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Drag and drop -> DRAGON DROP, four and twenty -> FOREIGN TWENTY, hair and makeup -> HERON MAKEUP. Fun sound changes, excellent consistency in how David executed each one.

Impressive theme density to go with very clean fill. Seven themers on a Sunday are tough enough, but David goes the extra mile, using nine of them. And he tosses in such colorful long fill as MEAT PIES, CAROL ALT, and ARMOR CLAD. Very difficult to do this without resorting to a bunch of gluey short fill, so kudos to David.

For those of you (us) who didn't know DRY BONES, here's a pic. As a huge Mario Bros. fan (the old-school versions, of course) I enjoyed learning that this character actually had a name. Tough to figure out the HBS (halfbacks) crossing, but it seems reasonable given the "skeletal" part of the clue.

A few explanations for clues I didn't understand at first:

• [Mystery prize] isn't a mystery box prize a la "Let's Make a Deal," but the Edgar Award for mystery writing.
• ELIS gets a very difficult clue, skipping [Manning and Whitney] to go with a region of ancient Greece.
• CERES is a dwarf planet, and it gets a great, timely clue. Super curious to see what the Dawn probe transmits back.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Great selection of themers today, phrases containing NYC to celebrate THE BIG APPLE. DESTINY CALLS is so colorful and vivid, making for a great entry. COMPANY CAR and FELONY CHARGE sing, too. (Sing Sing, in the latter's case.)

I would have been so tempted to stick in KENNY CLARKE, the great jazz drummer known as "Klook," but TONY CURTIS plays to a much bigger audience. Sigh.

As an 11-letter entry, THE BIG APPLE smack dab in the middle of the grid sure makes things hard. Interesting layout today; I like how Jeffrey smooshed pairs of themers together to separate them as much as possible from that troublesome THE BIG APPLE. This can be tough feat to do, but Jeffrey wisely chooses theme pairs with easy letter combinations, making the north and south regions nice and smooth.

It does leave big swaths of white space in the SW and NE, roughly 4x6 chunks which are rarely easy to fill, especially when fill needs to be Monday-smooth. Jeffrey does an impressive job in the NE, featuring Jerry STILLER and JON SEDA, the latter thankfully done with easy crosses.

The SW does have the fun ALL EARS and FLY ROD but overall doesn't come off quite as nicely, needing some glue to hold it together. I might have considered breaking up ALMONDS with a black square at the O, which would have given more flexibility in filling. (My wife, who loathes ALMONDS to the point where she accused me of poisoning her with an almond cookie, would approve.)

Then again, that would create even more 3-letter words, and the current count (25) is already on the high side. So many trade-offs in construction.

It sometimes just takes a single clue or entry to make me want to high-five someone, and BIDS did that for me. As a huge bridge fan, this very bridge-specific clue made me wistful for the time when bridge ruled American culture. It's tough to make a puzzle cover a huge range of topics, from bridge to WAFFLES to TONY CURTIS to BALI, and that effort is much appreciated. Something for everyone.

– puzzle by Jeffrey Wechsler

I love how often Joe Krozel introduces themes that have never been seen before. I'm not sure I'd ever think of creating a puzzle where every across entry is an entry in a common acronym.

I'm not sure how I'd even start putting the grid together, for that matter. Knowing how hard it is to achieve this sort of "all acrosses share a feature which the downs do not" task, I was wowed by the feat.

Here are some of the (perhaps) lesser known acronyms:

• HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior (the Great Lakes)
• VAT: value-added tax
• BPOE: Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
• GI: general issue
• NSF: National Science Foundation
• ERA: earned run average

It's too bad about having a bit of oddness around GRIG and LUANA since the rest of the puzzle is so smooth, but both of these entries is inferable from the crosses. And overall, I found it incredibly impressive that Joe could put this concept together.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel

Fun interpretation of phrases containing OUT today. TAKE OUT ORDER stood OUT for me, as the base phrase is solid and the resulting kooky definition is surprising. Interesting take on breaking the "dupe" rule of crosswords, where an answer ought not be duplicated elsewhere in the grid. (Will plays a bit looser with this rule than other editors, which is completely in his right, as the editor gets to make the rules.)

I personally like "clue echoes," so seeing [Letters on some kits] in sequential acrosses was neat. I wasn't sure at first if a CPR kit was a thing, but some Googling shows it to be fine.

Loved the clue for MACS. For those of us PC users, "Safari" is an internet browser widely used on Macs. And an interesting clue in [They may be paddled], which wasn't CANOES or KAYAKS or BOATS. I wonder if this might stir a little controversy, especially given all the recent NFL violence issues. It is a clever misdirection in the clue, though.

