Thumbnails

★ I love APRIL FOOL's day. It's so rewarding to build a false door, so my kids think they've been Cask of Amontillado-ed, or put on an elaborate parental replacement scheme, or stage a MEN IN BLACK memory wipe.

This fool has already set aside a future therapy fund.

APRIL FOOL means that all bets are off in the crossworld. There have been some jokes, screwy clues, sheer inanity, and even fake news. My favorites, though, are the rule-breakers. Repeated words! Letters outside the grid! Missing black squares! What will kooky constructors think of next? (Here are all the NYT puzzles from April 1 over the years.)

My Spidey-sense tingled immediately, with [Pikachu's cry in Pokemon]. Being a gigantic dork, I knew immediately that this was PIII-KAAA-CHUUU!!! Surely that couldn't be the answer though, since there were only seven squares.

Sadly, that was my actual thought process.

So much fun to see the "entry cannot be used the clue" rule broken over and over. The scientific name for the bison = BISON BISON was doubly fun. And this history (re)buff had to wait for all the crosses to figure out the fourth president after ADAMS. Or did he?!

(He did.)

I wondered if it would have been great for every clue break this long-standing crossword rule, but that would have been too much. The unpredictability is exactly what entertained me.

That also gave Joel and Wyna the freedom to go wild with fill and especially wordplay. [It charges for cleaning], as in how a ROOMBA electrically charges. REALTORS have (house) lots to deal with. [Cell info] these days is one's telephone number … unless it's the DNA in one's cells.

Along with the headlining of my favorite makers, ADAM SAVAGE, this puzzle gave me delightful JAMAIS VU.

– puzzle by Wyna Liu and Joel Fagliano

THE GIRTH OF VENUS … I wonder how many irate emails we'll get today.

Crossword constructors have long relied on REO to make grids work. Such useful letters! I enjoyed the insidery nod today with the REO BALLOON — which also plays on the REO Flying Cloud! I might be one of the few people grinning at that connection, but maybe I can float this fun idea into more people's consciousness.

REO BALLOON worked well for a second reason: you can easily confuse O and D with a casual glance. (If you're a parent of a six-year-old still working on his letters, you can easily confuse his Q and his … is that an ampersand?) It's perfect for an art FORGERY.

It would have been great to have others so closely disguised. I'm sure there would be some fights in the Museum of Modern Art if they labeled van Gogh's masterpiece as THE STARRY FIGHT. Maybe THE CREATION OF A DAY is easier to overlook since that switch comes at the end, but Y and M are tough to confuse.

Tricky decisions. Jeremy and Tracy's point about random letter changes feeling inelegant is well-taken. Having them spell out something is appealing. FORGERY is apt for the theme, and getting those letters to swap in with the limited number of uber-recognizable paintings is a tough job.

It doesn't feel amazing, but getting FORGERY to pop out is interesting. Not at all a BIG OOF (which apparently is what the kids say these days?), as I appreciated hearing about Jeremy and Tracy's creative process.

– puzzle by Jeremy Newton and Tracy Gray

It's unusual to have a vowel progression focused on short vowel sounds, because long vowel sounds make it so much easier to realize what's happening. I enjoyed the change of pace ... PACE, PEACE, PICE — dammit!

This genre is so well-mined in crosswords that it takes something extra to help a theme rise out of the muck ... MACK, MECK — blargh!

Drastic spelling changes can help, although that's a double-edged sword. I tend to field many "what is this theme?" questions for some big VMs. Without a revealer to explain what's going on, you depend on your five words to get the idea across.

A more straightforward approach like PACK animal, PECK on the cheek, PICK six, POCK marked, PUCK handling makes the theme abundantly clear, but it's so dull that solvers would pack it in.

Lewis Rothlein and I tried to do something completely different in this genre, riffing on BLANDER, BLENDER, BLINDER, BLONDER, BLUNDER. Although not a blunder, it was blander than I'd hoped.

Mondays rarely bring wordplay joy in clues, so I was ecstatic to be treated to a POGO STICK as a device for someone who's "hopping mad." My kids are yo-yo mad right now, and I fear the emergency room visits when POGO STICK mania arrives.

