Joe Deeney author page

I've seen dozens of plays on (nationality) + (food) over the years, so it's a delight to experience a fresh angle. One of my first efforts riffed on [Pain] = FRENCH BREAD — "pain" is the French word for "bread" — but every editor said it felt way too familiar. Given that was ten years ago, it's even harder to come up with something that feels interesting within this category.

There's something beautiful about other alphabets. Featuring them in crossword clues is not only neat from a diversity standpoint, but each one hints at what the entry might start with. I'm terrible with languages, but I could still recognize RUSSIAN and GREEK letters. Although ARABIC and CHINESE took longer to place (my ancestors are weeping), they still served as perfect footholds to figure out the themers.

There's not a lot of traditional wordplay in the theme. On the one hand, I wanted a clever clue written in the native alphabet, like [Game of kings?] presented as [国王的游戏] — how kooky would that be? Yes, that would mean that few solvers would get the wordplay, but how many solvers figured out that 跳棋 meant CHECKERS?

(insert loud ancestral wailing)

Working with five long themers is no joke — there's so much strain everywhere. The 14s are particularly challenging since they stubbornly have to go into rows 5 and 11, jamming things up. Kicking off a puzzle with AGLET isn't ideal, and crossing it with THISBE might make some SLOE solvers complain that this be inelegant. I'm curious if some cheater squares could have helped, perhaps at the T of THISBE and/or the A of AGLET.

It's tough to offer something new in a long-established category, and I enjoyed this angle.

POETS CORNER, literally represented in each of four corners today. Alexander POPE / Ezra POUND, Adrienne RICH / Thomas HARDY, Jonathan SWIFT / Robert FROST, Gertrude STEIN / Robert BURNS — each of the eight so conveniently has a last name that can be clued in an innocent way. As much as I'd love to see someone fresh like Amanda GORMAN included, a clue like [Brit's "oy, chappie!"?] would have gotten a POUNDing.

There's something apt about including old English poets, especially Thomas HARDY, who is buried in Poet's Corner, and Robert BURNS, who has a memorial there. I have the same mixed feelings about this as I do about the British royal family, though. Yes, it's steeped in centuries of history and tradition, but there are all sorts of unspeakable mores, most recently written about in Prince Harry's book.

Might have been fun to focus on modern-day poets to give a stronger sense of freshness — Alice WALKER and Rita DOVE come immediately to mind — though it might be morbid to write about great modern-day artists as if they were dead and buried.

Weighing these complicated issues is so bard. Er, hard. So much for my ten minutes of escapism.

I enjoyed much of the colorful fill, like SOY DOG, POWDER KEG, and HEY MR DJ. Thankfully, Zhane didn't dabble in video jockeying, or Ingmar KAMPRAD/KAMPRAV would have dropped a mic on my head.

An Ode To Bias:

I should have read Pride and Prejudice

But I'm disinclined to call that bliss

TOBIAS Wolff's tallies of my ode might be summed up as TOTAL LIES. In response, I say:

Why so keen on keeping score?

People who do are a total bore.

You don't like my odes? Tough.

Or more properly, To UGH.

I had way too much fun riffing on Joe's idea.

The first time I saw stacked, paired grid-spannners in a themeless, I was blown away. Relating it to a "daily double" made it that much more clever. That was over a decade ago, and it's still at the forefront of my mind.

I enjoyed Joe's doublets today, although featuring a movie from the year of that groundbreaking themeless and an album from fifteen years before that took away some shine. JAGGED LITTLE PILL is certainly crossworthy, given that it sold 30+ million copies and was made into a musical, but it would have made more of an impact if this puzzle had coincided with some notable anniversary.

I'm curious who will play Elon Musk in a Twitter movie that's sure to be upcoming. I was blown away by both Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield's performances in THE SOCIAL NETWORK. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE was solid, but I kept wondering when he was going to break into SexyBack.

Wonder how you might find doublets? Free association like "movie title" plus "lead actor in said movie" is difficult unless you go to the trouble of creating a dictionary of matched pairs — a ton of work considering how many thousands of movies there are.

There is a way to find, say, 30-letter entries that can break 15 / 15. OneLook is inconsistent about how it counts spaces, so select sort "by length" in the options and hit OneLook search again. This sorts by "crossword length," i.e., spaces don't count. You'll find entries like

• ABSENCE MAKES THE / HEART GROW FONDER
• JACK OF ALL TRADES / AND MASTER OF NONE
• VICE PRESIDENT OF / THE UNITED STATES
• YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR / CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.

