Times, Monday, May 25, 2020

ACME: As a Libra, I'm very familiar with the phrase, "I've changed my mind" so decided to see if I could literally do just that within the confines of a puzzle. When I realized LEONARDNIMOY contained the word MIND reading backwards I got very excited about trying to do a MINDMELD puzzle. Then I found the matching-in-length FINDMYIPHONE and I was off to the races.

MIDNIGHTCOWBOY, one of my favorite films of all time, morphed into MIDNIGHTINPARIS...fittingly, as it's the only Woody Allen film I've enjoyed in the past 20 years. He was my idol as a young girl (ahem) and I had a long correspondence with him (see photo) after we met in the 70s.

I approached Victor Barocas whom I coincidentally saw made a CHANGEDHANDS puzzle for the LA Times while I working on this one. We had met through a puzzle tournament in Minnesota, where he is a professor at the U of M, just as my dad had been decades before. Victor is phenomenal with dense material (just look at those nice sixes: ACIDIC MERMAN BENIGN SLIPUP... that's a short story in itself!) and was able to wrangle my all-over-the-place-ness with a nice grid.

Actually, our initial attempt was rejected b/c of the weak fill, I blame myself, but we were given a chance to start from scratch on the strength of the not-in-a-grid previously themers. Glad Will Shortz and company CHANGEDTHEIRMIND and let us redo to a much better puzzle all around! As per usual, not originally intended as a Monday (given the anagramming and the theme density), but there you have it!

VICTOR: I had the privilege to work with Andrea for a few years on the (sadly, now gone) Minnesota Crossword Tournament sponsored by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library. Andrea is both delightful and professional, and she always brings a combination of joy and flair to her puzzles. It was a pleasure to work with her on this puzzle, and I hope that the solvers enjoy it as much as we did.

It blows my mind that BOGGLES THE MIND wasn't the revealer. That's okay, I don't mind.

Even though I've seen a lot of Jedi MIND tricks and anagramming themes over the years, I kept an open mind while solving. I enjoyed how elegantly the circled letters progressed, an orderly procession marching along the puzzle's diagonal. Neat!

Well, until I started thinking about it.

What, Jeff overthink something? You don't say.

What kind of twisted mind CHANGES ONES MIND in such a regimented fashion? If I were making this puzzle, I'd, of course, start with my usual DIMNess, then I'd follow with INDM falling off the grid because I think outside the box dammit, and continue with D M ___ I ___ N broken up after losing my mind.

However, as a diehard Trekker (not Trekkie—puh-lease!) I'd absolutely end with a MIND melded backward in LEONARD NIMOY. That's the sort of mind(bleep) I love experiencing. That's some Admiral-level meta-ness, that is.

So many Star Trek episodes featured the red shirt, that poor ensign you knew was going to bite it. Dude was going to wade right into the alien ILEDE ICAL swamp and then disintegrate.

It turns out everything we need to know about construction we can learn from Star Trek. The problem always came when Kirk told everyone to spread out in this giant, unknown area. When you try to explore swaths with EMAIL ME and BIG MOMMA stirring up alien quicksand … you better say oh hell no and beam your ass right back up.

There's an interesting nugget of a concept here, CHANGED ONES MIND having a lot of potential. I enjoyed the theme phrases Acme and Victor chose — FIND MY IPHONE is contemporary, and it seems to be a highly-used app — but the execution of theme and gridwork wasn't as mindful as a Monday puzzle ought to be.