Timothy Polin author page

There are a ton of elements in this puzzle. Did they all hit you on the head?

• Five types of apples falling onto NEWTON. I love how Tim stood NEWTON vertically, getting at the ROME apple bonking him into the idea of gravity. I didn't immediately recognize EMPIRE or ROME as apples, but given the theme, it was easy enough to figure out. Sadly, there aren't any ways to disguise the common RED DELICIOUS or GRANNY SMITH.
• LAW OF GRAVITY. Apt conclusion to the puzzle.
• Long down phrases employing wordplay. I only caught that WEIGHTY MATTER, COME ON DOWN, and especially FORCE OF NATURE / FREE FALLIN hinted at the concept upon my second look.
• Squint at the black squares in the center of the puzzle. Are your eyeballs hurting yet? No? Squint harder. Do you see an apple? Sorta kinda like the Apple logo? If not, let me just drop these five apples on your head …
• Extras. I can imagine LOOKOUT, NEWTON! (fine, without the S) and I GET IT NOW! (never mind that the clue points more to Archimedes) as appropriate for the NEWTONian event.

There were so many tasty elements, but they didn't all cohere as well as other apple puzzles. Today's was more like an apple pie baked with coriander, chili oil, and chestnuts. (My wife and kids gagged. Only a little.) For a Sunday puzzle, though, you ought to go big or go home, so I appreciate Tim's audacious plan.

(Okay, a lot.)

Such a fun way to interpret SKIPPING / STONES, ROLLING Stone, the ROSETTA Stone, and the BLARNEY Stone spaced out as if they were skipping across the grid. Reminds me of a similar layout that played on a different concept.

I can see why Will Shortz decided to run both puzzles on Thursdays. Each letter has two crossing answers like in any crossword, but the themers are essentially unclued. You know by the end that they're going to be some sort of stone, but which one? There's no [Key to deciphering Egyptian writing] anywhere.

Part of me liked that this made the puzzle extra difficult, but another part wondered if an Across clue at the R of R O S E T T A might have enhanced my solve.

It's a shame there isn't another famous historical STONE that would fit with the ROSETTA and BLARNEY Stones. Not necessary, but it might have lent a touch of elegance. There's the Marvel Universe's INFINITY Stone, but that might be too niche-dorky.

The wide-open upper-right and lower-left corners provided so much themelessesque goodness. I am the George COSTANZA of my family. [Patriots in New York] is so cleverly getting at the NFL Patriots playing as the AWAY TEAM. TYRANNY and NEXT GEN are vivid. Two dings for the nerdcore AT-AT walker and ZALE instead of ZALES stores, but I happily accepted those prices for such fun.

I slowed way down through the center of the puzzle, trying to figure out if crossword rules were being broken or what. No letters are technically unchecked, but no clue for the three STONES sure made things challenging. I'm leaning toward wanting clues for them now, which would have made the entire solve more even.

Fun concept, always neat to see something a little familiar yet also different on a Thursday. Well done, Tim!

I'm embarrassed. Ashamed, really. As a child raised by TV, having watched thousands of hours of Saturday morning cartoons, I can impersonate most every character in the TV multiverse. SNIDELY WHIPLASH's sidekick, Muttley, and his wheezy laugh? Heh heh heh heh! Gimme something harder!

Huh? Muttley is DICK DASTARDLY's sidekick?

And DICK DASTARDLY is different than SNIDELY WHIPLASH?

Some creative team was awfully uncreative. Seriously people? Why not make a superhero called "Superguy" or "Green Lamp Man"?

Bah.

The cartoon lover in me loved today's theme, bad guys with trademark mustaches.

The anal constructionist in me didn't enjoy the DR of DR FUMANCHU. He's a doctor? What's his doctorate in? Better be medicine or engineering, or his mom will be letting him know how badly he's let down generations of ancestors who worked so hard to give him this opportunity.

Surprising tightness; difficult to think of others that fit the theme. Besides DICK DASTARDLY, there was BORIS from "The Bullwinkle Show." JAFAR from "Aladdin" sort of qualifies, but his is more a goatee.

As a goateed Asian person getting "randomly selected" for further screening at the airport EVERY SINGLE TIME, I don't love FU MANCHU included today, perpetuating the "evil Asian" stereotype (Ming the Merciless, anyone?). I wondered if that was a real thing when I was younger, but along with TSA eyeballing my every move, I've been stopped and hassled by cops twice now, so I'm starting to doubt it less.

The fact that FU MANCHU is the only non-toon in the theme set also makes him stick out.

Solid Monday offering overall, though. Tim's gridwork is newb-friendly, has a lot of flavor in ROCKY ROAD and WINE SAUCE, and shows loving care in its craftsmanship. My personal feelings about what FU MANCHU has done for people like me aside — you go get a PhD, and this is what you do with it?! — I'd consider the puzzle for the POW! It could have been a ton of fun if it stuck only to cartoon characters.

★ RIDDLE me this: who stumps Jeff at "Name That Theme" on Mondays? NO ONE! Holy mixed up R I D D L Es, Batman!

D'oh! The joke's on me.

During the holiday season, we get inundated with Christmas songs, Christmas presents, Christmas eggnog-that-looks-and-tastes-vaguely-like-snot, that it's fantastic to get a Hanukkah theme today — and a fresh one at that, the letters D R E I D E L spun around within phrases. Although those Ds and Es are common enough, seven letters isn't easy to work with. The only others I found were SOLDIERED ON, BEWILDERED, IDLE DREAM, TUMBLE DRIED, and of course, THE RIDDLER.

