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As a practical joker, I dug this theme. Appropriate for April Fool's Day! Each of the props is a common enough gag, and all of them work well as snappy crossword entries. JOY BUZZER is such a lively entry, plus it has all those juicy Scrabbly letters in it. Fun stuff. I'd make a "pull my finger" joke, but that isn't exactly NYT-suitable. (Sadly.)

Speaking of those Scrabbly letters, Sharon does a nice job of grid layout to facilitate smooth filling around the J and the pair of Zs. The blocks right below the J and the Z help her section things off, and there are a lot of three-letter options ending with either J or Z (TAJ, HAJ, RAJ, etc. / ADZ, TAZ, BOZ, etc.). Really only the MAZDA slot provides any sort of difficulty, and Sharon does well to fill that corner smoothly.

Usually, themers are alternated (left-right-left-right) to reduce the amount of overlap between adjacent pairs, but Sharon aligns both JOYBUZZER and DRIBBLE GLASS to the right. That's less of an issue if there are two (or more) rows between themers, but with just one row here, there are bound to be some challenges. Once you get the nice COBWEB in place along with TAJ, it's pretty hard to avoid something like ABOO.

Another challenge in the west and east sections, curiously. There's no hate in LOVE/HATE for me, just a beautiful entry. And I appreciated getting RIVIERA crossing it! That does constrain the east section though, resulting in NEBR. Similar sort of thing going on in the west, with OEN and ON UP as the price to pay. Overall, I think the trade-offs are reasonable, though. I liked GAG ORDER and IMELDA enough that those little OEN / ON UP bits didn't bother me much.

Finally, beautiful clue for ABBOT. Who but the head of an abbey would be a keeper of brothers? Great repurposing of a common "my brother's keeper" saying.

– puzzle by Sharon Delorme

Cool pattern! Totally brought me back to a Krozel from a few years ago, his famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) LIES puzzle. I was just starting to do the NYT puzzle at the time, and seeing the crazy LIES within the grid (and the clues!) helped hook me into the NYT puzzle and its Thursday trickery.

This one relies on anagramming the T H U S letters formed in black squares:

• CABANAS = HUTS
• SEAL = SHUT
• REAR = TUSH
• ERGO = THUS

Not as memorable a gimmick as the LIES puzzle, but I appreciate the new direction, the attempt to do something different.

Super, super hard grid to fill. I like the touch of no black squares outside of the four "letters," but that sure makes for a rough go. Not only is a triple-stack of 15s required, but another triple-stack of near-15s. I know some solvers will get frustrated with the number of gluey bits; that's to be expected. It's the price to pay for a wacky trick puzzle like this, especially considering that the four "themers" (CABANAS, SEAL, REAR, ERGO) further constrain the puzzle.

Loved so many of the clues:

• [Action of a flipper] had nothing to do with pinball. (A "flipper" is slang for someone who buys houses on the cheap and flips them for profit.)
• The "tag" in [Baseball tag] refers to a tagline. Baseball, America's NATIONAL PASTIME. (It really should be rock climbing, but I'd settle for curling.)
• [Your highness?] made me laugh. "Highness" is a strange way to express ALTITUDE, but it works with a little humor and imagination.
• Perfect that IMDB chooses to rate SPINAL TAP up to 11.

Just as with the LIES puzzles, I imagine some people will love this one as some will hate it. But one thing is hard to doubt — it will be remembered.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel and Timothy Polin

★ Another beautiful Berry construction. He seems to be settling into a 66- or 68-word groove, a sweet (and challenging for mere mortals) spot that allows him to incorporate 15ish excellent answers into the grid while keeping gluey bits to near zero. Also appreciated is his continual testing out of new black square patterns, giving us a new experience every time.

The most impressive aspect of this one is that it features two 14-letter entries — squished together! As Doug Peterson once told me, 14-letter answers (and 13s too) are super difficult to build themelesses around, since they constrain your grid in weird ways. That one black square at the end of a 14 starts fixing your skeleton into place almost immediately, reducing much-prized flexibility.

And the way he does it — 1.) choosing to put minimal space in between the 14s and 2.) separating them with a long word. Daunting task! Typically that would result in either a bit of glue to hold it all together or only neutral word right in the middle. But AFRIKANER is sparkly, made even better by giving us interesting trivia about Charlize Theron's background. Very impressive.

The clever cluing is another of Patrick's hallmarks:

• [Impressive way to turn up?] is an impressive way to describe a figure skating jump.
• Trade secrets are played close to the chest. So is a UKULELE.
• [Magazine that's on the market?] refers to Forbes' coverage of the stock market. And crossing FORBES with STOCK EXCHANGES!

I vowed to try to spread the POWs around, but it's tough to do when Patrick consistently turns out such great work. I made some comments about him using few Scrabbly letters to avoid gluey entries, and now he comes back with three Xs, incorporated with silky smoothness? I'm running out of points to make to give a balanced review.

Hmm. Well, there aren't any "current" entries, i.e. this puzzle could have been equally enjoyed by NYT solvers from 10 years ago? As much as I disavow things that kids these days do (SNAPCHAT, BINGE WATCH, SELFIE STICK), perhaps a light touch of that might have been nice?

