Enrique Henestroza Anguiano author page

CASCADING MENU is such an evocative term, making for a great marquee for the central stair stack. ALL-TIME GREATS is great too, and although it's been ages since I've read any ISABEL ALLENDE, I've enjoyed her work.

Interesting twist on a stair stack pattern — I appreciate the innovation, especially given how common the middle stair stack has become. It's rare to see four Across entries stacked atop each other like IS THAT IT, WIRELESS, OPERETTA, and SPIN SERVE, and to do with when there's already a middle stair stack is audacious. Connecting it all with yet another long entry like TETE-A-TETE is shooting for the stars!

One of the risks of this type of layout is that it's difficult to fill each of those long slots with something amazing. Perhaps Bluetooth-connected singers could argue that WIRELESS and OPERETTA are indeed amazing, but we'd still have to have a tete-a-tete about how many times TETE-A-TETE has been used through the decades because of its common letters and perfect vowel-consonant symmetry. BEERAMID and NEST EGGS shine things up in the opposite corner, though.

Given that it's a 70-word construction, I'd prefer to have less CSA EDT ENE IST. (Some folks will immediately recognize a community supported agriculture box, but if you've never heard the term before, there's no way to figure it out through etymology.)

Solid stair stack construction overall, though, especially given that additional constraint of stacking so many long Across entries above each other in the lower-left and upper-right corrners.

OPPOSITES ATTRACT crossword constructors. There's something so alluring about finding entries containing opposites, and OFF / ON A LARK, BIG / LITTLE LIES, LEFT / RIGHT AWAY, and OUT / IN FRONT are solid examples. They're all themer-worthy phrases, and it's neat that LEFT RIGHT AWAY uses the meaning of RIGHT so differently.

It's elegant to have the themers isolated out in front. It makes them so easy to notice — you don't need to circle or highlight them, even for early-week solvers.

Although this is a great presentation for newbs, I fondly remember some more complicated offerings. I enjoyed having to suss out hidden opposites and the creativity involved with embedded opposites.

Interesting fill choice in TAME IMPALA. It's not my jam, but it's easy to suss out the two recognizable words. I'm sure fans of the group will appreciate the inclusion. Early-week solvers will appreciate the explanatory clue, too.

Uno ESOS or OSO, ICI or there, no biggie. Three is a lot, though, from a single category in many editors' lists to avoid. DO NOT feels partialish as well, and the ETHNO prefix isn't great. Are these worth the double-double bonuses in SUPERFOOD / SOUR BEER and LATTE ART / TAME IMPALA? This sounds like a Buzz Beer advertisement!

I'm sure this won't be the last time we see OPPOSITES ATTRACT, but this is a solid early-week version of it.

AYE, I, AI, AY … hey, who are you calling four eyes?

Neat that Enrique managed to use every possible homophone of EYE. Ai-yah, I couldn't think of any others except those that were part of another word, like EIDER DOWN.

Great revealer, too — EYE OPENERS aptly describes that the first words are all EYE sounds. I did pause, wondering if I had an ear problem since EYE OPENERS has nothing naturally to with homophones, and—

AY CARAMBA, Jeff!

I appreciated that AYE and AY aren't "dupes," since they don't share an etymology. AYE means yes in sailor-speak, and AY is an exclamation of surprise or despair in Spanish. I vote AYE for both their inclusions.

I recently got a revision request from an editor asking me to replace AREPA. I enjoy food, and I love South American cuisine, but I understand the feedback. Crossing AMANA, that first letter might be a total guess. Toss in a DOLMA, and my college friend who only eats brown foods (toast, plain chicken, etc.) might be writing in today.

Probably doesn't help that there's both an AMANA and an OSTER blended into the grid. I'm no chef, so I'm thankful that we picked up a broken OSTER food processor a few weekends ago for $4, which I repaired back to its original $100 value. I love a bargain, so OSTER was top of mind today!

It isn't easy to make a homophones puzzle stand out these days, but the cleverness of the revealer and the completeness of the set helped.

Cool collection of metaphors following the (adjective) + (article of clothing) pattern to label a person. Most of them are super evocative — I'd be happy to see entries like SCAREDY PANTS, EMPTY SUIT, and STUFFED SHIRT in a themeless.