I usually don't notice (or care about) abbreviations in a grid, but an editor recently asked me to reduce my usage, as they can be seen as inelegant. TLDR, with a plethora of IPOS IPA OMG INPJS SCOTUS CIA DKNY, I can see the point.

Although the theme didn't wow me, David did so well working in SPIN JOB, SUNDIAL, DR SEUSS, YOGI BERRA bonuses for those tired of this AbstEmIOUs genre. And his comments always crack me up!

– puzzle by David Distenfeld

★ What a great take on the "what connects these things?" genre! The mainstream approach would employ phrases like FROZEN PIZZA, GREAT NEWS, and ICE ICE BABY, tied together by DELIVER THE GOODS (with a clue alluding to the last words of each phrase). That's adequate, though it wouldn't deliver a strong aha for "things that can be delivered." Using all movies helps makes this memorable.

I did wonder at first, why movies? Yes, DELIVERANCE is a movie, so it kinda sorta makes sense to have the other themers be movies. It was a little strange, though, that BROADCAST NEWS and ROSEMARY'S BABY can be delivered, whereas you could hardly order a MYSTIC PIZZA from—

Thankfully, someone in the theater shushed that annoying guy so everyone else could sit back and enjoy the solve. Clean grid, superbly newb-friendly, with a theme that's both interesting and ties to one of the constructors' main interests?

Two thumbs up.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels and Christina Iverson

At the surface level, this might look like an impossible construction challenge. How the heck could you possibly integrate those special TMI/TMI boxes?

Brandon's technique is effective, and there are a couple of other hacks, too. That only gets you to the starting gate, though. Think about the limited selection that the TMI string forces. There aren't many solid phrases to choose from, and most are long. The shortest ones I could find were HOT MIC and T MINUS. Trying to stack pairs of long themers — with limited flexibility to swap others in and out — will usually cause INKSPOTS all over your grid.

Excellent results, particularly in the opening corner. BREASTMILK / HOTMICS, with silky crossings everywhere, is a reason to say TA-DA!

The other two stacks also worked well, although I could see solvers saying I'M SORE to the AVILA / EVEL crossing. Additionally, it's not great to use the now-defunct PAC TEN, but one could make a case that it's historically significant.

I didn't get a sharp aha moment from the revealer — OVERSHARING doesn't indicate extra-long TMIs to me — but it was nice to get GASBAG as a wink-wink bonus in the upper right.

– puzzle by Brandon Koppy

With such juggernauts as Matt Amodio, Amy Schneider, and Mattea Roach looming large in Jeopardy! ToC, seeing the unheralded Sam Buttrey upset the heavily-favored Amodio was awesome. Almost as fun as watching Sam floss!

Great idea to play on disguisable pairs: BILL and TED, LAUREL and HARDY, PENN and TELLER, CHIP and DALE. At first glance, TED might seem like a cheat, but the TED in TED Talks is not named after a guy named Ted, but based on the "convergence of the fields of technology, education, and design."

There aren't many other uber-famous duos that could work this way. Good luck disguising BERT and ERNIE or BONNIE and CLYDE!

We were going to highlight the entries to make them easier to pick out, but that looked a right mess. My anality typically demands some semblance of themer symmetry, but there's something to be said for being a RENEGADE.

It would also have been odd to mix the pairs for the sake of symmetry. LAUREL and TELLER would be one awkward comedy duo.

Throwing symmetry to the wind allowed for freedom in filling, too. Fun to get the symmetrically placed ROAD RAGE and RENEGADE. Sam's a wild man!

I would comment on NINEVEH, but this entry coming from a master of trivia seems just about right.

I'm eager to see what a person of Sam's talents has on his bucket list. Perhaps he'll be up for a [Salad including apples and celery]-type crossword review collaboration …

– puzzle by Sam Buttrey

A tale of two puzzles today, for every KID GLOVES we get MOLTEN LAVA. SWEET TALK crossing a MIND BENDER. Was it EASY PEASY, or was THAT'S A TALL ORDER more appropriate? It reminded me why I love Brad Pitt at his best, seamlessly mixing humor and crazy action. DODGED A BULLET is perfect.

Interesting grid pattern, almost hinting at a scope sight, so appropriate to the central DODGED A BULLET. The chunks of black squares in the upper left and lower right even round off the edges, making the puzzle circular(ish). They also help immensely in filling those huge regions — intersecting two stacks of longish answers is so difficult without some cheater squares.