Ah, I'm stretching. Fantastic work.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

Nice mini-theme, BACKSLAPS echoing CHEST BUMP. Back when I co-captained an Ultimate frisbee team, I asked the guys on my team not to CHEST BUMP, as it felt too show-off-y to me; against the Spirit of the Game. (The women on the team weren't as interested in CHEST BUMPing.) But it's a super-common practice in the NFL and other sports, and it was a fun way to end the puzzle. Makes me want to devise my own crossword-finishing touchdown dance.

Not a huge number of long answers today, just 12 with eight letters or more, but Ned makes great use of two marquee entries: KISS MY GRITS and PLAY FOOTSIE. The former probably won't be familiar to the younger generations of solvers, but it sure took me back to the days when I was watching every single episode of Alice instead of doing my homework.

I often talk about how multi-word entries are prized, and SCHEDULE A helps me emphasize that point. By itself, it's not going to wow a whole lot of people (except those of us curiously fascinated by tax preparation), but trying to parse the crazy -DULEA ending gave me a great moment of discovery.

Same goes for AMDIAL (adjective describing AMD chips?) and KOPUNCH (Keystone uppercut?). Nice way of snazzing up a shorter entry; taking advantage of crossword entries eliminating spaces by nature.

And although there aren't a huge number of A+ entries, there aren't many gluey bits either. By my count, about 12 assets and 2 liabilities (OLIOS and A VIEW) easily puts this puzzle into my thumbs-up criteria.

Finally, fun to learn a few things. Sikkim is an Indian state, who knew? And I enjoy learning a little Russian. Spasibo and good night!

– puzzle by Ned White

★ Great change of pace M ONday puzzle, the seven days of the week "broken" by black squares a la DAYBREAK. The northwest corner is just about my personal ideal — three very nice long entries, some contemporary entries in LIFE OF PI and PRIUS, a touch of James Bond in MARTINIS, higher education represented firmly with FERMI, and a wordplay clue around OTIS' development of the elevator. Beautiful variety.

Seven theme answers — actually, 14 — is rarely easy to implement. Most often it calls for trade-offs, forcing the constructor to choose certain aspects over others. I like Finn's prioritization of getting the seven days equally spaced, in every other row. That felt spot-on, given how the days within a calendar get laid out. Would have been a bit odd to have MON and TUE entries crammed together in adjacent rows, for example.

It would have been nice if the days were all parts of the longest across answers though — darn those pesky trade-offs! THU being part of NEOLITH and UNITARD was much more elegant to me than WED being part of WOW and EDDA, for example. And COLLAPSED and EASY MONEY not being part of the theme felt slightly awkward.

But you can rarely get everything when you shoot for the moon. I really appreciated Finn's effort to go the extra mile on this difficult construction, decorating the NE corner with the fresh entry, HOT MIC. Totally worth the ONE IN partial.

A final note, regarding PIMP. Will and Joel and I were shooting the breeze at the ACPT last weekend, talking about what types of entries are just fine and which push the line. JAILBAIT was the main one we mulled over, but PIMP also popped up during the discussion. I'm perfectly fine with PIMP, as the "Pimp My Ride" TV show is pretty popular, but I can see how some solvers might be turned off by it. Tricky.

Such a treat to get something different and well-executed on a Monday.

– puzzle by Finn Vigeland

Debut! Really interesting find; five different –OUGH endings, all pronounced differently. Great way to end the puzzle too; an in-the-language phrase incorporating TWO of them. PLOUGH THROUGH, indeed!

Great to see David's ambition here. Sometimes debut NYT puzzles can feel like the author was simply happy to get the grid to work. Completely valid feeling when you're starting out. But David goes way beyond most debuts, incorporating a huge quantity of long fill. MALE MODEL, PIE CRUST, BEDEVILED added a lot of color to my solve — much appreciated.

It's so tough to find the balance between snazziness and cleanliness. Personally, RADIANTS didn't do much for me, and those parallel down arrangements (RADIANTS/PIE CRUSTS and ANO NUEVO/NANOGRAM) often cause trouble in surrounding fill. David does amazingly well in those direct regions, but they do sort of propagate around to cause a little of ISR/MSU/OSE/ISH sort of glue.

Finally, I might have liked a little more consistency in the themers. Although TOUGH ON CRIME is a beautiful answer, it's the only themer with three words. And DOUGHNUT HOLE is an equally snappy answer, but it stuck out for me in a different way, as the only themer where the –OUGH ending didn't actually end the word. David's original themers could have worked well, or something like DOUGH MIXER and TOUGH BREAK could work too.

Then again, some people argue that consistency is overrated. And given my strong liking of the final themer — the only one with two -OUGH enders — I might even agree. I sure do like my DOUGHNUT HOLEs.

Interesting theme, solid execution. Some solvers might complain about the preponderance of esoteric names — CYD, RAMOS, EKBERG — but all the crossings felt fair to me. I like learning a little something in my crosswords.

– puzzle by David J. Lieb

It's a trap, indeed! TRAP gets appropriately hidden in four theme answers. As a bonus, three answers are starred as types of TRAPs: BEAR trap, TOURIST trap, and RAT trap. Sometimes "a single word hidden inside theme answers" gets a bit old, so I appreciated C.C.'s effort to go one step further.

