Veteran solvers have "hidden word" radar, and mine was pinging. ITS hard to explain, but when you see something like ITS spanning ...
read moreVeteran solvers have "hidden word" radar, and mine was pinging. ITS hard to explain, but when you see something like ITS spanning across two words over and over, ITS hard to ignore. I was pleasantly surprised that it was much more than an ITS ME or ITS WHERE ITS AT theme. KEEP IT (literally between) U (and) S is a strong rationale for the embedded UITS letters.
It's easy to search for the *UITS* string, and there are many possibilities. The plethora of choices takes away some of the impact — it's much more impressive to work with a series of letters that feels near impossible to embed in phrases — but Eric did an excellent job picking colorful themers. QUIT STALLING is one we hadn't already added to our word list.
I breezed through the grid, hardly any speed bumps. With only four themers, that's exactly what I expect. Even after a second look, I couldn't find a single short entry to fault. Top-notch smoothness.
As Eric mentioned, when you have two 12-letter themers in the middle of your grid, placing them in rows 6 and 10 is often advantageous since the breathing space between every pair of themers usually allows for more long Downs. When your middle themers are squinched together like today, long Downs often have to go through three themers, and that extra level of inflexibility can be troublesome.
Eric's layout worked well, though, even allowing for a couple of mid-length bonuses in FAJITA, DURANT, and CENSURE. Along with the refreshing MINT LEAF and MOON ROOF feature, that's a reasonable amount of pizzazz.
Although BETWEEN YOU AND ME and BETWEEN US have been used over and over, the twist of UITS made for a fun a-ha.