Hilarious clue for YODA, too. It's difficult to get creative on Mondays since you don't want to risk confusing newer solvers. [… who could have this clue written?] is delightful. No dark side there.

A couple of sticky points in the grid, particularly a few crossings that might trip up newbs: EUROPA / MARA, SESTET / TRE, ELI / ELROND. I'm guessing that all of these are guessable, but the ambiguities aren't ideal. At the least, they could take away from the sense of unassailable victory you want newbs to feel. Shifting the black squares in the bottom part of the grid could have helped, breaking up those big 6x3 sections.

I enjoy left-right symmetry, and it can be a lifesaver — 14 14 14 12 is a constructor's nightmare! Will Shortz likes it fine, but not all editors do. Today, I could see how an editor might object to those unsightly 2x2 blocks of black squares, but I thought they looked a tiny bit like a dreidel's stem and point.

Ooh, it would have been amazing to arrange more black squares to form the outline of a DREIDEL! I'm constantly thinking about Sunday grid art concepts, and that would have been fantastic. Ah well.

I love it when a puzzle makes me go off on research rabbit holes. It's a nearly-perfect Hanukkah theme.

A common constructor's nightmare: solvers missing the gist of a puzzle completely. I wonder how many people will think this was a straight-up tribute puzzle, listing JOHNNY CASH, JOAQUIN / PHOENIX, and RING OF FIRE?

Or worse, not think about it at all?

We've done some animation (below) for those of you still with us. RING OF FIRE, get it? Four answers that require FIRE to be added on for the clue to match the answers?

Okay, it isn't a RING, more a square. Yes.

But!

Is not a boxing ring a square as well? What is also a ring?

A DUCK.

Before you write an angry email saying I'm a moron, wait! A duck is a bird. What else is a bird?

A PHOENIX.

A PHOENIX rising … OUT OF A FIRE!

If you can't recognize my genius, I feel sorry for you.

I'm hoping the NYT's app animates the RING OF FIRE similarly, as it'd be a neat effect, splashing upon victorious finishers' screens. Without it, though, I worry that the effect isn't strong enough to make an impact, or even be noticed.

Even if the concept is missed, the grid is a great piece of construction, as I always expect from Tim, such a pro. Fixing that block of FIRE — er, RING of fire — in place causes so many constraints, and it's that much more difficult when you need to work in four other themers. Amazingly smooth gridwork, along with some tasty bonuses in ST JAMES, ON A ROLL, CAB RIDE.

THINK / TWICE = double the first word in five clues, so that their answers make sense. Not as tricky as a typical Thursday, but still a reasonable gimmick. I bet a lot of solvers are breathing a sigh of relief to get a softball that still meets their expectations for some Thursday trickery. Some solvers quit after Wednesday because they can't break through the Thursday barrier. Perhaps this one will open the door!

Tim did a great job choosing key words that:

1. are valid in their own right,
2. are also valid when doubled, and
3. have vastly different meanings when doubled. Elegant touch that they're all exactly three letters, too.

Delightful long bonuses, as I've come to expect from Tim, who's one of the best gridmakers out there. POWER LINES, EVIDENCE, and MATT BIONDI are great, and the fantastic OIL PRICES is a standout with its clue. "Crude estimates," indeed.

The best Thursday constructors struggle with the balance of making a trick interesting and novel enough, while not making it so hard that a minority of people understand what's going on. It's so difficult to set up solvers for a hard-earned a-ha, one that feels worthy of all the time they put in. Tim struck a fine balance today.

I've seen tricks like today's, but not quite Tim's implementation. (I'm thankful that the Constructors Getting Scooped streak ended at three.) It did remind me of a brilliant metapuzzle by Matt Gaffney, but in a good way. I enjoy seeing how top constructors execute on a similar notion.

★ I love blasphemous rule-breaking in the crossworld! I especially love it when there's a grid separated in two, with something nifty secretly connecting the halves. Tim built a literal WALL today, using three themers with sort of a WALL rebus. STONE(WALL) JACKSON, such a colorful entry!

I did wonder about DESKTOP (WALL)PAPER. I usually call it just WALLPAPER. But some research showed that it's indeed a legit term, so that's just my ignorance.

Hey, themeless-grade quality fill! Such a treat to get BANK TELLER, SPELUNKING, SOFT SPOKEN, SOAP OPERAS, along with good use of mid-length slots: LE CARRE, ICE NINE (I'm a huge Vonnegut fan), AMALGAM, RASSLE.

Even the pedestrian SINGERS got elevated via a great clue. [Choir composition] surely had to be referring to some type of music the choir director was arranging? Great misdirection.

And that PEN clue! I had to read "boardom" a few times before finally smiling, realizing that it's a play on "boredom," meaning "a place for boars." Great punny groanery.

Huge visual impact with an in-your-face grid telling solvers to $^*#$! YOUR %@#$!!! CROSSWORD RULES! Along with a great idea to connect the halves and excellent gridsmanship, it's an easy POW! pick.

The LEA/NIN/GTO/WER — literally leaning! Another Tim (Croce) and I had bandied around this idea years ago, but we couldn't find enough relevant theme material to flesh it out. We were aiming for a Sunday, where I was originally hoping we'd be able to represent Galileo on top of the LEANING TOWER, dropping an apple to the ground.

(There are so many things wrong with that …)

I'm envious of Tim (Polin)'s much stronger notion today. I like the way he fleshed it out — TIP, ANGLE, TILT, PITCH all hinting at the leaning-ness-osity. And PISA ITALY rounds things out nicely.