It confused me a bit to run randomly into those BEAR, TOURIST, and RAT traps, so I highlighted them below. Hey! It just dawned on me that I missed an important element: each one of the three types of trap actually intersects a hidden TRAP! It's like the TOURIST actually gets trapped in the TOURIST / TRAP. Very cool.

Honestly, I thought at first that the BEAR, TOURIST, and RAT words were haphazardly placed, but now that I see this extra element, it makes me really appreciate C.C.'s extra effort. It might have been cool to get a fourth trap intersecting the revealer — maybe GREASE at 52-down? — but that might be too much to ask for.

Already, C.C.'s grid is very constrained given where the sets of themers had to go. Not a surprise to see some of the gluey bits right in those crossings — EIS right by the TOURIST / TRAP; ACS and TCI by the RAT / TRAP crossing. Before fully grokking the whole theme, I wasn't sure if those compromises were worth the price, but I have a better appreciation for the difficulties now.

Finally, I like C.C.'s use of cheater squares in the very NE and SW. Tough to cleanly fill triple-stacked 8s. Not a huge fan of OTT and ERG and EIN (especially when combined with EIS) but C.C. sure gives us a lot of good material in those corners. ABC NEWS next to RED STATE and ESCARGOT is a lively stack.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

A great majority of constructors never dip a toe into the quagmire that is the 64-word themeless, so it's that much more impressive that a newer constructor would try it. A really nice result, an open puzzle featuring a lot of long entries.

Great to get a bit of David's personal vibe into the puzzle, the clues for EMMET and LIVIN LA VIDA LOCA clued to "The LEGO Movie" and "Shrek 2." I much appreciated getting a feel of recency via cluing instead of esoteric (to me) answers. So many of the latest pop stars or rap songs go over my head, requiring every single crossing to get. At the ACPT, Sam Ezersky and I talked about how David's earlier GRAND THEFT AUTO: III / MTV MOVIE AWARDS puzzle resonated so strongly with him while I had to struggle with those entries — we had a laugh when realizing that he and David were from the exact same demographic ... very different from mine.

By nature, wide-open areas are often going to require some glue to hold them together. David does amazingly well in most of his grid, spreading out the bits of OCALA, MLLES, ILO such that they're not terribly noticeable. Most impressive is the middle stack of MUHAMMAD ALI / ROLLOVER IRA / WLLIAM TELL with very clean crossings.

The only place I hitched a bit was the SW corner. As much as I liked ALGER HISS / WIRE FENCE and SCIPIO, it's the only corner of the grid where there's a concentration of elements David mentioned: SOO, EER, RFDS. I think I like ZEIT, but I can see how it would feel like prefix-ish or too deep into the German language for some.

Finally, loved many of the clues. [Peer group?] for EYES is brilliant. [Pen that's no longer used] refers to a penitentiary = ALCATRAZ. And [Wheel of Fortune] as part of the TAROT deck is a great misdirect.

– puzzle by David Phillips

I find big stacks to be visually stunning, but they can often require way too much gloop holding them together, leaving me feeling like I just ate a juicy steak which turned out to be full of gristle. MAS, the stack-master, does a nice job today of putting together four nice grid-spanners with using only OLEAN, SERI, ONE AT, and SSTS to bind them. That might seem like a lot to some, but as far as quad-stacks go, it's actually pretty good.

And although none of the grid-spanners are unbelievably sizzling, SALES ASSISTANTS sure gets a beautiful clue to help it sing. [Counter intelligence?] is so clever, referring to a person working a sales counter.

I also appreciated how much connectivity there is through the puzzle. A few weeks ago, Will made a comment about not accepting any more of a particular grid skeleton because of grid flow issues, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Here, MAS does a great job of connecting the top, middle, and bottom thirds together with long answers. SONNETEERS and ENCOURAGED are a bit neutral for my taste, but CAR ANTENNA sure sings. TETRIS also plays a nice role in grid flow, plus it has a brilliant clue: [Fitting entertainment at an arcade?] refers to how a player must fit TETRIS blocks together.

I appreciate some Scrabbly letters in a puzzle, especially in one where the construction difficulties are so high. Three Xs and a J add a lot of color. Given all the Scrabbly goodness though, I might have preferred just two Xs, which would have reduced the type of XENO (prefix) and REXES (odd plural) entries. Normally those are too minor to even be mentioned, but since the middle quad-stack already requires a couple of gluey entries, I'd prefer to see the rest of the puzzle err on the side of cleanliness.

Overall, quite a nice construction which (unlike many triple- and quad-stacks) actually adheres to my themeless criteria. Roughly 11 assets - five liabilities + maybe three bonus points for visual impact = a quality themeless.

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

Seven theme answers which "turn up," i.e. they become complete by reversing back into themselves. GLUTEN FREE B becomes GLUTEN FREE B(EER) when you hit B and bounce back upward, thus completing the entry. NOW WHERE WER becomes NOW WHERE WER(E WE), DO EXACTLY AS I (SAY), etc.

