Ryan Milligan author page

★ What a fun idea! I like Tom Swifties, but when they've been so overdone in both real life and in crosswords that they run the danger of feeling bleh. I appreciate Ryan's different take on the theme trope, expanding it to full-name celebs. The cluing — done in a Tom Swifty-esque way — is what makes the theme work for me. Given GLENN CLOSE's iconic role in "Fatal Attraction," thinking about her getting a little too close was fun.

I used to listen to HOWARD STERN — my twin brother was once interviewed on it! — so linking STERN to a STERNLY-issued warning was also fun. Great stuff.

JAMES BLUNT wasn't as familiar to me as the others, but that's not a surprise given my horrible pop music knowledge base. It would have been great to get EMILY BLUNT in there to make it two men and two women, but perhaps JAMES BLUNT is more famous? Tough to judge. And JAMES does have that relatively rare J that can make crosswords more interesting.

Love DEAL ME IN as a bonus entry. SPORADIC and OFFLINE are good too. It would have been nice to get maybe one more pair of long downs, but these themers are of "awkward lengths," in that they force placement of several black squares immediately. Makes it much harder to work in high quantity and quality of long fill.

A couple of hiccups in the grid. Some of that is to be expected, especially in places where themers and long fill answers mesh together — EAP and INTER is a prime example, with that east section fairly constrained.

But avoiding DREI should be easier in a relatively flexible section like the lower right. Along with HARRYS (plural name), REG, UNI, ONS, DO NOW, it felt just over the threshold of too much. I'd have liked to seen rework to smooth it all out a tad.

But it's hard to argue with an early-week theme that tickles, and this one gave me a lot of smiles.

Debut! A theme HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT, those letters spread through three long answers, tied together with WHERE IS THE THEME? Although I typically don't care for made-up-sounding theme answers, the revealer has a playful aspect to it.

Audacious to debut with a 74-word puzzle, even more so to do it with parallel downs (BAD LOANS / ATE LUNCH and WRETCHES / NATIVE TO). Difficult to get colorful answers while still keeping the crossings clean.

I love BAD LOANS and WRETCHES, but ATE LUNCH and NATIVE TO don't feel nearly as strong. What with some ELL / A TIE and CVI / ESSO glue, I might have preferred breaking up one of the long down pairs. I'd usually rather get two great entries with super-clean fill than four pretty good ones with some subpar crossings.

Nice touch to add in other long fill. ELI MANNING is a controversial figure, a guy the Giants traded up (at a high price) to get in the 2004 NFL draft. Other players available in the first round of that draft: QBs Philip Rivers or Ben Roethlisberger, and stud WR Larry Fitzgerald. Hindsight is 20/20, but it sure makes me wonder how much value per dollar you really get out of that overall number one pick.

Then again, there's Peyton. Ahem.

And AMSTEL BEER … the last time we had something like this — SOL CERVEZA — Matt Gaffney had the exact same reaction I did, that it felt off. I highly respect his opinion, so it was good to know that I wasn't the only one. AMSTEL BEER feels better than SOL CERVEZA, because the label actually says AMSTEL BEER, but it does feel slightly wonky to me still.

Overall, I might have liked a craftier "hiding in plain sight" trick — the circled letters didn't really feel hidden to me at all. I'm not sure what that trick would be, or how it would work, but I think of the "Magic Eye" posters, where you stare at the thing for ages, and then all of a sudden the image pops out — now that's hidden in plain sight. Can't wait to see if someone could actually pull that off!