Also nice that LEA NIN GTO EWER breaks out into decent entries, too! It would have been just about perfect if Tim had made the ___WER slot one square longer so he could have turned EWER into SEWER, but what are you gonna do. It's already a tricky grid layout given how the trigrams need to be chunked apart, requiring so many black squares deployed in the center.

Speaking of black square deployment, you might be wondering why Tim left his SW / NE corners so wide open. Triple-stacked long answers, like in a themeless? That usually isn't done, at least not by sane people! Well, Tim didn't have a choice, given that he'd already spent so many of his black squares in the middle of the puzzle — note that the grid has the max allowable 78 words.

Tim did so well in those corners. I love SNOWBALL, AFRAID SO, TIE ON ONE (says this Taiwanese boy). Along with great mid-length fill like BUSTED, GAL PAL, SPEEDO, Tim's excellent gridsmanship came through in spades. All of the themage, plus great long fill … and only a HOO to show for it?

There's a reason why he's won a ton of POW!s.

This one could easily have been my POW! choice — I wish Tim (Croce) and I had seen this direction way back when — but there's one coming up that I absolutely love.

Ha! Shows what Jim knows. I barely noticed the lack of consistency. I'm no uber-picky perfectionist.

Okay, it was the lack of tightness that bugged me. Puzzles can be perfectly fine if you can choose among dozens or even hundreds of possible themers. But it's so elegant if you can employ a perfect set. Why ROSE and not … um … PANSY?

Why LILY and not … er …

Okay, maybe it was a tight set! Neat realization that so few flowers are used in this metaphorical sense.

Okay, I admit, Jim is right — I would have preferred each themer to be a simile, or each a noun phrase, etc. Consistency is so elegant. But if it's colorful — even flowery — language vs. consistency, I'd take the former any day.

Great gridwork, as I'd expect from Tim. Those big NW / SE corners are executed so well, hardly a weed yearning to be pulled. (TOI, yank!) The themers take up a huge amount of real estate, but Time deployed his black squares so wisely to separate them. And those chunks of black squares almost look like rows of flowers in a garden!

The wide-open spaces create a slight mismatch for an early-week puzzle — easy theme + tough fill creates solving dissonance — but I thought the long bonuses like METADATA over OXYMORON were worth it.

★ Duuuh-duh. Duuuh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh AAAA!

Something lost in translation there, the theme song to JAWS not quite as catchy on paper. However, I thought Tim did an excellent job of making this crossword catchy! Not just a DORSAL FIN made of rebus letters, but some good references to JAWS. Yes, he's a MAN EATING / SEA MONSTER, in a movie directed by SPIELBERG set on AMITY ISLAND. But I thought the cheeky ones were standouts:

• In football, a DEEP THREAT is that wide receiver who can burn you for a long TD. Or in this case, it's a literal threat from the DEEP blue sea.
• I hadn't heard of REEL BIG FISH, but it's an apt description of JAWS.
• In golf, a WATER HAZARD is a pond cutting across the course. JAWS is a very different type of WATER HAZARD! Golf would be much more exciting if they had this type of WATER HAZARD.

I wasn't sure what the big black cross in the center represented? At first glance, I guessed that the puzzle would be about Dracula. Then I thought maybe it's an anchor? Sort of, although it doesn't quite get there. And an anchor doesn't seem all that JAWS-related.

Then I realized that there's so much theme material in the center, that Tim didn't have much choice but to use that big black cross. The fin rebus squares, SEA MONSTER, DEEP THREAT, GREAT / WHITE / SHARK — that's a lot of stuff you need to separate.

It's too bad. The fin visual is cool, but it's overshadowed by that black cross. This kind of thing tends to happen with Sunday visual art puzzles. Generally, it's better if you can make the visual out of the black squares instead of rebuses or circles, but that does also have the drawback of making things very obvious.

Great gridwork, otherwise. Tim's constructions are so solid. He's one of the few people I'd trust to give me such a smooth Sunday product, just a bit of HGTS STDS ELHI. Way less than average — and with more theme material than average! Such a top-notch constructor.

I like it when tribute puzzles do something a little different to make themselves stand out.

Tim combines two theme types today — a WORD rebus + parsing WORD as "W or D" for a Schrödinger (jokes can be delivered WRYLY or DRYLY, dogs have PAWS or PADS at the ends of their legs, and WINING and DINING are forms of entertainment). It's a neat mesh of two tried-and-true theme types, producing something different.

The best Schrodingers are those where both options seem equally valid — solvers would put either in, 50/50. That's exactly the case for WRYLY / DRYLY.

PAWS and PADS not as much — I immediately put in PAWS. I had to think a bit after finishing before PADS made sense.

And WINING / DINING … that one felt slightly different to me, as it's rare to use DINING to describe "entertaining" without combining it with WINING. So WINING (which is much more used by itself), felt strongly like the only "correct" answer.

I've heard of WORD SQUAREs before, but wasn't exactly sure what they were. Came back to me quickly after reading the Wikipedia article, though, and it made for a perfect descriptor of the concept.

Ah, PES. The anatomic foot. Next to QAT, one of those words Scrabble players must learn in order to play competitively. Why the two ooky glooky offenders? As much as I love TRIASSIC and GRIDIRON, two delightful grid bonuses, they were the cause. If you use black squares to break up TRIASSIC at the first S and GRIDIRON at the D, it makes the north and south sections so much easier to fill well.