Finally, I bet there will be grousing about LIEF. I doubt I would ever choose to use LIEF, but that's personal preference — although it's not a terribly current word, it does have literary value. I did hesitate when I got there, especially since LAEF (Et ALIA felt equally correct to me) seemed as good as LAEF. Er, LIEF. Perhaps an easier or less ambiguous crossing would have been better there.

Oh, let's not forget HOT PINK! Great entry worked into the fill. Not totally sure it's a super-popular Victoria's Secret color, but this clue is bound to spark some discussion.

– puzzle by Julian Lim

This particular arrangement of six intersecting grid-spanners (highlighted below) is notoriously hard to execute in a 72-word grid. The problem with all these criss-crossing answers is that you create constraints in every single part of the grid.

There really is no one area where the constructor gets full flexibility to work with a wide-open area, because every nook and cranny has at least two entries already fixed in place. And the center has sections where FOUR fixed entries completely border an area to be filled. Check out the SHERRI / UKR / EGAL region for example — that sits right in the middle of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, LONELY TEARDROPS, ANYWHERE I WANDER, and I BELIEVE I CAN FLY. Rough task.

So I was impressed that Mike was able to keep the number of gluey entries relatively low. It's particularly tricky to do this with longer fill, so the NW with PARISIANS and the SE with LODESTARS would have been very tricky. Granted, TROI and SALS are likely not broadly known, but try telling that to die-fans of "Star Trek: the Next Generation" and "Do the Right Thing." (Like me. Qapla'!)

And for a pop music moron, I felt like most of the songs were well-known enough that I was able to get almost all of them without resorting to every single crossing letter. The exception was ANYWHERE I WANDER, but apparently La Rosa was all the rage back in the 50's, so that's fine.

It would have been really cool if one of the songs had been titled something like CROSS DOWN ACROSS to pull everything together as a revealer. That's a song, isn't it? (Well, it should be. Get to work on that, Mr. La Rosa!)

– puzzle by Mike Buckley

Jill is one of XWord Info's world-famous(-ish) "J Crew," Jim and Jeff rounding out the trifecta.

– puzzle by Kyle Mahowald

★ A 64-word themeless is so difficult to pull together that the constructor must often rely on neutral or boringish entries. Not today. Impressive grid and even more impressive cluing.

I figured Byron would have to rely heavily on the common letters (RSTLN E), so figuring out DESI ARNAZ JR took me forever. Seeing a NAZ?? ending made me go back and erase several times. And testing out a J and an R at the end — NAZJR, what a bizarre string! — just couldn't be right. I was mixed as to whether DESI ARNAZ JR is crossworthy in his own right, but that curious run of ending letters plus the brilliant clue, [Ball boy?] (Lucille Ball's boy), makes me give him a thumbs-up.

Speaking of cluing, Byron's clues hit the Saturday sweet spot for me. Personally, I have a tough time with "deep dictionary" clues, where the constructor/editor pulls out definition number 45 in an attempt to stump the solver. I don't find that very satisfying, working like a dog and then ultimately having to go to the dictionary to understand what I just solved. Byron tends to use seemingly innocent clues with a devilish bent, giving me a fist-pumping elation when I get them. Here are my favorites:

• [Good for rushes, say] could have been TRASHY, given the rushes I — er, you — get from reading a romance novel. But it's good for the growth of rush plants too.
• [Preserves, in the end] made me think of KEEPS IN, as with an edit one is waffling about. What a great a-ha when I realized that this referred more to the Egyptian way of preserving things.
• [Banquet offering] cleverly hides the capital B in the Banquet line of TV dinners. So much for my first guess, SALAD BAR.

Notice how each one of these avoids the giveaway question mark. Brilliant.

And even the part I liked the least, the NW with its RUCHED and GRIPPE, felt at least fair to me. Plus, it reminded me of a good discussion Jim and I had about whether AGUE was a "good" or a "bad" entry. Jim's point was that even though it's not in the language today (my doctor wife corroborates this), it has literary value. Granted, Jim is a big Dickens fan, but still, I enjoyed being reminded that some entries I dislike are ones that others will love.

– puzzle by Byron Walden

Jeremy goes one step further than the standard "words hidden in themers" puzzle type, by incorporating SET IN / STONE for an additional layer of complexity. I appreciated the puzzle even more after finishing, thinking about what a difficult time he must have had in finding strong themers which 1.) contained precious stones 2.) broke those stones into exactly two parts, and 3.) had to have an "E" in between those two parts.

That's a huge number of constraints, so to find such entries as strong as PONY EXPRESS, GAME THE SYSTEM, and POP A WHEELIE is really impressive. And Jeremy could have chosen short *SET* answers (like ASSET, SETI, etc.) to make things easier, so getting CHEESE TRAY and LEASE TO OWN in those difficult spots is much appreciated.