Filling around paired stacks is rarely easy. Solid work, Joe, sprinkling some NBA JAM and CREAM ALE around to add some color.

★ There's no secret that I've been giving NYT Sunday puzzles the STINKEYE over the past five years, not so gently trying to encourage the editorial team to step up their game in finding better ways to attract fresher, more creative ideas. At first glance, today's theme — seemingly yet another "first words are synonyms" — hardly justified the large Sunday canvas, and I was ready to launch into the usual diatribe. To my surprise, I dug, fancied, went for, and even loved the concept!

At a basic level, it's impressive that Joe managed to incorporate almost all the possible "like" synonyms that are disguisable. The only other one I could think of was TAKE TO (the slopes or the cleaners).

Digging deeper, the meaning changes are so profound. GET OFF ON as in "start" vs. as in "like" is stark. Same goes for DIG, especially when you're talking about DIGging your OWN GRAVE. That is one hilariously curious obsession.

And the theme clues! "Dextropodophiles" broke the record for how long I've ever stared at a word. Then "Autotumulophiles" broke it again. Both are words I can parse and make sense of by etymology, and what a hilarious moment for each when I connected them to RIGHT FOOT and OWN GRAVE.

Sunday puzzles take so long to do that it's critical for constructors to offer something refreshing, engaging, and ideally providing multiple levels of solving pleasure. Appropriate that Joe featured so much LOVE, PRIZE, FANCY, GET OFF ON, DIG, GO FOR LIKE, as these all fit my admiration for his puzzle.

I was all set to deliver my usual "Will Shortz doesn't like themes where circled letters are all the same because they're too easy to fill in, and then the puzzle's over" — but it was hardly over! Yes, I could fill in every circle after the first two sets … but what did they mean? More importantly, what did EYES ON THE PRIZE have to do with anything? There are pairs of Is …

Wait, EYE C!

A pair of Is on top of various PRIZEs: TROPHY, CUP, MEDAL, and the revealer's own PRIZE. Clever idea, and I loved how the obviousness of the circles proved to be anything but.

Amazing find in TROPHY within ASTROPHYSICIST. Will isn't taking many "hidden words" themes these days, but a long finding like this is a prize-winner. Breezy phrase in ZOOMED ALONG, too, doing a great job of tucking in a MEDAL.

Even though CUP is only three letters, it's difficult to hide within a phrase. PLAYED CUPID unfortunately doesn't break CUP across two words, as is Will's usual requirement, but there aren't many possibilities, except the PUBLIC UPROAR that I fully endorse regarding Microsoft Windows' %$#!@! AUTOMATIC UPDATES.

Solid integration of the eight Is. It's an easy letter to grid around, but eight of them — in fixed positions — can make things much harder. Smooth results, with ILE as the only gluey bit as a direct result.

There are some repercussions: CIARDI crossing ADZES could be tough for newer solvers, and LOCI vs. FOCI often causes confusion. The LPGA gets press, but I could see how someone might think that the Female PGA could be right.

It's not often that a Tuesday surprises me, creeping up with such a gold MEDAL a-ha.

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.

★ Check out the pdf file of today's puzzle! (NYT Games Subscription required.) Boxes so BIG they burst out of the grid all crooked? Now that's something you don't see every day!

Such colorful themers, too. ME AND MY (BIG) MOUTH, WHATS THE (BIG) IDEA, YOU OWE ME (BIG) TIME, three home runs. THAT'S A VERY (BIG) IF felt like VERY had been inserted to achieve proper length, but otherwise it's a top-notch phrase as well.

After uncovering the first themer, I thought this was going to be too easy for a Thursday. Surprisingly, it wasn't a no-brainer to fill in the others. I did know that there would be an implied BIG somewhere in the phrases, but that more served as confirmation after I pieced the themers together, rather than a dead giveaway.

Such brilliant wordplay in "… that turns light green?" Like when a kid gets carsick? Like a chameleon in grass? No, it's a way of saying a SOLAR PANEL turns light into a green energy source. It's admittedly tortured, but that didn't take away from my enjoyment.

SOLAR PANEL, along with I'LL ALLOW IT, STAY ON TASK, HOW ON EARTH — you can't ask for much more than four great long bonuses. I did pause for a long, confused moment at STREGIS, but it gave me a lift when I realized it was ST. REGIS.

BEAMER … I'm not beaming at you. Tricky to make a 6x4 corner like the SW work when flanked by a themer and a long bonus. I might have tried a black square at the P of PERK to see if BEAMER could have been massaged out.