TRIASSIC / GRIDIRON worth the price of PES / QAT? Not to me, especially since Tim already fulfilled my quota of great fill with TORCH RELAY and CUP OF COCOA. PES in particular is one of those Maleskan words that give crosswords a bad name. YOU HAVE TO KNOW RIDICULOUS STUFF TO DO CROSSWORDS! I'd mark it as a puzzle-killer, if I had my druthers.

(I can just see Scrabble-lovers up in arms saying QAT IS AN IMPORTANT WORD!!!)

Overall though, I liked the innovation, mixifying two standard theme types to produce something new. That's the kind of thing I love in a NYT Thursday puzzle.

★ Tim wants us to BURY THE / HATCHET, embedding four AXs below the grid. Neat idea! It's been long enough since we've had a letters-outside-the-grid puzzle that this one made a strong impact for me. Thanks for spacing them out, Will!

One of the best aspects of these types of puzzles is that as a solver, I get phrases I've never (or seldom) seen in crosswords, since they're longer than the usual 15 letters. NONE OF YOUR BEESW(AX) is beautiful. Although SIT BACK AND REL(AX) is 15 letters, it's still fun. I also liked PERSONAL INCOME T(AX) and STELLAR PARALL(AX), although I'm used to seeing the latter as simply PARALLAX.

What made this puzzle a standout for me was Tim's execution. It's hard enough to work with four long themers and even harder to throw in a 7/7 revealer. The theme density means that there'll have to be heavy overlap somewhere and that usually results in crossword glue or wonky-sounding entries. Tim did end up with the odd BURL in the SW corner, but check out how smooth those bottom corners turned out. STELLAR work there.

The south region often suffers in a layout like this, because so many across entries have their start and end fixed into place. But it's so smooth. Such pro work down there.

Toss in a couple extras like TAMALES, ARMORY, OBOISTS, LAB MICE, and I'm an even happier solver.

Interesting theme + high theme density + overall smoothness = POW!

A cartographer's dream puzzle! Tim gives us not just the EQUATOR, but the (Tropic of) CAN/CER and the (Tropic of) CAPRI/CORN. But that's not all! The perimeter answers need a little direction … specifically the appropriate cardinal direction. Santa's workshop is in the (north) POLE, I-5's locale is the (west) COAST, etc. We've fixed up the answers below to reflect this.

I liked the perimeter answers that needed the appended direction much more than the ones that (sort of) worked without them. Eurus is a WIND in Greek myth. Yes, specifically the (east) wind, but still a WIND. It's more accurate to say (south) KOREA will host the 2018 Olympics, but KOREA would still describe it. Can't imagine what a North Korean Olympics would look like!

Tim chose to interlock his theme answers around the very perimeter, which constrained his themer choices mightily. Drastically reduces your options when they have to intersect at the corners. I might have liked it better to put cheater (black) squares in at least two of the corners so that you could work with stronger ones like (east)WOOD or (west) POINT or just (north) STAR instead of the defunct (north) STARS.

Super, super tough to work with perimeter answers, as they take away so much flexibility in the corners. And then you add three themers in the middle of the puzzle? Hatchi-matchi! Not a surprise to get a bunch of REQD, ABOX, ENOW, ANON, etc. But overall, I thought Tim's final product was good for this type of construction. It's nearly impossible to get a grid as constrained as this anywhere near the normal threshold for crossword glue, and he managed to get within spitting distance of it.

This general concept reminded me a little too much of other similar themes, most recently a Sunday from earlier this year, and it was odd to split up CANCER and CAPRICORN. But overall, I liked the mappiness of it all.

Fun with parsing, words ending in -AGE split as if they were a historical age. Some neat finds, SHRINK AGE as a time when psychiatrists ruled, that's good stuff! PILL AGE as a time when sweaters pilled up also amused — dramatic transformation from PILLAGE to PILL AGE. Same with BONDAGE to a time when James BOND ruled!

I wasn't as hot on the ones that were more similar to their base phrases. WRECKAGE and WRECK AGE both relate to wrecks. COVER AGE was a little better, clued to cover bands, but "cover" still has similar meanings in both the base phrase and the resulting one.

The relatively short theme phrases allowed Tim to go crazy with great long fill. Love DUCK BLIND, TEEN IDOL, LAWMAKER, SAFE SPACE, ZIGGURAT! Okay, that last one might be tough for novice solvers, but it's something educated solvers ought to at least recognize. (I admit, I thought it was a type of popsicle.)

Especially well done in the NW / SE corners, what with two long down answers next to each other. Rarely easy to fill around something like DUCK BLIND / BEHEADED 100% cleanly, but Tim got close. That clean of a result often requires countless iterations, trying pair after pair after pair of entries until you land on two giving friendly letter combinations.

I wasn't sure if PIE SHOP was a thing — do some bakeries focus only on pies? Apparently, the answer is yes! Man oh man oh man, this is the type of thing I like learning from my crossword.

A couple of MOUE LAMS blips, but overall, a fun, well-constructed puzzle. If more of the themers had delighted me along the lines of BOND AGE or SHRINK AGE, it would have been a strong POW! contender.

I've seen a lot of crosswords playing off of state abbreviations, but this particular take delighted me. What cool finds, AL(abama) inside TUSCALOOSA, CA(lifornia) inside SANTA MONICA, etc. It reminded me of another state abbreviations puzzle I also thought was very cool.

I had noticed this curious property when I was staring at a letter from ALBANY, NY a few months ago. I remember thinking how cool that was — wish I had looked for more like it! Bravo, Tim.