A relatively easy construction (as far as 140-word Sundays go), but finding theme answers was tricky. That is, until I dove back into the world of computer programming, spurred on by Bob Klahn and the needs of our CrosSynergy syndicate. It had been a few years since my last experience with Pascal and C++, so getting started again was quite a struggle. Turns out technology is vastly different from 15 years ago, dang it!

Wrenching myself away from my beloved arrays in favor of "lists" and "dictionaries" proved a bit puzzling, but now that I'm climbing my way up the learning curve, I'm finding Python to be more intuitive, akin to working on a Mac vs. a PC. It's pretty cool to be able to write code to find "all words whose last three letters reversed match the previous three letters" or similar such query.

All in all though, programming is just another tool, in the same way that a Crossword Compiler, or Excel, or even a computer is a tool. Finding that FREE B(EER) and ONE TO (TEN) fit my criteria was a good start, but FREEB and ONETO were much too short to use as themers. Good thing a close friend of mine is on a quest to find decent GLUTEN FREE B(EER)! He and I have done many taste tests, and ON A SCALE FROM ONE TO (TEN), most of them rate about a negative four hundred and twenty nine.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Debut! And what a debut. Jim and I had many discussions about this one, that fact alone making it a successful puzzle. Five Beatles songs — all 15 letters long — given a wacky interpretation, plus a kicker, the FOUR of WHEN IM SIXTY FOUR combined to form the FAB FOUR. Very cool idea.

Four grid-spanners are hard enough to do. I've commented many times on all the difficulties that arise with so many down entries that must interact with two or more grid-spanners. Including FIVE of them, two pairs each double-stacked, is an order of magnitude more difficult. It certainly provides a neat visual impact, akin to wide-open themeless puzzles. Amusing that this puzzle reminded me of another one, which just happened to have a double-stacked pair of grid-spanners ending in ALEX!

As Will mentioned, there are some compromises that the stacks force. For me, it was only really noticeable in the SE and NW corners where there's a concentration of gluey answers. And as to "Monday-like" answers, I think most anything is fair game — if the crossings are gettable. I LOVE the entry QUANT, for example, as it's both a memorable piece of finance lingo and inferable just by itself (it's slang for a "quantitative person").

LISLE crossing AVILA might be fair game in a themeless, but more a source of grumbling on a Monday.

This puzzle will likely play super strongly to the generation that grew up with the Beatles. I can certainly appreciate all the great feelings — it's like what the Simpsons or Monty Python do for me. Personally, not knowing SHES LEAVING HOME made me wonder if it would have been better to have just four themers (which would go along with FAB FOUR!), but I'm sure this song plays as well as the others to Beatles fans like Jim.

Memorable first puzzle; hoping to see more from Alex.

– puzzle by Alex Silverman

Jim and I had another interesting discussion, comparing this puzzle's level of innovation to that of yesterday's. I like stunt puzzles once in a while, and I especially like them when they break completely new ground, or at least push puzzledom in a way that I hadn't quite imagined.

Super, super tough to only work with EIGHT letters within a single grid. It's fairly easy to set up, requiring just a simple program to eliminate words from one's list containing the letters to be excluded. What's much more difficult is how to set up one's grid skeleton in order to take advantage of long entries that are still allowable. Bruce did a great job of featuring these marquee answers — STARTER SET, EASTER EGGS, RAT TERRIER, THAT'S GREAT are all snappy.

It's so difficult to avoid gluey bits with this sort of stunt. All puzzles contain some sort of trade-offs, and this one is on the far extreme, a crazy-hard constraint requiring a large number of crunchier entries. I'm sure there will be a lot of debate as to whether it was worth it.

Having a more impactful revealer would have been really nice. Something akin to ONLY YOU for a puzzle with only Us as vowels (never mind the O in ONLY. Ahem.) ties a stunt puzzle together nicely. Perhaps if FOUR were the revealer, and the puzzle used only the letters F, O, U, R? EIGHT by itself felt a bit arbitrary, as did the selection of what other three letters were to be used.

Because the idea is more of an improvement than an innovation, it felt like the stunt didn't pack quite the punch of yesterday's puzzle. But I appreciate Bruce's pushing of the envelope.

ADDED NOTE: Astute reader Andy Lin wrote in, saying that people who don't like today's puzzle ought to be called HAIGHTERS. Could have fit as a secondary revealer!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

I had to look up BILATERAL / SYMMETRY, wondering if it really described entries like MADEMAD (MAD is identical on either side of the middle E). To Joel's point, wouldn't MADEDAM be more descriptive of BILATERAL SYMMETRY? According to one dictionary, though:

BILATERAL SYMMETRY: the property of being divisible into symmetrical halves on either side of a unique plane.

Fair enough!

It did confuse me a bit that BUTTERFLY and TAJ MAHAL, while also adhering to BILATERAL SYMMETRY, don't seem consistent with MADEMAD. It did make me imagine what a BUTTERFLY with one wing flipped would look like, i.e. the outer edge of one wing attached to its body. Kooky.

Aside from my OCD wonderings, another solid construction from Joel. During a fun chat at the ACPT, I really appreciated hearing his perspective about variety in shorter answers. Especially for every-day puzzlers, it's cool to see less-often used entries like BAD SPOT, UM OKAY, MAD MEN and even BRYAN, which can be clued in so many different ways. I like the fresh feel of Joel's grids. (I didn't notice the "dupe" of MAD until Joel mentioned it, and I agree with him that it doesn't matter.)