Just in case the theme concept isn't totally clear yet, I highlighted the SETs "in stone" below. With the tremendous number of constraints this condition placed upon the grid, it's a wonder that Jeremy was able to fill it so well, even tossing in some goodies like RECKON SO, NERF GUN, and the Wheel of Fortune sequence RSTLN E (the free letters in the bonus round).

A couple of clues to point out:

• [Facetious string?] — "facetious" contains AEIOU in sequence.
• Did you think [You may put stock in it] had something to do with faith or trust? No SOUP for you!
• [One connected with the force?] teases us poor Star Wars dorks, "the force" referring to a police force.

Overall, I like the push to do something new, Jeremy taking an established theme type and giving it an additional layer of complexity.

– puzzle by Jeremy Newton

Beautiful construction today. Parker Lewis and I had coffee the other day, and he mentioned how tough it is to cleanly incorporate five longish theme answers into a 15x. So true, especially when the middle one is 9, 11, or 13 letters long, forcing awkward black square patterns.

Lynn if known for her smooth Monday grids, but this one is a cut above. I'd happily hand it to beginner friends as a gateway puzzle. It's got an ESE, plus a MER and a USTA (which could be hard for novices), but the crossings are very fair.

And on top of that, check out how colorful her corners are, typically very tough to get clean in this type of arrangement. COVETOUS, MAHLER, FALSIES, UPSURGE. Not at all FRUMPY!

The connection between WHERES WALDO and anagrammed W-A-L-D-O sequences seems tenuous to me, as I would have imagined more a WALDO hiding diagonally or behind black squares or having red herring W-A-D-L-O and W-A-L-O type strings to hide him. Putting that aside though, Lynn chooses a great assortment of theme answers. SUPER BOWL AD is so timely (although we Seattleites don't need any reminders).

So maybe the theme didn't do much for me, but I found the execution to be DREAMY. (Pete Carroll's slant pass call, not so much.)

– puzzle by Lynn Lempel

If only the themers had been run vertically. Then it could have been [The ailing crossword writer was …] FEELING DOWN.

*rim shot*

I had heard some of them before, but I still got a laugh out of the trash collector being IN THE DUMPS and the postal worker being OUT OF SORTS. Yes, the latter is kind of a stretch, since postal employees don't have a fixed supply of sorts (do they?), but given the wacky theme concept, it worked for me.

I hadn't heard of FEELING PUNK before. Googling the phrase in quotes doesn't get many hits. Several dictionaries list PUNK in that sense though, some even with "feeling punk" as an example. Generally that would make it fine in my book if it were a piece of fill, but given that it's a theme entry, I would have liked a phrase more solidly in everyday use.

Very impressive to work in two sets of long downs along with the five themers. Typically, five themers make it hard to work in even one pair, so to get two is a nice bonus. So many of them are vivid, too. ASTEROIDS gives me pleasant childhood memories, and SHOOT EM UP is beauty.

STEEL (DRUM) BANDS feels a little incomplete without DRUM, but that's minor (plus, Wikipedia disagrees with me). And I usually have no problems with plurals, but I agree with Kurt and Jan-Michele that HOME PLATES feels a little odd. No doubt it's "correct" in that you could say "there are HOME PLATES in every ballpark," but it's tough for me to think of a sentence I'd actually hear in actual life.

An enjoyable solve, made even more so by the minimal amount of gluey fill — given five themers and four long downs, I would expect to see much more. Some might complain about WYTHE being too difficult or esoteric for a Tuesday puzzle, but I enjoyed reading about him. First American law professor and an early opponent of slavery? Heck yeah, worth learning about.

– puzzle by Kurt Mengel and Jan-Michele Gianette

★ A really nice debut puzzle. Most people would stick to four — or even three — theme answers in their first go-around. But Will goes big with six! Laudable.

And what an amusing theme. I laughed, picturing a junior editor starting out on the job, overzealously throwing around red ink. For all my grumbling about pop songs and hip bands, none of which I know, here's a case where I really welcomed them! It's doubtful that even the most clueless editor would correct THE BEATLES, but I can easily see the person smugly changing LINKIN PARK and deeming the LUDACRIS spelling as truly LUDICROUS.

Smart layout, intersecting two pairs of themers and using black squares to create a lot of space and separation between themers. Doesn't allow for a lot of jazzy fill, but that's okay for me, since the themers were mostly vivid.

A rough patch here and there, but that's to be expected in a six-themer, especially where there's a lot of overlap. And really, only the CWT / TO ERR / EDUC north area stuck out to me. No surprise that it came in one of the two areas with most themer overlap — where four white spaces sit between THE BEETLES and LUDICROUS. I might have tried moving the black square at the end of ITERATE up to the R of RODEO in order to reduce the overlap. Hard to say if that would have caused problems in the center of the puzzle, though.