Not only that, my family goes to BLOOMINGTON, IN twice a year these days. Makes me feel even more like I should have thought of this. Drat!

Impressive feat of construction, fitting in seven (!) themers. It's so hard to execute on a grid with so many themers without resorting to some crossword glue, but Tim managed to do it. FOO isn't great, but it's not terrible either. Well, LLB is impossible to figure out if you've never heard of it, so that's not good. But given how much overlap was required — check out the six letter pairs Tim had to work around in the TUSCALOOSA / BLOOMINGON overlap — it's a very good result. Very few constructors could execute so well on such a challenging assignment.

I wasn't as hot on ASTORIA, OR or OZARK, AR as I was the others, though. I thought these two might have done the puzzle some disservice by watering down the theme. Just the five others would have made for a super-solid puzzle — perhaps a POW!-worthy one — for me.

Perhaps Oregonians, ASTORIAns in particular, will disagree! But this Seattleite had a tough time recalling that ASTORIA was indeed a Pacific Northwest city.

Overall though, I enjoyed sitting back and admiring the five strong themers and standout craftsmanship. Not only a mostly smooth grid, but great bonuses in CHAKRA, YEW TREE, NAVAL HERO — so tough to pull off with so many themers.

Interesting case for me, where less would have been more.

Rare sighting of up-down symmetry! Will's told me before that this type of symmetry looks too odd for him, so I'm glad to see another example we can add to our list. I do agree that it's not as visually pleasing as normal or mirror (left-right) symmetry, but I like how it opens up more possibilities for creative constructors.

Speaking of creative, BELT LOOP gets interpreted as "words that can precede BELT, looping around the right of the puzzle back to the left." (AMMO, LAP, TOOL.) As an old-school gamer, I think "warp" is a better description of this phenomenon — TIME WARP might have resonated better for me, using "words that can precede TIME" — but I can see how that would get lost on a lot of solvers.

At first, I was curious why Tim used up-down symmetry. It shouldn't be that hard to find a 14-letter phrase with LAP or AMMO in the middle, yeah? But then I realized Tim gave himself an additional constraint of having the ends of the phrases be actual words — MOTHS, APSE, LIVES. It narrows down his choice of themers dramatically, thus forcing the up-down symmetry, but I like that added constraint a lot.

I did find it a bit odd that BELT LOOP didn't have a symmetrically-placed theme partner. It would have been perfect if Tim could have added a fourth example of this LOOPing to match with BELT LOOP, but how would you even lay that out? Maybe BELT all the way over on the right of the puzzle, and LOOP in the same row, all the way to the left, with a cross-referenced clue?

Well-executed grid otherwise, with just an ASK NO, NESTER, and TEDS as dings. TEDS does mean "spreads, as straw," but I'd much prefer a straightforward clue referring to multiple TEDs.

Nice to get some CLEAN AIR, CRUCIBLE, YES SIREE, KABOOM, IT'S A SECRET, HEDONISTIC in there, too. That's a ton of great bonuses. I would have expected much more crossword glue to make these all happen, so it speaks well to Tim's craftsmanship.

WORLD PEACE interpreted as "words across the globe meaning PEACE" — neat idea! The concept was well disguised; I didn't see the revealer coming. Made for a good a-ha moment.

PAX ROMANA was the obvious one for me, as that probably should be familiar to educated solvers. And I knew MIR is Russian for PEACE, since that comes up in crossword clues frequently. SHALOM … I think I've heard that before from a Jewish friend of mine, in the "peace be with you" sense.

ALOHA was the only source of confusion for me. Doesn't it mean "hello" and "goodbye"? It also means PEACE? Apparently, it means many things, encompassing affection and mercy too. What a versatile word! It would have been nice to get another themer with a more specific PEACE meaning, but ALOHA does work.

Tim does so well with his bonus fill. I wasn't sure that ECOCARS is a term in real-life use, but Google proves me (very) wrong. Not the first or the last time! I enjoyed getting BALI HAI, ORIGAMI, TAIWAN (my mom will dispute the clue, [Disputed island …], but don't get her started unless you have 50 or so hours to kill). I was surprised to see SCREW IT in the NYT, but I love it.

Great DAY clue, too — who knew that a DAY on Venus is longer than a year? That means … the planet rotates around its axis very, very slowly? (I didn't have to look that up on Wikipedia. Okay, maybe I did.)

Excellent craftsmanship on this one (although I'm giving you the stink-eye, CHOICER). If all the connections to PEACE had been a little stronger for me, this would have gotten the POW!

Every once in a while, I finish a puzzle and stare at it, trying to figure out the theme. It took me an embarrassingly long 12 minutes of searching and thinking and beating my head to realize that five phrases end with synonyms for "hit": SLUG, BELT, BOP, SOCK, CUFF. D'oh!

Why was this theme so hard to pick up? Besides my idiocy, Tim used a wide-open layout; a themeless-esque word count of 70. That opens up so much room for great fill, and Tim uses most all of it well. STEADY JOB, TAKE A KNEE, LOW RIDER, LONGHORN, GARDEN SLUG … oh wait, that last one is a themer. Double d'oh! You see the problem? All that great long fill in the across direction muddies what's a themer and what is not.

I like it when a puzzle gives me a little credit, doesn't dumb it down, but in this case, I would have liked a final HIT or something that clued me in.

Another solution would have been to use a more standard layout, with only five long across answers, making the five long across phrases stand out more naturally.