Solid results, too. HAM IT UP / TOP BANANA are indeed DELIGHTS, and while IPOS could have been a valuable 7-letter slot without all those cheater squares, it's hardly a TORPID result.

I fell into the [Dough in Mexico] = PESO trap. Sometimes traps feel like a constructor thumbing their nose at you, but given that PESO and MASA only share one letter, it was easy enough to correct my mistaken assumption with a smile.

I pondered over the OVAL clue. [Cameo appearance?] indicates wordplay mischief. It must mean a cameo ring … are all cameo rings OVAL? Many are, but ...

Haters of "The Simpsons" won't be happy to see both WOO-HOO and GROIN clued referencing the show, but my juvenile sense of humor made me laugh right along with Homer Simpson and Lindsey.

– puzzle by Lindsey Hobbs

Interesting riff on the "black square pyramid" low word count design that we've seen more and more and more recently. I enjoy watching the evolution of a themeless design motif as it progresses from its birth to maturity to beyond.

There are a ton of black squares today, but I enjoyed the gentle curve formed by the five solo squares from lower left to upper right. Although certain editors don't like single-corner black squares, it's completely subjective.

This puzzle qualifies for our fewest words page, though many of the other 60-worders have a ton more white space. I remember this Kevin Der masterpiece with awe; a ground-breaking achievement at the time. That's not to say I like records for their own sake—although there's something amazing about certain achievements, they don't always make for the most pleasurable solves.

I appreciate that Sid worked in an above-average number of long slots. That's sometimes difficult with these low-word counters, so it was great to be treated to evocative entries like COAL MINER, BEER BONGS, ART SCENES. I wasn't impressed by more neutral entries like ENTWINES and CANADIANS, but Edmontonian Jim Horne might have something to say about that.

My daughter, who insists on going by TESSA instead of Tess now, made me some "ties" for Father's Day last year. Although I might have preferred PIE TIES to paper ones, it's the pieties that count.

POND SCUM typically grosses me out, but not when its clue uses such delightful misdirection toward dirty films. And I've seen a ton of clever clues for TSA, but having "bags under their (watchful) eyes" set off my metal detector in the best of ways.

– puzzle by Sid Sivakumar

Several years back, I spent many hours mulling over phrases like A BIRD IN THE HAND, WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, IF THE SHOE FITS … How to score them for our word list? Weighing their partialish feel vs. their evocative implications gave me fits. Ultimately, I decided that IF YOU HAVE TO ASK …

(Yeah, I still don't have a great answer.)

Thankfully, I didn't have to ask about John's gridwork. Having had the pleasure of working with him, I knew the strength of his technical skills. It surprised me that he had qualms about working on a Sunday, though most all constructors are hesitant to tackle the 140-word 21x21 challenge.

What gave me no surprise at all was that John produced an almost perfectly-smooth grid with a couple of great bonuses. To be sure, ENERGY CZAR, SECRET MENU, DALAI LAMA, LASER TAG, TO BE SURE are excellent. With hardly a short entry to speed bump my solve, it's exactly the kind of grid I desire.

Birds of a feather …

A friend and I used to make up these kinds of semi-complete phrases to annoy an overly-inquisitive Ultimate Frisbee teammate. "The person who blinks first …" followed by a suggestive eyebrow raise did wonders.

For our entertainment, that is. Not for his sanity.

I'm not a fan of listicle-like puzzles, so a random assortment of these phrase types didn't hit me strongly. But you know what they say: Every day you highlight a Greek word …

*insert suggestive eyebrow raise here*

– puzzle by John Ewbank

★ Old guard crossworders might say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH to tautology puzzles, but Gia found such a fresh and heartwarming way to end this one, with the modern LOVE IS LOVE, clued in an inspiring way. Hardly an IT IS WHAT IT IS statement about some of the progress that's helped many of my LGBTQ+ friends do what makes them happy.

Equally inspiring is the quality of Gia's gridwork! Hey, constructors who grumble that with five themers, it's good enough to achieve a smooth grid; take note. Gia not only achieved near-perfect cleanliness, but she worked in some beauts: SPAMALOT, SWOOPED IN (so much more evocative than standard add-a-preposition phrases), and MASTER KEY. If IT'S A TEST, the proctor DEEMS Gia's achievement of sparkle and smoothness much more than FIT.

