New York Times, Wednesday, August 31, 2022

First draft of this puzzle was a vowel progression; unfortunately O. V. WRIGHT ended up on the cutting room floor in the final version.

The consonant crunch at the intersection of 45-Across and 45-Down is my favorite part of this puzzle.

It took me much longer than FIVE SECONDs to figure out the RULE of today's theme. It didn't help that I stared at IV FLUID and wondered if I'd gotten the revealer wrong. Isn't IV the Roman numeral for FOUR, not FIVE?

Ah! The missing one is inside FLUID. IV + I = V. Genius!

I took ten to X out that idea.

The revealer today reminds me of "A Beautiful Mind." It's either a genius-level, code-breaking idea, or it's a web of colored yarns spewed onto a cork board. I lean toward the former, since it's a clever interpretation: FIVE (Roman numeral V) is in the SECOND position of the entry!

Why do all the themers start with two initials, though?

Only a beautiful mind could figure that out.

I like that Joe tried to tighten up his theme by adding a constraint. Without it, there are thousands of entries whose second letter is V. Working within his self-imposed limitation, Joe did a great job picking out the zingers. The only ones I would have wanted were UV RADIATION, CV JOINT, and PV=nRT.

That last one's equal sign makes it less than ideal for a crossword.

What other constraint might have generated a bigger a-ha? Maybe ... adding some "ONE ___" secondary revealer? Hey, TV DINNER would also fit with ONE FOURTH (since I is the 4^th letter)!

Given that I'm spinning multi-colored webs, I like Joe's choices.

I didn't get a strong click from the theme, but I appreciated the zinginess of the revealer and the novelty of the interpretation. It's neat to see a John Nash or Alan Turing at work, coming up with ideas I'd have never considered.