Tim's such a strong constructor. It's not easy to complete such a theme-dense and wide-open grid without some crossword glue. There is a ROTO, but what else? Some may balk at E INK, but I love it. Not only is it a modern invention, but millions of people use it (it's featured in Amazon's Kindles). So, extremely well done there.

I did pause at so many "+ preposition" phrases — CALLED TO, SOLD TO, FEAST ON, SET ON — but there are always trade-offs when you work with such a tough grid skeleton. I'd much rather have a pile-up of these types of phrases that just take up space than have a gloppy mess of crossword glue, so I can give them all a pass.

I usually like it when synonym-theme words are disguised, and these phrases sure do that. But I don't like feeling defeated like I was beaten by the puzzle. (DRUM BEAT would have been another possibility!) Strong execution, as with most all of Tim's puzzles, but I would have enjoyed this one more as a Monday puzzle, with an explicit revealer to explain what was going on. (Or, if I was smarter.)

I admit, I had to think about the theme for many minutes before I understood it. Funny a-ha moment when I finally realized that HOMEY was phonetically "hoe me," as in a VEGETABLE GARDEN wanting to be hoed. Same with GLOOMY as "glue me," and ROOMY as "RUE ME." Amusing to think of a LOST OPPORTUNITY begging to be rued.

Typically it's best to stick with regular symmetry, as it's what most solvers and editors are used to, and only resort to mirror symmetry in special circumstances. You might think that with 15-, 13-, and 15-letter themers, regular symmetry would have been fine. But check out the crossing of GLOOMY and MODEL AIRPLANE, in particular how far down GLOOMY extends — makes it impossible to place the 13-letter answer in the center of the grid.

Mirror symmetry often allows for some cool features. (I personally love it and would use it even more than I do now if it didn't cause some editorial hesitations.) Check out those lovely long downs, MEGAPHONE / OPEN CASES and NEED A RIDE / ESTATE TAX. Sure, those could also be incorporated into a grid using normal symmetry, but there's something so pleasing to have all four of them featured across the bottom.

As with most all of Tim's puzzles, extremely well executed. He gives us even more bonuses in SCHMEAR and TOPKNOT, not to mention PAPRIKA, ACOLYTE, SORCERY. Having worked with Tim on a few puzzles now, I have a deeper appreciation of how hard he works to include these types of bonuses, while simultaneously avoiding dabs of crossword glue. Maybe TYNE is a little esoteric, PCT is minor, but other than that, the short fill does its job by largely going unnoticed.

Some fun clues, too. Took me a while to figure out that the "Sewer of note" meant "one who sews," as in Betsy ROSS. "Dead reckoning," with "reckoning" meaning "doing an accounting of," was great wordplay for ESTATE TAX.

I loved the concept. Would have gotten my POW! if there had been a fourth example.

Famous horses and their riders featured today. The LONE RANGER atop SILVER resonated best for me. ROY ROGERS on TRIGGER felt mostly familiar. The others I didn't recognize, but some Googling suggests that these are all crossworthy. ZORRO on TORNADO was the most questionable for me, but ZORRO fans will likely vociferously disagree.

I shudder when I see paired, stacked themers — they force so many fixed letter pairs, and when you stack up all those pairings, you can get a quagmire. My prior experience with it was so challenging that I swore it off. Tim did such a nice job executing on the grid — I had to look a second and third time to believe how smooth the final result was.

The long paired theme answers create an even bigger challenge. You might think, what's the big deal, crossword symmetry allows for pairs of themers, right? Nope. With the horses in symmetrical locations, the riders end up in non-symmetrical ones. LONE RANGER doesn't match up with ROY ROGERS … but instead, it has to match with a 10-letter piece of fill. Now, not only do you stack a rider atop a horse, but you stack another long answer to make a triplet of long answers. Such a challenge!

There was some minor O GOD / LYIN, maybe KWH (kilowatt hour) could be tough, but that would be a great result in a normal puzzle. To pull it off here is astounding.

One thing he did well was to space out his theme pairs to the far edges of the grid, to reduce interactions between pairs of themers. As a result, ROY ROGERS / TRIGGER barely had to work with DALE EVANS / BUTTERMILK. But he still managed to make the puzzle feel open; not overly sectioned into mini-puzzles. Great work.

The theme didn't do much for me, as a majority of the pairings were unfamiliar, but the concept makes for a fun visual. And the fill execution was top-notch, especially considering what a Herculean task Tim had in front of him.

PINOCCHIO's NOSE expanding throughout themers — neat idea. Concepts where the circled letters are all the same can be a bit repetitive, but I liked the a-ha moment PINOCCHIO gave me.

Well executed grid, especially considering the high theme density. I'd expect some crossword glue, especially in those areas that have to work around two themers. But I'd also expect the overall product to be nice and smooth because Tim is a highly skilled constructor. Thankfully, the latter of my expectations won out, in spades.

Love how Tim kicked off the puzzle, giving us both a rare X and a great clue: [Fifth member in a noble line]. It's so innocuous, hinting at some royal family, yes? But no, it's referring to the noble gasses, of which XENON is the fifth. Clever!

There is an ODEA lurking, but I don't mind that so much.

I appreciated how many of those rare letters Tim worked in — those Js and Xs spice up the grid. The Big Four — J Q X Z — can be difficult to work in smoothly, but that wasn't a problem today. I especially dug the JX in the lower left, so elegantly worked in without any crossword glue required.