My wife tells this joke she thinks is hilarious:

Q: What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?
A: Dam.

So DAMS, clued as [Challenges for salmon] made me smile.

And fun repurposing of "Grape Nuts" cereal, a WINO being a [Grape nut?] of sorts. I also enjoyed the homonym play on [Dehli order?] for SARI, a clothing item common in India.

ADDED NOTE: there was a last-minute change to the grid, and apparently the old version was printed by mistake in the NYT hardcopy. It affects only the western section of the puzzle (TOO BAD became TAIWAN, etc.). SARI for the confusion.

– puzzle by Will Treece

Literally four CORNERSTONEs today, with a beautiful clue for the revealer. [Where one might find a date …] felt like it had to be THE CORNER BAR, COFFEE HOUSE, MATCH DOT COM, or whatever the kids are using these days. Love the trickery, pointing to not a first date, but a calendar-type date.

Also nice to get some bonus material, INSCRIPTION and TIME CAPSULE worked in. And crossing theme answers, nonetheless! For how constrained those NE and SW corners were, they came out pretty well. People may point to OSA, ETTE, and ITO in these regions, but ITO feels perfectly fine to me given the fame both Lance Ito and Midori Ito achieved.

Once I figured out the concept, I worried a bit about the NW and SE corners — so difficult to fill corners with perimeter answers, and even more difficult when those areas are this big. Very pleasantly surprised to see how well the NW came out, even a WINESAP worked in.

The SE did have more glue than I like to see, but it's hard to avoid that. One aspect that I've picked up over the years is that in this sort of arrangement, needing words ending in "I" makes filing surprisingly difficult. Having two perimeter words containing an I — RHINE and GRIND — likely made things tougher.

Unfortunately, the ?????STONE pattern has limited results, and with TOUCHSTONE already used elsewhere, there aren't a lot of other good options in those two slots. In cases like these, I find that switching black squares around so that you can also draw upon ????STONE (only four preceding letters) can help immensely, opening yourself up to entries like SAND(STONE), EMMA(STONE), LODE(STONE), etc. Different lengths = more flexibility.

Finally, I loved the clue for AFT: [Like a spanker's position on a ship]. I hope no one's looking at my Google search history …

– puzzle by Jules P. Markey

Robert Boyle may seem esoteric, but he's an enormous figure in the world of chemistry, best known for Boyle's law, relating pressure and volume.

(Now seeking nominations for what Chen's law ought to express.)

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

72-worder from David today, the maximum number of words allowed in a themeless. Going up to the very max allows one to quasi-segment the grid, freeing the constructor to work on the grid quadrant by quadrant. It's SO much easier to fill a grid when you're able to work on small parts without having to worry about how they'll affect the rest of the puzzle.

Take the beautiful NW corner for instance. It's not like it's completely sectioned off from the rest of the grid, but only TAMPERED, SNEAKED, and CONTES connect it. One technique I sometimes use it to put (temporary) black squares in to help me isolate a section. Here, they would be at the E of ACHED and the P of PETRIE and the Q of ESQUIRE. In constructing the triple-stack, I'd just make sure I end up with flexible letter patterns in the places that would connect it to the rest of the grid, i.e. at 10-Down (TAM is nice in that it has so many possible endings).

This does reduce grid flow, as there aren't many places to go from one mini-puzzle to the next. And that did make it awfully tough for me to solve the SW quadrant. I'm so bad with pop music — when you need every single crossing to piece together WHO DAT GIRL, and the section is isolated, it can create a solving logjam. I'm thankful for the helpful clue, as the "she" in the lyric eventually led me to figure it out.

Are SERIAL PORTs still in use? That feels like something an ubergeek would make fun of. (Along with my trusty Motorola Razr from 2002.)

A few clues took me a while to understand, even after the solve. Here they are, in case you were equally stumped:

• CONTES is the French word for "tales," and generally means … well, tales.
• [Intern] has nothing to do with that poor guy you send out to wash your car. Not that I ever did that. Ahem. Here, it's going for the "internment camp" type definition.
• PIPEs often have traps, i.e. the P-trap in a bathroom sink.
• The mysterious Rev. preceding Std.? Apparently it refers to Bible verses. Revised Standard, I believe.
• The beautiful WAFFLE CONE. Not a product made in the parlor of one's home, but an ice cream parlor. Great misdirect there!

