New York Times, Thursday, May 31, 2018

I'm delighted to have this crossword appear in the New York Times. I'd like to thank Will and the other editors for helping to bring the puzzle into shape, and especially for having the good sense to nix a theme entry which had so endeared itself to me that I willfully overlooked the absurd difficulty in parsing it: OMEGAALPHA ["Behold, the enormous French mountain? Yeah, right!"?]

I've always enjoyed the sort of wordplay featured in these theme answers, where — as in the charade or heteronym — the letters and their order remain the same, while the spacing changes to amusing effect. I sometimes see it as a special kind of anagram, another longtime obsession of mine. (Readers of this column who are also interested in anagrams and an extra bit of daily wordplay might enjoy a puzzle series I've been running at AnagramsAroundEve.com, with crossword-style clues with anagram phrase solutions.)

I love it when I see a theme I can't even imagine dreaming up. Take Greek letters, stick a bunch together, then parse them in odd ways to come up with creatively kooky answers? Fantastic! I had the hardest time figuring out LAMBDA TAU = LAMB DATA U, but what a hilarious image. Made me think of "Hamburger U," McDonald's training grounds.

And CHI PSI ZETA XI = CHIP SIZE TAXI? That's an incredibly cool find. A funny one, too!

THETA OMICRON = THE TAU MICRON sounds like a Stephen Hawking book.

I wasn't as hot on BETA PI ETA = BET A PIETA, as the spacing changes weren't as unpredictable. Still, the concept of betting a pieta (depiction of Mary and Jesus) is evocative.

The theme was so interesting that I wanted so badly to give it the POW! The fill didn't quite match in excellence, though. TABAC at 1-Down = sigh. ALEPH at 2-Down confuses the theme a bit. I'd much rather keep all other letters out of the fill for this theme, no matter what language.

ICAL crossing SECY — neither is a puzzle-killer, but they sure ain't good. Crossing them draws extra attention to these dabs of crossword glue.

OZAWA / TAZO is worse to me. I don't think educated solvers should be expected to know OZAWA off the top — I played in orchestras for 20 years, and I learned him only from crosswords — and while TAZO was once owned by Starbucks, I wonder if it's a big enough brand to demand solvers' attention. Crossing them doesn't feel fair.

Toss in some ARNO, OCTA, TUE, and I just couldn't do it. So close to a POW! on your debut, Dominick! I think if you'd left out ITS ALL GREEK TO ME, I still would have understood the theme, and you could have smoothed and snazzified your grid. Not a whole lot of room for bonuses, as it is — HAIRIEST and AMATEURS are fine, but not outstanding.

I've seen plenty of crosswords around ITS ALL GREEK TO ME, but this one was different. I like different.