I did feel like it was odd that some seven-letter across answers — especially ONEOFUS and CHALUPA — weren't themers. Similarly, I originally missed that GIORGIO was a themer. Maybe shading instead of clue starring would have helped. Or, placing the themers so that they were bilaterally symmetric in the grid (using left-right mirror symmetry) would have been particularly nice.

Finally, some great clues:

• [Passing concerns …] aren't transitory worries, but concerns for NFL QBs = TDS.
• [Kings are part of it …] has nothing to do with the Bible or history, but the NBA's Sacramento Kings.
• Chemistry! I know some solvers pull their hair out when seeing organic chemistry nomenclature, but I personally love it. Not that I know the structure of LSD off the top of my head, but it's fun to reason out what it possibly could be.
• As a huge Blues Brothers fan, I ignored the given clue and pretended it was [___ Jake, the best of Belushi's many awesome roles].

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

Great revealer, YOU GO YOUR WAY … ENIM OG LLI DNA. Er, AND ILL GO MINE. We've seen plenty of BACKWARD-style puzzles, enough that I cringe at the thought of having to fix up all the answers so that our database of entries is kept clean, but I can't remember a revealer I've liked so much. Spot on.

Nice touch on ESSE and MOM and ATTA across the center too. Perfect for symmetry, as the center row could arguably be included in either the top or the bottom half. Best to make those entries so they could fit with either.

And what an impressively clean construction. This sort of stunt puzzle can be awfully tough — without autofill as a tool to tell you if a section can be theoretically filled or not, the construction requires more of a letter-by-letter approach. I was surprised that I couldn't find much of anything to point out as glue.

Perhaps some may grouse at LBOS, especially crossing OBIE, but I think it's not only fair game but desirable. LBOS (leveraged buyouts) aren't as huge today as during the late 20^th century buyout boom, but I find it to be important enough that educated solvers really ought to know it.

I often suggest to constructors that less is more. Many of them can't get their head around that idea. Why not put as much themage in as possible, right? I appreciate Joe's thoughtful approach toward fairness, but I felt like BACKWARD gave away the game too early and easily. I would have given this the Puzzle of the Week based on the awesome revealer alone, but the double BACKWARD took away from the a-ha moment for me.

Still, a very impressive construction on a tough set of constraints; clean as a whistle.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel and Peter Collins

ML's first solo themeless! Unusual layout, featuring six grid-spanners, laid out in a criss-cross style. This type of arrangement is tough to execute on cleanly, as every region around two crossing grid-spanners becomes highly constrained. And given that there are eight such intersections, which means that the entire puzzle faces tough constraints all over.

WAHOO! ML does quite well in smoothing out the short stuff holding the puzzle together. There's been some Facebook chatter about STRO, but I think it's a reasonable enough answer, especially for those fans in Houston. I imagine people not in Seattle would think I'm crazy for clueing THEMS as [Seattle's MLB team] = THE M'S, but it's super common here.

Really the only place I found tough was the south. I liked learning a tidbit about SAINT BEDE — the cross-reference works well because the answers are so close to each other — but not being familiar with BARI as an Italian port made the B a guess for me. There's an argument to be made that as an educated solver, I really ought to have known one of them. Grumble grumble, fine!

Ah, there was the KRIS KROS crisscross. KRIS felt much more like a real name of course, but END ON felt much more apt than END IN for [Finish with]. Darn my gullibility when it comes to B-list celebs!

Finally, A STROKE OF GENIUS regarding A STROKE OF GENIUS. Themelesses featuring grid-spanners rely on the long entries to be stellar, since there usually isn't much else of note besides them. Not only is A STROKE OF GENIUS fantastic in itself, but it's a devious trap. All the first letters were clued so easily that I quickly had ASTRO- as a start. So of course, [Something that's brilliant] had to be some sort of ASTRONOMICAL phenomenon, right? Just loved this trap, set up and sprung so fiendishly for a unique a-ha moment.

Hoping to see more of ML's byline on themelesses, and more diversity within themeless constructors in general. It would have never occurred to me to feature ELIZABETH WARREN or KROS — aaugh, KRIS! Kardashian — for example, so I like getting into the mind of someone who thinks very differently from me.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo

★ Along with others from this past week, this puzzle brings out the differences Jim and I have around puzzles. Monday's puzzle sizzled for Jim since it brought back great Beatles memories and feelings for him. Not as much for me, as I appreciate the Beatles more from a historical perspective.

The Simpsons trigger something primal in me, a reminiscence of great times as a kid, seeing this ground-breaking cartoon series emerge and evolve. Seeing NED and OKELY DOKELY really did it for me — NED is a wonderfully tragic, complex character who started as a Bible-thumping stereotype but who has now lost his wife, questioned his faith, and struggled with raising two young kids — but those answers couldn't possibly have done anything for a non-Simpsons watcher. This puzzle sang for me, but it's definitely not going to be everyone's POW choice.