TURNCOAT stuck out as not like the others, since it's the only single-worder. Also, TURN isn't as clearly an adjective.

I was only vaguely familiar with the term BLACK HAT. Makes me uncomfortable, given how the term originated — whiteness associated with "purity, cleanliness, and moral righteousness." That has so many more implications than simply being a goody-two-shoes. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

The themer lengths are so tough to work with, the middle 9 kicking of the inflexibility by forcing triplets of black squares on either side. Then, the two 12s can only go into rows 4 and 12, further putting on the squeeze by forcing yet more black squares.

It is true that SCAREDY PANTS could be right justified (STUFFED SHIRT left), and the two of them swapped. That's still only four possibilities, though.

Given all the constraints, some beautiful gridwork. Wise choice to leave a big 4x7 chunk in the largely unconstrained lower left and upper right, which saves black squares to can be deployed elsewhere, especially in that theme-packed middle. What with BLACK HAT, EMPTY SUIT, and TURNCOAT crammed together, escaping with only the tough foreign vocab ETOILE and OMNIA is a win.

Although there were a few blips in the theme set, I still thought it was a crossworthy concept.

We've had plenty of plays on OPENING, FIRST, BEGINNING to indicate "look at the first word of a phrase." Most of them, though, have been "words that can start with X" themes, which are passé. I appreciate how well Enrique disguised his synonym theme, STREAK, DASH, and BOLT, all used in a non-running sense at the start of their phrases.

Consistency elevated the theme, too: (synonym for RUNNING) + OF + (noun). A friend forwarded a NYT rejection notice recently, and a criterion the team cited that could help him next time? Themer consistency.

I also appreciated the novelty of the theme phrases. I'll admit, I looked askance at BOLT OF FABRIC at first. Then I realized that my 20-year-old-t-shirt-and-jeans wardrobe probably makes me less than an expert in this arena.

My only hesitation (cue Jim Horne's chortles) was that RUNNING didn't match part of speech with the synonyms. I explained why STREAKING and DASHING would give parallel structures, or FIRST RUN as a revealer would match parts of speech better—

YOU CAN STOP CACKLING ANYTIME, JIM.

Newb-accessible theme displaying elegance in themer selection, consistency, and grid execution. RUNNING START to the week, indeed.

Enrique! I worked with him on a puzzle earlier this year; enjoyable back and forth. Nice to see him nab his NYT debut. POLAR OPPOSITES is demonstrated in six paired locations, for example, WET in the Northwest (quit it with the it-always-rains-in-Seattle jokes already) and DRY in the SE. Great touch in the oppositional clues, WET as [Like Seattleites who refuse to carry umbrellas even in downpours because it's the principle of the matter] and DRY as [Never like Seattleites ...]

Hey, quit that!

Perimeter puzzles are well-trodden enough that Will Shortz's standards for them are high. Putting a black square in the very NW corner would make Enrique's job much easier since he wouldn't have to find overlapping answers such as WET / WORK. There is a huge universe of antonyms with the same number of letters, but this constraint — in all four corners — adds a huge amount of difficulty.

Typically, it's frowned upon to section off a piece of the grid, so there's only one answer in or out. If you can't figure out KCUP, for example, that bottleneck could mess you up. It does make construction tremendously easier, though, which is especially important in a perimeter puzzle — having WET and WORK cemented into place is a tough constraint. As much as I dislike sectioned corners, I'm okay swallowing that if it means smooth fill, which Enrique mostly delivered.

The other rough aspect of perimeter puzzles is that even if you can get all four corners filled out cleanly, you still have to knit them together in the middle, where your revealer lies. A constructor's nightmare! I like what Enrique did up top, everything clean, and even working in colorful SO TO SPEAK.

Not as much in the south. STELAE might be tough even for a late-week puzzle; crossing it with MOLESKINE could be a killer. Thankfully, I knew the former from crosswords, the latter because I've bought Moleskines for snooty writer friends. (Admit it already, Snooty McSnootfaces.)

All in all, a fine crossword of its genre, exhibiting reasonable trade-offs.