Finally, I love hearing about David's introspection, his never-ending quest for improvement toward perfcetion. Er, perfection. Great attitude.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Ellen has such patience with me. I think it's important to brainstorm dozens, perhaps hundreds of ideas in order to come up with something I feel is really NYT-worthy. We went back and forth and back and forth, trying to come up with a few good Sunday ideas, and each time, a promising idea came up just shy, or we decided that it just wasn't good enough. Weeks, maybe months of headbanging.

But when Ellen proposed this little idea in a short email, I felt sure there was something to it. I worried we wouldn't be able to come up with enough instances that fit the pattern perfectly, but Ellen came back shortly with a promising list. Turns out a computer science background and some query skills comes in handy! I added a few more, we finalized the selection, and off we went.

The grid design was incredibly challenging, and it looked like it was going to be a bear to fill, given all the crossing constraints. We originally tried using standard crossword symmetry, but all the theme answers branching downward made that very difficult. (It might have been possible if we didn't have the theme answers in symmetrical locations, but that felt inelegant.) Mirror symmetry made the layout much more feasible, and also let us place the themers (at least their first halves) in spots of symmetry.

But after putting together a draft skeleton, we weren't sure it was going to fly, given all the crossing constraints. I took a tenuous pass at filling one tiny little section to see if the entire thing was feasible, and after maybe ten hours and many hundreds of hairs pulled out, I emerged victorious. Ka-ching!

Then Ellen politely mentioned that I had entered IS IT REAL, not IS IT LIVE. Into the circular file.

Several dozen iterations later, passing the file back and forth, going cross-eyed with frustration, we emerged from the long, dark tunnel. At revision 43j, it's not the most work I've put into a single puzzle, but it's pretty close.

A really fun time working with Ellen; hopefully the solving experience amuses people!

– puzzle by Ellen Leuschner and Jeff Chen

I get such a feeling of satisfaction when I fill in the last box of a crossword and get "Mr. Happy Pencil." Finishing a word search is more a feeling of relief. I had to scan through the entire grid three times, go through the full list of presidents, scan through the grid an additional three times, and finally go letter by letter with the list of presidents up against the screen. But I found those last two, dangnabit! (Highlighted below in blue and red against the white grid background.)

• Time it took me to finish the puzzle: 5 minutes
• Time it took me to find the first six presidents: 10 minutes
• Time it took me to find the last two: 45 minutes (I (stupidly) hate to give up on anything)

Pretty clever, the way David hid NIXON and especially TYLER. I originally hadn't thought about words "crossing" diagonal lines of black squares, and then the idea of TYLER crossing TWO of those lines blew my mind. Hopefully most other solvers didn't burn quite as much time as I did. But hey, what an appropriate diversion for Presidents Day.

Overall, I liked the construction. With so many constraints, I expected to see more gluey fill. I also expected that the diagonal presidents would be located smack dab in the middle of those gluey bits. (BOURG helped me locate NIXON, and I was SO sure something had to be hidden around the odd ODORED.) So a good trade-off, packing a reasonable number of presidents into the grid without many compromises.

P.S. DOLE (SE corner) and Robert E. LEE (NE corner)? There is no such thing as a coincidence!

– puzzle by David J. Kahn

What a cool visual. Sometimes grid art takes a bit of squinting and an overly active imagination to properly enjoy, but I really liked how well Bruce conveyed a Scottie dog with just 24 black squares. Compare to the image on the right — a spitting image.

I also liked the idea of "dog names that can be disguised as other things." CHOW, BOXER, POM, HUSKY, SETTER are perfect, as they have other definitions completely different than canine ones. Most of these have been mined for clever clues, so I enjoyed the turning of the tables. It's too bad that not all of the nine met this criteria.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? Or IN … since the dogs are inside the puzzle, not outside of it? As much as I love/hate that earwormy song, it doesn't feel quite apt for a revealer. Matter of opinion, of course.

While I enjoyed the novelty of the visual, the lack of symmetry did give me pause. We've had some puzzles with an asymmetrical center but symmetrical perimeter, and having at least a touch of symmetry somewhere is awfully pleasing to the eye. I don't think that's possible here, given all the theme material, but I might have liked less theme density in exchange for perimeter symmetry.

On that note, even taking out POODLE would have been nice, allowing the south section to be filled more cleanly. Such a tricky area, given BLOODHOUND's appearance. It's always tough to make these judgment calls about theme density vs. cleanliness of fill, and each constructor will have his/her different idea on where the line should be drawn.

But overall, I appreciate the gridwork. The west section is particularly pleasing given the raw size of the white space. I like that Bruce left himself with few constraints in the biggest section to fill, allowing himself to work in some nice answers with just AN EEL as the lone liability.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

"X the Y" phrases changed into "Y the X" with amusing results. I love the image of a poor duck sitting inside a holding cell, the light bulb swinging over him as the detective demands to know what happened to the stolen diamonds. After some light questioning, he pulls out THE DUCK FEATHER FOUND INSIDE THE BANK VAULT.