So many aspects of this puzzle hit for me. With roughly 14 asset entries and 4 liabilities, it easily fits into my "what makes a good themeless" criteria. Sure, things like ARY undoubtedly take away from the solving experience, but when you pack in such stellar entries like ELEANOR RIGBY, BOOK EM, THE CLASH, BELIEVE YOU ME and the marketing blooper Graham CRACKOS, I say OH COME NOW! The tradeoffs are more than worth it.

And the cluing. BABYSIT by itself is a ho-hum answer, but a great clue can turn a neutral entry into an asset. [It's easy to do for an angel] had to be FLY or HAUNT PEOPLE AND TORTURE THEM FOR THEIR MISDEEDS, right? Nope, the "angel" refers to an angel child, one easy to watch over.

[Quick move?] nicely uses the convention of "shortly" or "quick" or "in brief" to denote an abbreviation or shortening.

[Step on a scale] avoids the giveaway question mark, referring to a step on the musical scale, not stepping on a physical scale.

I recognize that the specificity of the grid entries isn't great for a huge audience with broad tastes, but man oh man was it spot-on for me. Nice to have the huge variety in constructors — if you don't like today's, it's likely you'll enjoy tomorrow's or that of the day after.

– puzzle by Damon J. Gulczynski

C.C. and Don's Sunday debut! And what a devious idea, a rebus variant that I haven't quite seen before. There have been ones which require you to read the rebus answers twice (in different ways), some where the double letter rebuses were used to double both across and down answers, and many that require reading rebus squares differently across vs. down, but I can't remember anything quite like this.

How to even describe it? Six-letter answers where letters #1 and #2 are identical to letters #4 and #5, i.e. PAYPAL, shown in the grid as PAYL. Perfect title, DOUBLE DOWN, describing the method in which those theme answers must be interpreted. It's tough enough to find a symmetrical set of themers answers that work, so it's impressive that Don and C.C. found such colorful ones as LAUNCH PARTY and PAPER TRAIL and EVENING STAR. HEART WARMING indeed.

As I've mentioned many times, puzzles using crossing themers are tough to fill. This one is even more difficult, because there's very little flexibility in choosing the three-letter answers. With less ambitious ideas, the constructor can often change what the crossing answer is, thus easing the way for smoother fill when necessary. Not so much here, as the entire grid is built around specific placements, i.e. the pair of DIRTY LINEN and PA(YL) are fixed into place like concrete. Alternates for DIRTY LINEN do exist (isn't DIRTY LAUNDRY much more common?), but there aren't many.

So, not a surprise to see that the gluiest bits came around those intersections. Wasn't sure what an AGON was for example, but I as I was solving, I was prepared to encounter that sort of oddball thing around the thematic crossings. ARB will get similar grumbling from some, but I actually love this particular answer. It makes me think about big-headed finance guys brag about driving their ARBs and QUANTs in order to pull off some crazy LBO. (And I smile when the deal fails miserably.)

I would have liked TACO SALAD and FREE RANGE to not be as long as DIRT(YL)INEN and PAPE(RT)RAIL, especially given the difficulty of sussing out the theme. Took me well over twice as long as usual to solve.

Very neat idea, excellent a-ha moment when I (finally) caught on. Definitely some compromises in filling, but some of it's to be expected given the construction's difficulty level.

– puzzle by Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel

Fun start to the week, LADIES FIRST applied to common "(man) AND (woman)" phrases for a role reversal. Nice construction too, very little glue required — keeping a five-themer puzzle to just MTG is impressive.

What I liked the best about this one was some of the unusual cluing. It's tough to come up with fresh clues for 3-, 4-, and 5-letter words that have been used hundreds of times before. But several stand out today:

• "Mr. Jock, TV quiz Ph.D., bags few lynx" is a new pangram to me. Bizarrely fun.
• Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew that Odin's steed had an unusual quality. Eight legs!
• I would have sworn OPEC's O stood for OIL. (It's actually "Organization.") Great way to add sizzle to an otherwise neutral word.

A few weeks ago, Joel suggested to me that I could better use 5-7 letter entries for flavor. This puzzle is a good example of that. It's not often you see OJIBWA in a puzzle due to its J and weird consonant pattern. Paul BUNYAN doesn't get a lot of play. Even COUSIN is relatively rare within crosswords.

The six-letter entries often get underutilized. Every crossword depends on the short stuff to hold a grid together, and most constructors lean heavily on 8+ letter entries for color. The 6-7 letter entries are a potential gold mine.

Finally, I understand the desire to make a Monday puzzle as accessible to novice solvers, but I think the "(hint: 59-Across") takes away from the whimsy of the theme. I would have liked solvers to be given more credit for their ability to hold out until the revealer to figure out what's going on.

Then again, Doug Peterson told me a few weeks ago that many solvers often give up if they can't figure out … 1-Across. Such a difficult tightrope act, balancing cleverness with simplicity.

– puzzle by Tom McCoy

At first I was underwhelmed by the S S concept. Super easy to find two-word phrases that fit this pattern, right? But I've been down this road before, missing the additional layer. I had to really scratch my head before realizing that Gerry incorporates a second level, the second vowel of each theme pair being A E I O U, in that order. Much harder to do.