ICHAT is the only short entry that ate at me, in that it's defunct. But there's not a lot you can do with that I?H?? pattern, and when you have further inflexibility in the adjacent M?I?? and E?O?? patterns, the result in that region is still pretty good.

If only AS YOU WISH had been clued to "The Princess Bride," one of my favorite reads from the past few years (even better than the movie!) A guy can wish.

I like the idea to turn PINOCCHIO's growing nose into a crossword visual. It felt a little strange that his nose grew unevenly — the O forming a step function rather than going linearly, for example — and maybe there was a better way to visually represent that lengthening schnozz. But I thought Tim did a great job executing this particular interpretation.

★ I'm such a sucker for any sort of science or math puzzle. Put in a W BOSON or a TITRATION CURVE or a GOLDEN RATIO, and you've made this solver elated (and probably pissed off many others). So even though the periodic table has been mined for all sorts of crossword themes over the years, I loved Tim's new twist. Fe (iron) found right within the EIFFEL TOWER … just as in real life! Another perfect one in a WEATHER BALLOON containing He (helium). Such a fun concept.

Not all of them worked that way, but there were still interesting connections. A LEPRECHAUN hoards gold. AEROBIC EXERCISE involves oxygen. A DAGUERREOTYPE uses silver, lithium is one type of MOOD STABILIZER, etc. Although these were a bit looser than Fe in the EIFFEL TOWER, all of them had enough of a connection that I enjoyed.

Nice mix of snazzy long fill and smooth short fill. I like how Tim used his long entries to help break up some of the monotony that can come with a bunch of 3-5 letter entries. Strewing FAKE IDS, SONNY BOY, LIL ABNER, STAKEOUT, EPIC HERO, ITS COOL across the grid made for great variation — never too many shorties all at once without getting some spicy long bonuses.

And the smoothness of the fill = excellent. A couple of minor ENL, ETD dabs of crossword glue, but I easily overlooked those.

Well, there was IL DUCE. Not loving Mussolini in my crossword. Although IDI / AMIN works his way in, as does STALIN. Hmm. Not sure why IL DUCE is worse, but I cringed at it.

BETHEL was my only other source of hesitation. It is an oddball word, but ultimately, as the lone esoteric word in the grid for me, I enjoyed learning it. I like learning a thing or maybe two from my crossword.

I would have liked all two-letter chemical symbols, as it's a bit too easy to work with O and U, but NUCLEAR REACTOR was so spot-on that I didn't mind. All in all, great entertainment.

A* P* phrases, with AP TEST acting as a revealer. Initialism puzzles are a very common theme type, so it's important to have some element(s) to help distinguish them. I appreciated the high theme density — I didn't realize at first that AMY POEHLER and ATOMIC PILE were themers — and Tim sure picked some good phrases. In addition to the aforementioned, I loved AL PACINO in "The Godfather." And who doesn't love a good ol' fashioned APPLE PIE? (Answer: my wife. I promise, she's not a communist.)

AIR PIRATE … is that a thing? Some Googling says yes, but I've never heard of hijackers referred to this way.

But AIR PIRATE is a themer! Curious how I missed it at both first and second glances. I highlighted everything below to give you an idea of how much theme Tim packed in. Impressive.

Even more impressive was the smoothness of his short fill. Some will see PTUI as dicey, but I think it's at least funny, plus it's used in comics all the time. With such high theme density, there will usually be some price to pay, so Tim did well to finish with just a bit of minor ASST, OTC (over the counter), TMEN, PTUI.

Where I think the grid suffered a little is in some of the mid-length fill; enough oddballs that as a whole, I was left with a head-scratching sensation. AGAVES in the plural to kick off the puzzle. SEA EELS — is that different from EELS? (Apparently so!) TUNA OIL is a thing, different than the more common "fish oil"? I like learning a thing or two from my crossword, but more than that gets tiresome, especially in an early-week puzzle.

Overall, it felt like a Monday theme with Wednesday fill — I can see why Will ran it on a Tuesday. But I like my Tuesday puzzles to have a little more theme complexity than this, and a little easier grid fill.

Solid gridwork around impressively high theme density, though.

WANKEN OBI has to be the most hilariously awkward phrase I've ever seen in crosswords. Ahem. Hopefully no geishas are doing the puzzle today.

Ah, CARRIE / FISHER. STAR WARS was the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, so PRINCESS LEIA is forever burned into my mind. The image of a strong woman kicking ass and taking names, awkwardly kissing her brother, those CINNAMON BUNS … she's the source of much of my therapy needs.

And it's neat how outspoken and don't-give-a-damn she was toward the end of her life. I'll miss her.

Some neat elements in this tribute. I liked the idea of the ST/AR W/A/R/S "opening crawl" (the prologue disappearing off to a vanishing point), although it sure would have been nice to get more than just STAR WARS in this format. (Unlike George Lucas's terrible opening crawls in Episodes I, II, and III, where I would have been much happier with just the title, no explanations of the senate deadlock and the galactic trade barriers and economic STOOOOOOOP!)

As much as I like STAR WARS quotes, breaking HELP ME OBI / WAN KENOBI / YOURE MY ONLY HOPE was odd. There doesn't appear to be any other way to break it up though, and this was one of LEIA's iconic quotes. Hmm. Maybe if mirror symmetry had been used, at least HELP ME OBI and WANKEN OBI (oops, I did it again!) could have been in the top half of the puzzle (going vertically), with YOURE MY ONLY HOPE at the bottom. That would have avoided the jump all the way to the bottom, then back to the middle.