Not the tricksiest Thursday, but such a pleasurable solve. Along with being technically well-executed, and a unique visual — it's so rare for me to encounter something I've never seen before in crosswords — this one earns Joe his second POW!

Joe is absolutely right, my first reaction to the central entry was my hair sticking up like Einstein's. Maybe SQUARED written out is fine, but the equation looks so much better in mathematical form (even without the caret or superscript). I enjoyed the other long marquee entries so much better. THIRST QUENCHER and MOO JUICE appropriately juicy, but two less snazzy entries sung even more with their awesome clues.

[It has wheels and flies] sounded like a riddle my kids tell over and over until my nose begins to bleed. I wondered if it would be a horse-drawn carriage — flies buzzing around the horse's tail — but ROLLER BAG is so much better. "Flies," as in "flies the friendly skies" is so devious.

I wonder if [Artificial object in orbit?] will go over some solvers' heads. Thank goodness for that telltale question mark, pointing to "orbit" as a term for the eye socket. Astronomically clever!

I wasn't as enamored with HELLA COOL, which sounds like me trying to fit in with my nephew and niece as they fall deeper into teenage years. Success level is at 0.4% and plummeting.

Nor did I care for the mish-mash of ECU ERG ISR MICD STR TUNS UNI. Way too much for a themeless puzzle, although most of them I could gloss over. It's when you rely on ECU and TUNS that it feels like tons of ergs to push through. I'm fond of MIC'D UP, the show, but I can understand why the bizarre-looking MICD might hit people over the head as strongly as KOD. (KO'd.)

I bet some word nerds will delight in the central entry, similar to how some enjoy entries like AANDE or TENK. I find that it violates conservation of momentum, though. Thankfully, Joe helped keep the balance with timeless, classy entries like OLD HAVANA and BLACK KOD. Er, COD.

Ah, initialisms, our old crossword friend. Since they've been done so many times over — even IC made an appearance back in 2016 — it's important to do something a little extra. I appreciate how Joe played on COLD OPEN (a term for a show's first segment sans introduction) to hint at the I C phrases. That's a fun bit of wordplay.

Joe's comment about theme / fill mismatch is spot on. Usually, it's a great idea to offer something for everyone, so no one feels completely left out. Want to include your favorite pop song? Probably best to balance it with entries from a wide range of other areas.

However, that concept doesn't work when applied to the big picture. If you have to toil this hard to uncover entries like VIZSLA, RH MACY, AMALFI, KATANA, the payoff has to be worth it. A simple initialisms concept doesn't fit that bill.

Some solvers will complain that VIZSLA is a weird entry; they hate the puzzle because of it. That's not totally fair, since VIZSLA is a real dog breed that some pet owners will find obvious. However, hearing this type of feedback has affected my constructing preferences. These days, I tend to shy away from anything that might attract the "weird" tag, trying instead to let my short fill be largely unnoticeable; ignorable.

I loved the MALLET clue, referencing Whack-a-mole. That's constructing in a nutshell, trying to smack down any gloop that bubbles up, in the eternal struggle of smoothing out a crossword grid. Great clue for EEYORE too, "the Gloomy Place" making me think of much more villainous characters. A relief to finally land upon the mopey yet lovable ol' donkey.

I'd have much preferred a Monday grid to synchronize with this Monday theme, but I can understand Joe's motivations. Construction can get repetitive, and it's hard to resist challenging oneself.

ADDED NOTE: reader Zach Schiff points out that Jack Daniels is from Tennessee, but IRISH COFFEE uses Irish whiskey (usually Tullamore Dew or Jameson). For the sake of science, I now will go drink one of each to compare. Maybe a bigger sample size would be useful ...

I can't live … with or withooooooout you … Welcome to today's edition of blogaraoke!

How interesting, that Romeo and Juliet's last names both become normal words if you remove the U! And it's so appropriate, given the lyric "I can't live, WITH OR WITHOUT YOU."

Wait. Doesn't that mean you can't live … period?

U2, J'accUUse!

As much as I enjoy mini-themes in my themeless, this was a too much of a good thing. A perfect mini-theme is two (maybe three) themers connected in a funny or thought-provoking way, while still giving the rest of the puzzle plenty of space in which to pack greatness. This one, with 44 squares of theme, would be light for a themed puzzle, but not unheard of.