Movie rights available.

Ed did a nice job of picking phrases that amuse. Even though BOOKS THE COOK was the only one where the first word was inconsistent (no other themers have a first word ending in S), I loved the turnabout — COOK THE BOOKS being the crime, BOOKS THE COOK the resolution.

These five themers are pretty consistent (aside from COOK THE BOOKS), but I would have loved more tightness/specificity. It's not absolutely necessary, but adding another level such as "all starting words are animals" would be bang-up. BADGER THE WITNESS -> WITNESS THE BADGER might be a little too close to QUESTION THE DUCK, but there's something hilarious about a poor badger sworn in on the witness stand.

That type of "extra level" is so elegant, but it is awfully difficult to achieve. I brainstormed FLY, GOOSE, SNAKE, but that's about it.

An impressive construction, especially considering the five long themers. The only oddball entry that jumped out at me was STANDEE, which is no surprise given that it stands (it's a literal standee!) in the most constrained section, crossing three themers. The S??N??E pattern has limited selection— SURNAME, STAN LEE, SWINDLE among them — but given how big that middle section is, I'm sure the common letters within STANDEE made filling much smoother.

Finally, yay for chemistry! Teflon has such a neat structure, the strength of those fluorine-carbon bonds making it very non-reactive. I'm sure this clue made many solvers shiver with bad memories of organic chem, but I like these little touches reminding us how deeply basic technology affects our lives.

– puzzle by Ed Sessa

★ Very, very cool idea. I bet many solvers filled in "APERA" as a rebus square and wondered who the heck APERANNA SUI was. (I still think Aperanna is a nice name.) Following along the loop, especially ROLLER COASTER looping around R (O L L E R C) OASTER, was really fun. And the fact that the resulting answer looks like ROASTER in the grid, a normal word — what a bonus!

P (A P E R) AIRPLANE also is neat, some types of planes able to gracefully execute loop-de-loops. It's not quite as neat as ROLLER COASTER since "PAIRPLANE" is obviously odd in the grid, but still, PAPER AIRPLANE fits nicely with the theme.

I get that a SHOELACE gets tied in a loop, but that themer didn't work quite as well for me. SHOELACEs don't really get tied in vertical loops, do they? I brainstormed a little bit, and could only come up with two other possible themers which might fit the vertical loop motif: STUNT PILOTS, which would look like S (T U N T P I L O) TS, or STUNT MOTORCYCLE. Maybe those are too close to PAPER AIRPLANE though.

These types of puzzles where the themers bend, twist, etc. are usually tough to execute, because of all the extra real estate taken up. So I like that Jason just uses three, and spaces them out nicely. Also very cool to incorporate R CRUMB into that difficult RC???? slot. The fill isn't particularly sparkly — more CATALYTIC and ATYPICAL than the beautiful BITCOIN and FIRE AWAY — but I appreciate the relative grid cleanliness.

Finally, two great clues. I love Greek mythology, so getting ARGUS and the [100-eyed giant of myth] was pleasing. (Although I would have been equally happy with ARGUS Filch, the groundskeeper of Hogwarts.) And [Illegal motion penalty?] thankfully had nothing to do with football (still not over the Seahawks' SB XLIX loss) but cleverly hinted at TILTing a pinball machine.

– puzzle by Jason Flinn

I always enjoy seeing something new. So to get three stacked pairs in a themeless was very cool — surprising that I can't remember something quite like this. It reminded me of Ashton Anderson's comments about trying for mini-themes within a themeless, using adjacent answers. TRUE CRIME and RAT POISON was especially pleasing to me, as both of them can stand alone as great phrases in themselves, and the link between them is strong.

IN ONE EAR AND / OUT THE OTHER was also nice, although half and half answers aren't as satisfying for me. With standalones, you can get one and then you still have the other one to uncover, whereas these half and halfs fall all at one time. Similarly, I SHOULD HAVE / KNOWN BETTER is colorful, but the reveal came all at once.

Speaking of I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER … BIG BREASTED? I appreciate Will's pushing the boundary of what the Gray Lady allows, but this to me stumbles outside of what makes the NYT crossword the NYT crossword. Readership and solvership is generally well-read, highly literate, and cultured to some extent (aside from me). Would we see BIG BREASTED featured inside the NYT Magazine or the Styles section? I'm okay seeing that entry featured in an independent crossword, especially but it's not my taste for the NYT. I very much appreciate David's comments and concerns about its usage. In my opinion though, it's tough to see it well-accepted with any clue.