But really, is it THAT hard? I was curious, so I searched for possible alternates for the middle SI* SI* entry. After 15 minutes of searching, the only other good ones I could find were SIX SIGMA and SINGLE SIDED. I love SIX SIGMA because it relates to so many things that interest me: statistics, quality control, and manufacturing. But it doesn't work as a central answer, because of its even-numbered length. You could enlarge the grid from 15 to 16 columns in order to accommodate, but I think enlarging a grid ought to be reserved for must-need cases only.

I liked much of the longer fill. Although I didn't remember who he was, Bronko NAGURSKI is an interesting figure in football history with a colorful name. Sheryl Sandberg's LEAN IN was on the non-fiction bestseller list. I CHING and ARTISTES are nice too.

Very difficult construction, a low word count (72) featuring a lot of mid-length material. Cleanliness does not come easily on this type of layout. Been a long time since I've seen EXC … except? Exceptional? Exchequer? But aside from a handful of gluey bits, I liked a lot of the MOTT ST / BOLERO / OUTGUN fill.

It's too bad there's not a more explicit way of pointing out how the theme combines initialisms AND a vowel progression. Generally, I like giving solvers the opportunity to discover the cleverness in a puzzle themselves, but this is an example where I fear that many people will never see it.

– puzzle by Gerry Wildenberg

Two of crossword's young guns team up for a two-fer today, theme answers which contain two words, each of which can precede CARD. This type of "both words can precede" theme sometimes results in tortured-sounding themers — it's a tough constraint to work with — so it's a good sign that I didn't pick up the gimmick until the very end. CREDIT REPORT, HOLE PUNCH, NAME CALLING, TRADING POST, and HIGH SCORE are all fairly colorful entries.

I also enjoyed getting a younger vibe to the puzzle, executed in a manner accessible to not just Alex and Sam's generation. VIP ROOM is great fill, and although it's something I'd doubtful ever get access to in real life, it was immediately understandable. CADDY clued as the nickname for Cadillac was nice, too. And ["Oh puh-leeze!" facial expression] for EYEROLL made me long for the (good) OLD DAYS. (In a good way, I promise.)

It was a curious SMASH-UP of cool entries like BIG PAPI and ones that didn't quite hit home for me. DO IT NOW felt a bit contrived, and the outdated ROZ / RAZR felt like something us 40-somethings would put into a puzzle. ACEY is something I usually try to avoid because it can really only be clued in one way. And in a puzzle about cards, it threw me off, making me wonder if it was part of the theme somehow.

Speaking of that, although I liked the implied phrases of CREDIT (card), PUNCH (card), CALLING (card), etc., I found it odd that HOLE (card) and HIGH (card) were related to the revealer, while the others were not. Felt like there was untapped potential somehow, perhaps to use those in a way so the puzzle ended with a bigger bang than PAIR OF CARDS, which sounds like a dictionary definition.

Overall, a good amount of nice material on a tough construction. As Alex mentioned, ending with a 12-letter entry creates all sorts of difficulties. I particularly liked the creativity in where they placed PAIRS OF CARDS; unusual.

– puzzle by Alex Vratsanos and Sam Ezersky

Ah, the quip puzzle. A great quote puzzle must be 1.) funny / whimsical and 2.) grammatically untortured. The first criteria is so subjective, but the second is much less so.

Especially when making up your own quip, it's too easy to add an extra "the" or pluralize a word to make the crossword symmetry work. I appreciate how nicely this quote flows. It also breaks up pretty nicely, skipping to the next line when a semi-natural break occurs. That's tough to do and still adhere to regular crossword symmetry.

I found the solve tougher than a usual Thursday, since 1.) you have to solve a quip puzzle with only the downs at first and 2.) the downs were full of esoteric names. I was super thankful of my pharma background, as I entered ZYRTEC just off the T. Then I was super grumpy when I realized ZYRTEC is an allergy medicine. D'oh! Toward the end, CIMINO obscured the starts of parts 3 and 4 of the quip, making the puzzle very difficult for me. I am glad to learn more about a film director I really should have known anyway.

Some really nice clues:

• SYNERGY always makes me laugh, as it's one of those terms MBAs toss around. (Not just stereotypically, unfortunately.) So I got a chuckle when I saw [Hoped-for collaboration result].
• The syntax on [Way-out challenge?] felt a bit off, but it's a fun way to get at getting out of a MAZE.
• MODISTE is such a fun, artsy word, and the [Couturier] clue gave me a nice challenge. Those JUICY COUTURE sweat suits apparently have infiltrated my psyche, darn it.
• At the ACPT, Will slyly mentioned that David tends to work in a lot of 18-year old teenage boy material. He recently committed to my alma mater, and I wish him many hot DATES. Hopefully that part of Stanford campus life has changed since I was there. Yes, it must have been the campus culture of non-dating. Couldn't have been me.

– puzzle by David Steinberg and Bruce Leban

Joe is one of a very small handful of constructors who seriously pushes boundaries. Like many of his other experiments, the direction of today's puzzle will awe some and cause eye-rolling in others.

It's hard enough to construct an entertaining 64-word puzzle. Getting down to so few words often comes with compromises, like excessive gluey bits that detract from the solving experience. Often, I use "cheater squares," i.e. extra black squares which don't affect a puzzle's word count, in order to smooth things out.