So why didn't it run on a Wednesday? The theme, while covering a lot of squares, is far from meaty--more a piece of trivia than the basis for a full themed puzzle. It wouldn't have kept my attention if it had been the sole focus of a Wednesday puzzle.

Perhaps a better compromise would have been to only use MONTAGUE and CAPULET, with the Us grayed out. The clue could run double-duty, MONTAGUE = [Romeo's family / director's tool]. It's not a perfect solution, but it would have still presented the interesting find, while clearing out more space for our regularly televised themeless.

Astute readers may cry foul that MONTAGUE and CAPULET aren't symmetrical. Jeff demands symmetry, I hear you shout! Yes, but I can be flexible. I don't always need perfect symmetry. I'm not that anal.

(three hours later, after laying out hundreds of various configurations to achieve some sense of symmetry …)

Some may wonder about UPSET ALERTS. Jim Horne asked me if that's a thing. For bracketologists, it's definitely a (most unwelcome) thing. ESPN even has a feature called "Upset Alerts." I can understand how non-March Madness enthusiasts wouldn't enjoy this entry, though.

There is some great fill, like PIECE OF CAKE, the oh-so-catchy MY SHARONA, CORNERSTONE with a great clue about where to look for a (not a love connection) date. I just wanted A BIT MUCH more, since material like TRACES TO, TASTES OF, LETS DRY, GINGERED didn't add to the solve.

★ The English alphabet offers so many opportunities for playfulness. Assuming capitalization, there are some letters that look like others when upside-down, ones that have reflective symmetry (A, H, I, etc.), splitsies, even some that become others when one half is lopped off. The possibilities for wordplay are endless!

I've seen several crosswords involving a letter or number split into two parts, so I wasn't wowed right off the bat by today's 8 -> double O. In fact, I was annoyed at first when I did the usual rebus schtick, entering OO into each square. Come on, Joe, that's an infinity sign, not an 8!

Nice shift of thinking when I realized my mistake and changed them into 8s.

There are so many touches I appreciated:

• PIECES OF EIGHT makes for such an apt revealer.
• Eight instances of the number 8! That's perfect.
• Snazzy themer choices, with great ATE material like HATERS GONNA HATE ...
• ... as well as long OO phrases like SCHOOL DAZE, WHIRLPOOLS, and even GOOF UP. It's much easier to use shorties like MOON, SOOT, TOON, etc. Going the extra mile in the OO themers added a lot of color.
• The leap from EIGHT to ATE is a bit odd without having some way of explaining that, but the quality of the themers more than made up for the initial confusion.
• So many of the 8s were within unusual sequences of letters. It's easy to see the ATE in THE FOURTH EST(ATE), not so much in XR_D. Oh man, that looked bizarre! I was sure I had something wrong, and it was such a nice victory when I figure out it was XR(ATE)D.

There are going to be folks on one end of the spectrum who think this is too easy; that they've seen stuff like this before. On the other end, some newer solvers will never figure out the connection between 8 and ATE. You'll never make everyone happy, but this one did a great job hitting a middle ground. All of Joe's time and effort showed through, both at making his theme feel elegant and at assembling a colorful, clean grid.

Joe beat me to the punch with his comment about his previous wide-open themeless! I had the same reservations going in for this one as for the previous one: more often than not, quad-stacks will contain some neutral entries or even liabilities. But wow, was I impressed by the SE corner: ESTATE LAW, A LOT ALIKE, DATA MINER, BOXSTER = 4 out of 4! Rare occurrence for a corner this big to be this fantastic. It deserves a round of applause.

The opposite corner (NW) was more what I was expecting. TEAR APART ain't gonna win any awards, and ZEROES OUT would be fine or even an asset, if it weren't crossing LEAP OUT. I don't mind duplication of short words, but it's inelegant when they cross.

I'd rank the SW somewhere in between those two corners. Three strong entries — ADAMS RIB / PEAR JUICE / HOW GOES IT — along with MJOLNIR! Lovely. PHAT was a ding (outdated term), and AEON isn't great either since it's hard to clue in any other way but "___ Flux." (AEON is more commonly "eon.")

Similar assessment of the NE. AFTERCARE / BORN TO RUN / ALONE TIME / TD PASSES; those are all solid to sparkly! ARIE, BENE, not so bene.

Being able to talk about each corner separately implies that there wasn't enough interconnectivity, but the choked feeling of the middle didn't bother me as much as I expected. Plenty of ways in and out of each corner, even if every connection was tunnel-like.