That aside, I really liked the pairing of answers, and would have really like a fourth pair in the NE. Perhaps ACT NORMAL and SHRINKAGE could be linked via Seinfeld (the pool episode, as David mentioned above), but that's quite a shrink. Er, a stretch.

For those of you (us) who didn't understand how [Critical unit?] could be STAR, think of it as a ranking unit, i.e. four stars. And an awesome clue, nodding to one of my favorite STAR personalities, Andre the Giant. How appropriate that his name means "manly"!

– puzzle by David Woolf

Complex concept today, so bear with me as I try to summarize it: pairs of answers flip-flopped; words that can precede "up" moving up, and words that can precede "down" moving down.

Sigh. That probably still isn't clear, so an example:

• END in TENDERHEARTED moves up ("END up" given an additional clue: [finally become])
• LIE in SALIERI moves down (LIE down given an additional clue: [go to bed])

Neat concept, taking advantage of all the little words that can precede "up" or "down." A bit strange to see gobbledygook within the themers, but it overall is a tricky and innovative idea. It would have been incredibly cool if the answers, after flipping, actually formed real words. Given that there are SO many words that can precede "up" or "down," I wonder if it'd actually be possible.

The flip-flop is a basic unit of electronic logic, a simple circuit to keep track of one of two states. So I thought it was cool how the shaded rectangles sort of looked like microchips. (Boy oh boy would I LOVE a crossword employing a fully-functional circuit diagram. Yes, I realize I'm the only one.)

Some clue highlights, along with a few I had to look up to understand:

• Elaine NARDO! I watched every episode of "Taxi" as a kid, so I loved seeing her in the grid.
• CHESS is the setting for a castle … like when a player moves his/her king and rook in the move known as "castling."
• CPA reviews books, all right — company books! Beautiful clue.
• TWIT apparently can be used as a verb. Huh.
• Fantastic clue, [Lit group] making me think about a book club — no, it's a group of boozehounds getting lit.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

★ Joel has such an interesting perspective. The construction was SO smooth that I assumed it was a 76 or perhaps a 74-word puzzle. A 72-word themed puzzle is hard enough to achieve with a few gluey bits, so to nail it with nary a glop is amazing.

My personal style is a little different. I always try to work in six snazzy long downs (unless grid constraints are severe), but that tends to ignore the mid-length 5-, 6-, 7-letter fill, leaning heavily on the short stuff that Joel points out as pretty boring for solvers. I hadn't really considered how important that mid-range stuff is, but I see what he means when I look at fill such as JUNTA, IM SURE, and ACCT NO (which looks really cool in the grid — a nice surprise to have to work at uncovering a Monday entry). I like those entries no matter how they're clued.

And his approach also gives the solver interesting trivia. Who knew WYOMING was the least populous state? I wouldn't, because my approach to grid design tends to ignore these 7-letter entries. (Also because I get WYOMING and Wisconsin confused.)

Finally, IM GAY brings us a reminder of a momentous event in TV history, Ellen coming out. Great stuff.

I might have liked a third fruit instead of BITTER PILL — if only BITTER PEAR or RANCID BANANA were metaphorical, sigh — but the theme coheres well enough. (I'm afraid the consistently very high quality of Joel's work has me spoiled ugli.)

A great construction, and a Monday puzzle chock full of interesting fill and tidbits.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

Amusing take on the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon, playing on "famous person named Grey" + "synonym for shade." EARL Grey, LADY JANE Grey, ZANE Grey are all crossworthy, methinks. It might have been nice to have everyone of the same ilk (all British nobles, e.g.) or three people from completely different backgrounds, but that's a minor point.

Some people have asked what Will means by "colorful entries," and this puzzle helps me make some observations. First, "colorful" or "vivid" is a very subjective term, so Will and I will undoubtedly disagree on many entries. But here are a few qualities that I think help add to a NYT crossword:

• Multi-word phrases. CALL A CAB rolls off the tongue. Single words can often be tough to make sing, especially ones that are "filler" in everyday conversation. Between CALL A CAB and something like COMMUTE, I'd take CALL A CAB most any day.
• Terms that are fun to say. STOOLIE is a perfect example. SCULLERY too, for me at least. I'm sure people who work in food prep would shrug at SCULLERY, but I hear this term infrequently, and it just sounds fun.
• Terms fitting the NYT's target demographic. People who read the NYT tend to be highly educated, so elements (pun intended) such as MANGANESE are appropriate. One caveat: it would have been great if the clue had pointed out a fun fact about MANGANESE, like its use in alloying stainless steel, as even most chemists can't remember Mg's chemical neighbors on the periodic table by memory. Not a lot of fun to try to answer a clue that's essentially: [random element].

