Alex Rosen author page

★ Now, this is the type of bait-and-switch I like! Alex baited me in with [Engagement ring], which had to be … BOUT? What's that aBOUT? And [Firm fruit] was getting at something like PEAR or PLUM. Not a plum guess from Jeff! Such a brilliant a-ha when I figured out the ol' switcheroo, [Ring engagement] cluing a boxing BOUT, and a [Fruit firm] the DOLE company.

And Alex was hardly sparing as he DOLEd these out. To make sure you grasp all the brilliance, here's the list with the clues REVERSEd:

• Fruit firm = DOLE
• Musician Young = NEIL
• Olympus mount = TRIPOD (Olympus, the camera company)
• Good look = SCAN
• Home call = BATTER UP
• Short cuts = BOBS (this one's not as strong, since [Cuts short] could plausibly clue BOBS too)
• Buffalo water = Lake ERIE, love that change of capitalization!)
• Ring engagement = BOUT
• Top crew = ATEAM
• Bank job = HEIST
• Not does = BUCKS, as in deer that aren't does! Brilliant shift in the meaning of "does."
• Thinking group = MENSA
• Storybook giant = OGRE
• Part IV = TUBE. Did you catch the IV = 4 to IV = intravenous switch? My favorite of the bunch.
• Asian pan = WOK
• Hard rock = ORE

The wordplay brilliance in the GOBI / FLAN clues almost equaled that of the themers. I missed the "dessert" vs. "desert" difference at first. Amazing spin on a "clue echo."

So many Thursdays riff off of established ideas, way too many constructors defaulting to rebuses, turning themers, blank spaces, etc. Not today. Alex's turnabout was more than fair play, and it would have won him the POW! on almost every week this year so far.

Solid intro to "letter removals that result in valid phrases." Our Replacement Finder can help with this — for example, if you seek entries that become equally valid entries when you cut IN, enter IN into the first box and leave the second blank. You'll have to sift through hundreds of results, but there will be plenty of gems like DISCIPLINES to DISCIPLES.

This theme type usually focuses on one fixed set of letters, so removing different ones — cut IN, scrub UP, take OFF, and strike OUT — provided a full range for people unfamiliar with this concept.

And for those of us who've seen it more often, there are a ton of witty clues to keep us occupied. There's some wordplay, like a MIRROR as a "compact disc," i.e., a disc in a makeup compact. Trivia fans might enjoy learning that TOPEKA's Siouan name centers around digging potatoes or that PERU is home to the National University of San Marcos, running since 1551. Cool!

There's even a combination of wordplay and trivia in the clue for TACT. [… when to be big and when not to belittle] is genius-level wordsmithing.

Along with a WATERBED LIMO RIDE? Feels like we've been dropped straight into an episode of Entourage!

The theme felt overdone to this jaded longtime solver, but it's an excellent gateway puzzle for those trying to crack the Thursday barrier. As much as I loved the LIME RICKEY to LIMERICK finding — the space change makes it so fascinating — I think the NYT team made the right choice to ask Alex to simplify the concept.

Grid art! Black squares often dominate circles, washing out their effects, but the circles win out today. From the first second I opened the puzzles, the smiley emoticon jumped out at me.

So much so that I tentatively filled in SEMI, then gained speed with COLON, jumped to HYPHEN, and completed PARENTHESIS. One minute into a Sunday puzzle, and I was done!

Well, there was the rest of the grid to fill in. My mind wandered, wondering what punnish delights there might be, playing on the common smiley emoticon. Would we see references to Tavis, George, or Guy Smiley? Perhaps there would be a WINK theme (the bottom of the SEMICOLON represents a wink). Man, I was hoping I'd get pleasantly hoodWINKed!

PUNCTUATION MARK, SMILEY FACE, ROTATE CLOCKWISE?

Ah well.

Interesting to learn PAREIDOLIA, at least. It's such a bizarre-looking word that I needed every single crossing. Reading up on its etymology gave me a solid a-ha, though. "Para" is Greek for "instead of," and the rest of the word derives from "eidolon" or "image." That sounded familiar, and the Greek myth-lover in me sat up in researching it more.

A few worthwhile bonuses, LEAP FROG, WASSAIL, LOW LIFES boosting the quality of my solve. However, there wasn't nearly as much heft in this 21x21 as it needed.

I've been a critic of themeless Sundays as a cop-out for not working hard enough to find quality themes, but this could have made for an interesting "mini-themed" Sunday. Open up the corners and sides — take out black squares above PAREIDOLIA and the right of AHA MOMENT, for example — and that would open up so much real estate for jazzy fill.

Great seed concept, unfortunately not fleshed out well enough.

JACKSON POLLOCK! Neat to see him memorialized in an artistic crossword. I'm usually not a fan of "spaced out circles" themes (Will Shortz isn't either; he finds them random and/or chaotic), but it's an genre for POLLOCK's splatter-painting style.

Wait. DRIBBLE? Further research does show that he indeed used DRIBBLE techniques. Maybe I watched Ed Harris splattering paint over a canvas too many times.

DRIBBLE does fit the orderliness of the P A I N T and T N A I P drips, all going in straight lines. Still, it doesn't do POLLOCK's non-orthogonal work justice. Even though having slanted P A I N T trails would have meant all sorts of grid construction problems — including the big-picture question of what entries are thematic — I'd have preferred something that more represented a POLLOCK creation. I bet that could be pulled off, with enough iteration.

A couple of dribbles in the grid, ACTA crossing ROTI particularly difficult if you don't know your crosswordese or Indian cuisine. Same with ESTER / ITE. We longtime solvers can generally get either without crossings, but something like ESNER (ESNE-esque?) and INE might look just as reasonable.

I love the idea of today's puzzle. Not so much this particular canvas.

Debut! And with Brad!

Brad Wilber is such a great guy and the former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education's crossword, which sadly ended a few years ago. He was perfect for that job since he's an incredibly smart person who can pull out terms like MONONYM that are not only interesting but accessible. I have a terrible time keeping those -NYM terms straight, but the MONO prefix makes this one easier.

Will Shortz is extremely picky about "hidden words" themes these days because they've become overdone. Today's features one incredible find, EMINEM in MINE MINE MINE! Some solvers might wonder if that phrase is legit, but those solvers don't have kids.

The other discoveries aren't as mind-blowing because four-letter hidden words aren't as impressive. It does help if there's a rare(ish) letter like a K, and SPIN KICK is a vivid phrase. CARBON OFFSET is a modern term. It's harder to hide ENYA than you might think. Still, these three don't have the wow factor of EMINEM's six letters.

I also want a perfect revealer for hidden words puzzles, and while MONONYM does describe what's going on, it doesn't give a rationale for hiding the names. MIDDLE NAMES would sort of do it, but that doesn't get at the one-nameness. I don't think there is a perfect revealer, unfortunately, which is a ding on this theme concept.

Another approach was to disguise one-named singers.

I appreciated the huge number of clever or fun clues. My favorite was [Body part where a shoe goes]. Probably like most everyone, I filled in FOOT, especially when the middle OO worked fine. Fun head-slap when I realized it referred to a horse's shoe.

A couple of rough patches in the grid, a bit of ELEV HELI, and SLUE is tough vocab. I've learned SIENA from crosswords, but if you haven't traveled to Tuscany, that might be a head-scratcher. Fair crossings for everything, though, and some might appreciate learning something new.

Not my favorite hidden words puzzle, but that EMINEM find was fantastic.