Overall, a super-solid 66-worder. It's a feat that's hard enough to accomplish without additional points of difficulty, and it becomes an extreme challenge when you throw in quad-stacks. It definitely attracted some POW! consideration, winning points on technical excellence for its degree of difficulty.

Beautiful gridwork. I always get worried when I see a long across like GOGO DANCER in a Monday puzzle since this pushes the construction into themeless-esque territory. If a constructor chooses to go wild like this — usually there would be a black square at the D of DANCER — it means trouble, unless that person has extensive experience in filling themelesses.

Good thing Joe does! He might only have two NYT themelesses published, but considering that the acceptance rate is minuscule (around 5% or less) for Fri / Sat puzzles, that's a huge accomplishment.

Such a smooth and invigorating solving experience. Just an ANON as a minor sticking point, plus the bonuses of GOGO DANCER, TURKEY TROT, HANGS TEN, TAN LINES, NEW DADS, POKEMON? Heck yeah, I'd give this to a newb!

I'm not excited by themes that can be easily searched for — a simple query will define the solution space in a few seconds. However, it is neat that there aren't many other options than the ones Joe used. That tightness lends a touch of elegance.

I wondered how KNOWS ONE'S ONIONS would strike American solvers. I enjoy Britishisms, but perhaps MONEY MONEY MONEY or BONE OF CONTENTION would have served the general NYT solving population better. It's a shame that MOON COLONIZATION is just a bit too long!

Not the most exciting of themes, but I'd much rather have a newb-friendly Monday than a mind-blowing one that potentially stymies folks.

What a great feeling to drop in DOCTOR DOOM with no crosses needed. [Archenemy of the Fantastic Four], a gimme!

I knew being a nerd would one day pay off. Totally worth being stuffed into trash cans all those times.

I paused at SOMETIMESY — a folksy way of saying sometimes? What a delightful realization that it was SOMETIMES Y, as in A E I O U and SOMETIMES Y. That NW corner is so far above SOSO, me and my climber friends using CRASH PADS all the time, and even more extras in HOT TIP, PRILOSEC.

SETTLES ON won't win any awards, but it's a fine, neutral entry.

"A fine, neutral entry" is going to be used in describing parts of almost all 4x10 big corners. Few constructors tackle thick, four-deep swaths like this because it's nearly impossible to get all four long entries to sing. At least, without relying on a whole bunch of gluey bits.

Joe came close with his NE corner, MAMA BEARS / POLO MALLET / EMERIL LIVE / CAST LOTS. If EMERIL LIVE hadn't been off the air for a while now, it would have been a perfect four out of four. Heck, Emeril's trademark BAM! makes me think of my own POW!, so maybe I ought to count it as a sizzler, too.

The SE corner is more typical. OVER AND OUT and STATS GEEK are great. TIP O'NEILL is a catchy name. URBAN ART is colorful. But RESTRAINTS doesn't do much. And AGENAS mired me down. (I agree with your hindsight, Joe!)

I'm wary any time I open up a themeless featuring 4x8 stacks or bigger. Joe did well with this one. Clever arrangement of black squares in the middle of the puzzle, helping him section off the four pieces of the grid for easier construction, while not choking off solving flow too much.

Many moons ago, I submitted a puzzle to Will with GAIMAN in it. He said he wasn't sure if NEIL GAIMAN was well-known enough.

NEIL GAIMAN?! Winner of the Newbery for "The Graveyard Book," writer of "The Sandman" series, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards?

I was kvetching to a friend about it, and he said, "Neil who?"

Huh.

Maybe Will knows what he's doing.

As much as I admire NEIL GAIMAN's work — "The Graveyard Book" is fantastic — I like feature entries that are more widely accessible, like EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA. The iconic photograph inspired generations to think beyond their limits.

And TULIPMANIA — those crazy Dutch! It may be urabn myth, but I love the story of the guy who accidentally ate a tulip bulb worth a fortune, thinking that it was an onion.

Now, you might say, are EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA things most everyone knows? And you might even have a good point. These are subjective calls — there will undoubtedly be people out there who think the moon landing was faked, perhaps even by the Dutch, who spread TULIPMANIA rumors to disguise their secret agenda of taking over the moon.

(That's the plot of NEIL GAIMAN's latest book.)

But there's one big point of difference: EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA are made up of words that most everyone knows. If you hadn't heard of GAIMAN before, it'd be a tortuous struggle.