Joe goes the opposite way today, using a near-record-low number of black squares. There have only been four NYT puzzles using fewer blocks, three of them written by … Joe Krozel. They all come with a big visual impact, a how-the-heck-is-that-possible kind of first impression. I mean, look at all the white space!

All of Joe's efforts in this arena use four pairs of intersecting double-stacked 15s. Joe mentioned to me that you get a lot of flexibility when you only have to worry about letter pairs (as opposed to letter triplets, in triple-stacks), and that's why he relies on this basic skeleton.

I was impressed at how nice the grid-spanners were. There's a danger that a constructor will be happy that they just got the dang grid filled, period. But Joe features such great stuff as STINK STANK STUNK!, AUTOMATIC WEAPON, and STUCK TO ONES RIBS. CONFERENCE TABLE feels a bit off without "room" in the middle of the phrases, but it's still a reasonable answer.

Sure, there are compromises in the shorter entries. It's impossible not to notice. (I guessed wrong on the FIORE / KINER crossing, and that was very unsatisfying.) I wouldn't want a construction like this every week, or even once a month, but every once in a while, I really enjoy the amazement of seeing a constructor pull off something I'm not sure I could do. I'm really curious to see the next step in this evolution — can a similar feat be pulled off with less than the maximum number of gluey entries I usually like in a themeless (around 5)? My money's on Joe.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel

★ I love recognizing puzzles that I think are outstanding — great fun to gush about something I really enjoy. Identifying a Puzzle of the Week makes me very happy, and I make a conscious effort to spread out the POW!s to different constructors. Patrick makes this so hard, since most of his puzzles are very good to fantastic.

I find simple sound change puzzles — "ch" to "sh" today — difficult to gush over; just personal preference. But during my solve I kept on noting great things. And in the end, I found it impossible not to give him the POW. It's easy to wow me with a lively themeless or a kooky Thursday, but to make me say I loved a basic sound change puzzle is a near miracle.

Here are the notes I took during my solve:

1. Ooh, Patrick Berry!
2. The title ... oh no, I hope it's not just a simple sound change puzzle.
3. Patrick used a LOT of cheater squares in this puzzle. He's usually not shy about deploying them — and I totally agree with that — but eight cheaters is a lot. It makes the grid uglyish.
4. Wait. This is a 136-word Sunday puzzle? Surely that means Patrick's going to require a few more compromises in his fill than usual (that is, more than zero).
5. [Indicator of freshness?] = SLAP. Fun and funny! Quintessential Berry-type cluing.
6. Neat trivia for RAF. "Dambusters" = a great nickname.
7. [Dead man walking?] for GHOST is fantastic.
8. No wait! [Compact containers] made me think of mini-Tupperware. But PURSES are "containers holding women's compacts." Brilliant!
9. Uh oh, uncovering my first themer. SHEEP THRILLS ... hey! That's actually funny.
10. Next themer. MUSH TO MY SURPRISE ... that's hilarious!
11. MOSHER … it is in the dictionary, but I've never heard anyone use it. Still, it's the only iffy entry in the grid.
12. VITTLES / POSEUR along with LETS / ROLL! = a fantastic corner.
13. Look how much excellent mid-length (6 or 7-letter) fill Patrick used! BE SAFE, NOW NOW, TAKETH, IN FOR IT. That's great bonus material.

Sorry, other constructors this week. Making a puzzle easy enough to play to a wide crowd AND interesting/funny enough to entertain veteran solvers is really impressive.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

Synonyms for [Left speechless]; DUMBSTRUCK and GOBSMACKED are really lively words. I hadn't heard of KICKED IN THE HEAD in this sense, but apparently it was a phrase that came into widespread use back in Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.'s day. Nice throwback.

For me, BLEW AWAY and KNOCKED FOR A LOOP weren't as colorful as the others, as they both felt slightly off — BLOWN AWAY and THROWN FOR A LOOP, yeah? If only the latter options has worked for crossword symmetry.

People often ask me what I mean by "colorful." It's a completely subjective term, but for me, Johanna's upper right corner exemplifies the word. TAKE THAT! / HOOKAH / HECK YES! are all entries I'd be happy to see in a themelesses. They're fun to say, and they evoke vivid images in my mind. (Although smoking flavored tobacco out of a HOOKAH was much more fun in idea than in taste. And aftertaste.)

That corner also exemplifies the Constructor's Dilemma. On one side of the spectrum, you can make part of your grid perfectly smooth, but it comes out with no zing. On the other side, you can jam-pack it with great material, but that usually requires some gluey entries to hold it together. Is all the great fill up there worth TRA and CIEL/TIA crossing? I think so, but there's merit to the argument that the intersection of two foreign words — one requiring a pretty good background in French — isn't desirable.

Finally, really nice job with filling the west and east sections. Typically those are the hardest spots to get smooth in this configuration (two 15-letter entries in the middle of the grid). Having three consecutive down answers that intersect two themers, i.e. 25-D, 26-D, 27-D, is tough. Excellent work to escape both areas with only an ECONO prefix.

– puzzle by Johanna Fenimore