I did like that CARRIE / FISHER was interlocked into that quote. Neat to see how fortuitously FISHER and PRINCESS LEIA linked together. That did force some inflexibility in the lower right corner, with the odd ALLEE, but I thought it was worth it. Carrie FISHER probably didn't like being called PRINCESS LEIA her entire life, but the two were eternally connected, no doubt.

Some neat ideas. They didn't all mesh together, but I appreciated the tribute.

We're PUTTING THINGS ON ICE today … er, ON THE ROCKS. I've heard SCOTCH snobs say that ice destroys single-malts, but I'm an infidel. So what if I want to put some cold cubes into my MacAllan? And beer? And red wine?

I really shouldn't be allowed to drink.

Tim gets us not only a SCOTCH on the rocks (ICE), but a BOURBON and a TEQUILA. I liked how he hid SCOTCH and BOURBON — TEQUILA was a bit disappointing in comparison since a TEQUILA SUNRISE (not surprisingly) overtly has TEQUILA in it. Would have been really neat to have some hidden alcohols, like STRING INSTRUMENT and CALENDAR YEAR over ICE. I'm not sure you're supposed to put ICE in those liquors, but I'm-a-gonna try it!

As usual, Tim does a nice job incorporating some bonuses: AMPHIBIOUS, EPHEMERA, and OBSEQUIOUS are colorful, interesting words. EPIPEN is a great mid-length entry, and the pairing of CANTORS and HILLEL is fun too.

Tim had a slightly harder job than usual today, given that he had to place ICE under three words, reducing his filling flexibility. Although those are common letters, they still constrain the grid quite a bit. It's unusual to get a SNERT and an ELOI--both esoteric--in one of Tim's puzzles, but it's understandable.

Also a bit esoteric are SEA CARP and ROARKE. The former is a fine entry, just not as stellar as I would hope for out of a precious seven-letter slot. And although I used to watch "Fantasy Island" (and dream about those tropical drinks — with ICE of course), I'm not sure Mr. ROARKE has stood the test of time.

Overall, I would have liked a little more from the theme, at least disguising TEQUILA in the same way as SCOTCH and BOURBON. But I do like me a refreshing (cold!) drink, so the puzzle gave me a nice visual.

Three types of BEAN take a DIP today, inside LOADED BAKED POTATO, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, and THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS (highlighted below to make the idea clearer.) I liked Tim's consistency, as

1. all three phrases have the type of BEAN in the middle somewhere (not at the beginning or end), and
2. all three types of BEAN are five letters long, allowing for the exact same pattern of scooching underneath a black square.

It was a little odd that BAKED bean and GREEN bean are actual types of bean, while MAGIC bean is not. Or is it? I just happen to have some with me, available for extravagant trade…

I also thought it was a little odd that the themers weren't quite symmetric. I guess you could make a case that the first and last are contained within symmetric rows (3/4 and 12/13), but the annoying engineer in me really wanted the bulk of those two themers in symmetric rows (4 and 12, whereas they're in 3 and 12 right now). I know, I'm so annoying! (My poor wife.)

Those three dips might seem like they're pretty easy to fill around, but don't underestimate them. Instead of working with just one long answer, now you have two long-ish answers plus three more crossings, i.e. LBAR, ADORN, and WADE around the first dip. I particularly liked how flashy the middle of the grid was, with AXIAL right in the thick of that second dip, along with OZZIE. Great stuff!

Some nice bonus fill, too, a bit of I, ROBOT, WET KISS and BASS LINE. I wasn't sure about PELAGIC, but what an interesting word when "in the sea" isn't fancy enough.

A couple of hitches in short fill — SCAD seeming weird in singular and SKEETS weird in the plural — but other than a CRAT, smooth results.

★ I'm a sucker for visual puzzles, and simply having a MUMMY buried within a pyramid of black squares might have gotten this puzzle the POW! alone. What a brilliant image!

I had the luck to go to Egypt a few years ago before things started getting unsafe, and that made this puzzle even more enjoyable. Descending into those claustrophobic pyramids during 120-degree weather was harrowing, but what a once-in-a-lifetime experience. All those stories about lost tombs and building projects of massive scale … wow. Just, wow.

As if that wasn't enough, Tim and Joe give us some more pyramid graphics in other back square patterns, plus some fun theme material. PYRAMID SCHEME, TOMB RAIDER, PHARAOH ANT are more indirect than TUT, but they gave me enough to feel like the puzzle wasn't just a pretty picture.

And bonus fill to boot, with a themeless-esque open feel! I loved uncovering RARE GAS, MEGAWATTS, LAST GASP, even RASTAMAN (are you singing Bob Marley's RASTAMAN Vibration now too?), and TEA BAGS that come with strings attached.

Not all the fill was great, but that's to be expected with such wide-openness. TWO HEARTS felt partial-ish, and crossing TWICE was inelegant. I doubt many people will like seeing ANIS, but that's the only real glob of crossword glue, and I found it worth the price of LITHUANIA / LAST GASP. Tim and Joe could have cleaned up that region by putting a black square at the T or G of LAST GASP, but I like their decision here.

It also would have been nice to get less random-ish placement of the M U M M Y letters, but I can't think of a better way to do it (maybe have those letters be part of theme answers? or have them regularly spaced somehow?).

I imagine TOMB RAIDERs slipping diagonally into the pyramid from the T of MAD AT or first A of AMANA, just like I crept through chutes into the real pyramids. Totally tickled by this puzzle; a perfect example of the astounding creativity crosswords can exhibit.