This is all a long way of saying that I liked a lot of Joe's feature entries, but I wondered how many would feel foreign to many solvers. See: LEAF PEEPER and ALL IS TRUE. I was able to fill those in in because they're composed of words I knew. But neither did much for me.

JOHN CLEESE wrote "A Fish Called Wanda"? I'm already a "Monty Python" and "Fawlty Towers" fanboy, but this fact impresses me even more.

I appreciated Joe's gridwork, nary a dab of crossword glue to be seen. If there had been a few fewer feature entries that felt divisive — either you know it or you don't — it could have garnered POW! attention.

I enjoy the lateral thinking required to dream up these types of themes. SPOTs can be found in PARKING LOTs, on LEOPARD PRINT, during a COMMERCIAL BREAK, and at a DOGGY DAY CARE. Four different types of spots demonstrate the wide range of meanings one word can exhibit.

I originally hitched at DOGGY DAY CARE, since Spot (the stereotypical dog name) required capitalization, but the entry itself is so sparkly that I decided I didn't care.

The only one that bothered me was TEASER VICE. (Think: one of those commercials that advertise "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.") Much too similar to COMMERCIAL BREAK, and a TEASER isn't exactly a "spot."

(I'm kidding, of course. Mostly.)

When I finally realized that it was TEA SERVICE — future crossword theme alert; fun parsing change! — I still wasn't a fan. Proper people do say "a spot of tea," but a TEA SERVICE having "spots" felt different; more of a stretch than the others. You can point while in a PARKING LOT and say "there's a spot." Same with the others. Not so much with TEA SERVICE.

I preferred Joe's original BENCH PRESS (where the bench presser is given a (safety) spot by a person behind). I brainstormed more and came up with CASH DRAWER and PAIR OF DICE. The former doesn't work any better than TEA SERVICE though since no one calls a ten-spot a "spot," and the latter is maybe too similar to LEOPARD PRINT. None of them is ideal, but BENCH PRESS works the best out of these options. I'm with Joe!

It is true that DOLMA is a toughie, especially for an early-week puzzle — doubly so when crossed with LOAM. There will often be prices to pay when a puzzle is theme-dense, but I think this could have been smoothed over by putting a black square at the L of TOILET and shifting black squares down within that column. I love DOLMAs, but its presence might make for a less satisfying newbie solve.

Besides that one blip though, solid gridwork. TEMP AGENCY, I BELIEVE SO, LET IT BE = solid bonuses.

Too bad about TEA SERVICE. The fifth themer makes gridwork much harder than four, and it detracted from the solving experience for me. I'd have given it the POW! if Joe had figured out a way to just use the four strong themers, which would have allowed him to jazz up the fill even more.

I wasn't sure what CALENDAR REFORM was, but interesting to read up on it. Sure covers a ton of possible changes to a calendar system!

Today, Joe gives us "impossible" time events that would require CALENDAR REFORM to make them happen. Ah, what I wouldn't give for EIGHT DAYS A WEEK … although I'd probably spend the eighth day goofing off and then wish for a ninth.

I wasn't as keen on LAST WEEK TONIGHT, as it's not the same type of time impossibility as EIGHT DAYS A WEEK. To me, it's simply describing that tonight, we'll go over what happened last week. Yeah?

It was also jarring to get WEEK repeated between two themers. I don't personally mind when a short word, like ONE or IT or UP is repeated in a grid, but to have a key component in the theme duplicated … hmm.

I hadn't heard of A MONTH OF SUNDAYS, but I enjoyed learning about it. Apparently, it means "a very long time," as in a long, boring stretch of days of rest? Heck, I'd take 30 straight days of rest, thank you very much!

Some nice bonuses worked in, WAGES WAR, REVERSI, NAIL GUN, Toni Morrison's incredible "BELOVED" all standouts. I appreciated all these extras, helping hold my attention through the solve.

The short fill … too much crossword glue for my taste. A Monday puzzle ought to be welcoming to novices, sucking them in. TMS for multiple trademarks isn't really used, and EDS, ELOI, AMIE, BLDG, ISO, NON, ETH. The one I object to most is ELOI, as the others are mostly figure-out-able by normal folks. ELOI is more a Maleskan-era throwback to where you could only do crosswords if you memorized these bizarro short answers.

I'd much rather have sacrificed a couple of the long bonuses in order to clean up the fill. Sorry ROD CAREW, but I think it would have been better to break you up into two answers. (I'm sure Twins / Angels fans will disagree!)

The theme reminded me of Mercury, whose day is longer than its year. Would have been awesome to work that into the theme somehow!