Working in so many long Across bonuses is unusual because when you start stacking long Acrosses on top of themers, things can get hairy and quick. I would typically suggest breaking up SWOOPED IN and MASTER KEY, probably at the E of SWOOPED IN, because there are limited solid solutions if you don't. This long Across sandwich does necessitate the oddball usage of SUFFIXED, but it's so worth it.

Maybe you could point to REFILE as an inelegance, but I'm not taking any chances with criticizing anything related to the IRS this close to tax day.

Although the theme idea isn't new — what idea is? — it's executed with a modern and elegant touch. FAIR IS FAIR. Gia gets the POW!

– puzzle by Gia Bosko

Traveling from Seattle to Bloomington was like taking a WAGON TRAIN when our kids were little. And don't even get me started about the time we were routed through Miami. Talk about FLIPPING A COIN to see who would deal with the FLOOD PLAIN of tears from our toddlers.

Great fun to work with Taylor on this one! Starting with one West Coast state's postal code and ending with that of an East Coast state was a rigid constraint, already making a symmetrical set unlikely. Then, we dared raise the wrath of the great goddess Cruciverba, by desiring the top themer to be WA crossing to a northeastern state, the middle one from OR to a mid-East Coast state, and the bottom one to span from CA to FL or GA.

Thankfully, She is kind and benevolent, the true G.O.A.T., only requiring a minor sacrifice of a GOAT and a LAMA (aptly made up of Louisiana and Massachusetts). I don't play CANDY CRUSH, but I praise the great goddess for making the game franchise popular enough to be SAGA-worthy.

Working with a 14x15 grid is risky since if Will Shortz gives you the thumbs-down, you can't try the WSJ or Universal since they rigidly stick to exactly 15x15. Sometimes you have to give it your best shot and pray, hoping that Cruciverba doesn't yell WANT A PIECE OF ME?

– puzzle by Taylor Johnson and Jeff Chen

Messes up Jell-O-lover's cling film periodical? You know … ANAGRAMS AGAR MAN'S SARAN MAG?

Count your blessings that I stay away from anagrams these days.

I appreciate the smooth connections within these themers, not one herky-jerky or grammatically tortured. There are a TIN HOST (anagram that) of five-letter sequences with multiple anagrams, but so many would give nails-on-chalkboard-screeches when linked.

Take AELST, which has six possible anagrams: LEAST SLATE STALE STEAL TALES TEALS. Trying to pass off something like TEALS STEAL SLATE as [Robber ducks pull building material heist?] would get you the LEAST stars possible, and people might even tell TALES of your STALEness.

AIDES IDEAS ASIDE, on the other hand, is something that I could imaging Cinda Canning saying in "Only Murders in the Building." EARLY RELAY LAYER could easily describe a team triathlon wetsuit. And while NOTES SET ON STONE so badly wants to be NOTES SET IN STONE for the [Engravings?] clue, it works.

With four grid-spanning themers, you can almost always incorporate four long Down bonuses, and Olivia and Brooke delivered. The RED BARON brought back memories shared with Snoopy over a root beer, and material like IT'S A TRAP and ON AND OFF BOLSTERS the quality.

It's difficult for me to see almost any anagram puzzle as memorable, so all the additional touches were much appreciated. I'll never give RANTER'S SNOT to great wordplay like [Nonstarters?] for BTEAM.

– puzzle by Olivia Mitra Framke and Brooke Husic

TOO LITTLE (squeeze TOO into a tiny box), TOO LATE (put that box all the way at the end). Creative way to amp up a rebus!

There are so many TOO ___ phrases out there. TOO many to count; it makes me TOO tired to think. This often leaves me feeling like the theme is (TOO long, didn't read Jeff's technical rant), but I enjoyed Robin's selection. Fun to pair TOO HOT and TOO COOL, putting them one after the other, and I have fond memories of Hammer's 2 Legit 2 Quit.

My kids will one day stop laughing at my Hammer pants. What can I say? I like baggy clothes, as tight ones are TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT.