These are simply my observations on what I think Will (and Rich and other editors) tend to favor. Each one has his/her own preference of course, so it's impossible to generalize with 100% accuracy. Will, want to weigh in?

– puzzle by Elizabeth A. Long

Very nice construction. Tough to achieve theme interlock, and four crossing themers often creates difficulty in filling a grid. Michael goes all the way down to 70 words, a really tough challenge when four of your themers are locked into place in a fixed skeleton.

And what a great start to the puzzle. That all-important 1-Across slot was so confusing — what could possibly end in –EDR? ROLLEDR looks so crazy awesome in the grid. Well done.

Interesting bit of trivia for ONE EARED. I wasn't sure the entry felt in the language, but I really enjoyed learning that factoid, that the praying mantis only has one ear. Apparently it's the only animal known to normally only have one ear?

With such a gridwork challenge, it's normal to see a few gluey bits. I'm not a fan of AMEBA / AMEBAS / AMEBAE, as I had only seen AMOEBA / AMOEBAS / AMOEBAE in the real world before doing crosswords. It's something I've learned to live with as a solver, but I do go out of my way as a constructor to avoid it. Not sure why it's evolved (pun intended) to not require the dreaded "variant" tag, as Merriam Webster lists AMEBA as a variant of AMEOBA.

And Trevor ARIZA — do something crossworthy already so all of us constructors can feel fine using you in puzzles! How about trying for my record, which will be "the first 110-year old to play for an NBA team." Steph Curry, your great-great-great-grandsons (and daughters maybe even!) better get ready for competition.

Not sure if I'm missing some layer of cleverness on the theme? I do enjoy the interlock with DES MOINES IOWA serving as a backbone to the puzzle — shout out to Iowans! — but I would have liked some more connection between those four capitals (besides that they locked together nicely).

Finally, a delightful clue for MONTHS. [Their days are numbered], indeed.

– puzzle by Michael Shteyman

Really enjoyed this idea, phrases containing only half of their final word, i.e. KENNEDY HALF DOLLAR playfully interpreted as KENNEDY DOL (DOL = half of DOLLAR). I don't remember exactly this trick before, so it had me stumped for a while as I attempted to figure out where the LAR in DOLLAR went. Great moment of discovery.

Also really enjoyed the construction, a nice piece of work. Caleb takes advantage of the "pinwheel" configuration of themers, and he tosses in a huge amount of nice long fill: ARISTOTLE, FUNNY FARM, FACE VALUE, etc. Normally this would be problematic in the pinwheel configuration because it can confuse the solver as to which entries are the theme answers. But in this case, the confusion just adds to the fun. Smart choice.

To me, SUPER BOWL HALFTIME doesn't feel like a stand-alone chunk — more like a partial. SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW yes, HALFTIME SHOW yes, HALFTIME yes. I went searching for SHOW and was a little confused to find SHOWS crossing SUPERBOWLTI. Would have been great to get a fourth perfect example, GOING OFF HALF COCKED and FLYING AT HALF MAST right on the money.

And I wasn't quite sure of MSNBC's clue: [What's left of TV news?]. Not being an MSNBC watcher, it was curious to read up on the supposed left-wing bias. I wonder how many people this clever-ish clue will be lost on, being equally ignorant as me.

Minor points though, just nits to pick. Very enjoyable solve, a WITT (wish I'd thought of that) Thursday gimmick.

– puzzle by Caleb Emmons

Neat 8-track pattern today. Reminded me of a mini-themed themeless from a while back.

Like puzzles featuring triple-stacked grid spanners, this one leans heavily on a just a few long answers for snazz. Luckily, THIS IS SPINAL TAP hits my sweet spot; one of my favorite movies of all time. I bet there will be others out there like me as well spouting off dozens of lines from the movie to the annoyance of everyone around us. STORAGE SPACES felt more neutral to me, and PRISONER OF WAR had the potential to be grim. Nice job on the clue, spinning it in a positive way by recognizing Sartre and Churchill for the hardships they endured.

Although he sounded familiar, I wasn't sure who STEPHEN JAY GOULD was, so I enjoyed reading up on him. Given all his contributions to evolutionary science, he gets a big thumbs-up for me, as right on target for a NYT audience.

Super tough NW section, the combination of MELISMA and SHOGI (as well as not being sure if GRISTLY was an actual word) turning up the difficulty to 11. I really like learning a new thing (maybe two) from a crossword, but getting too much shoved together can make it less palatable.

Finally, I loved the clue for ASIA. I was vaguely aware of the neat "four Asian Tigers" term describing Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. And learning that the four "Tiger cub economies" covered the more developing economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand is something I quite enjoyed learning.

Nice change of pace, with a cool-looking grid.

– puzzle by Julian Lim