More TOO L;DR technical analysis: since this is a 16x15 grid (to allow for the even number of letters in COOLFORSCHOOL(TOO)), Robin could have gone up to 81 words. One way would have been to break up ATE AND RAN at the N. I love the color that this bonus and MONOXIDES bring to the table, but is it worth the price of PEDE headlining your puzzle?

Another factor in the decision: Robin already has a ton of short entries, pushing the boundaries at 24 3-letter words. While breaking up ATE AND RAN wouldn't increase that count, it would have added more 4-letter words, perhaps adding choppiness to the solve. Overall, I like Robin's choice, though I sure hate that PEDE is afoot.

Fun debut; I appreciate the effort to do something new with a rebus.

– puzzle by Robin Yu

Such a chatty puzzle: I MEAN TO SAY that DOESN'T MATTER — I CANT STOP. MAKES SENSE … YOU DO THAT. I love that breezy feel in my Friday themeless.

Fun foodie mini-theme, too, with the millennial calling card of AVOCADO TOAST, with an APPLETINI and a MINT OREO (probably all millennialed-up into something that costs $20). What is it with this generation and their desire to pay exorbitant prices for a one-dollar avocado and a twenty-cent piece of bread?

(Fine, I ordered AVOCADO TOAST the other day. And it was delicious.)

Interesting to include both MUSIC VIDEO and TUBI. I've only heard of the latter through crosswords … I would note that it seems like it should be a MUSIC VIDEO channel for tubas, but I'd get heckle(phone)d.

Speaking of things I didn't get:

• ETON is not a competitor to rugby but to Rugby, the British school that apparently spawned rugby!
• [Key collaborator] is PEELE, as in Key and Peele. I avoid horror movies like a zombie apocalypse, so Jordan PEELE isn't as familiar to me, while this "Parks and Recreation" fan rooted so hard for Donna and Joe.
• I'm not ashamed to say that I'm something of a "Tom and Jerry" aficionado. (Okay, maybe a little.) Not knowing if the feline friend was TAPSY or TOPSY made me all TOPSY-turvy. Ah me. I mean, OH ME!

Such a pleasant way to ease into the weekend, especially with great wordplay like [Walk on water?] describing a PIER walkway.

– puzzle by Billy Bratton and Clay Haddock

Unicorn … MEANING WHAT? I love that word usage, referring to the incredibly rare TECH START-UP that's still privately held yet worth over a billion dollars.

That definition is second only to the basketball usage, describing a seven-footer who can handle like a point guard, shoot from distance, protect the rim, and finish in the paint. Taking a chance on Kristaps Porzingis paid off this year, leading my buddy and me to not just finish first in our fantasy basketball season, but to win the championship!

Now, if we can just figure out how to draft Victor Wembanyama next year …

The northwest corner is dynamite. Describing a CARICATURE as a "sketchy offering" is hardly sketchy! UFOLOGISTS is already a catchy term, then you amp it up with the "disc-overies" pun? Those are topped by the innocent cluing involved with [Field of computing]. Once I got over my "I'm supposed to know subdisciplines within CS?!" chagrin, I laughed at my idiocy, overlooking the simple ADDRESS BAR field at the top of web browsers.

I paused at the SIEMENS / RHAMES crossing much longer than Paolo Pasco did at his MACKAY/MADRE vs. PACKAY/PADRE square. Oh man, I was rooting so hard for Paolo to win it all on his first showing at the big dance. Congrats to Dan Feyer for edging him out for his record ninth win!

I had to struggle through a lot of tough cluing, like [Fluff] meaning ERROR, but that made the final square that much more satisfying to complete.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

Perfect puzzle for the Fonz. If only he were Canadian. Ayyyyy, eh?

The game is AFOOT today … or is that ABREAST, given that the themers are divided left/right? I appreciated that both an A separation and an A addition were in play, making it more difficult to predict what would happen next. BRUSHED A-SIDE vs. A+WARD OF THE STATE. There are pluses and minuses to each.

Okay, that's no A+ or even A- joke, but it had to be made.

(No, it didn't.)

I hitched toward the bottom of the puzzle, wondering why the pattern broke down. I'd built up A HEAD OF STEAM, crisscrossing between the left and right sides, then I hit AHEAD OF STEAM. True, it does fit with the "add an A to form a different word" pattern, but unlike ATONE POEM, I would happily use A HEAD OF STEAM in a themeless. In the end, it does work, but given how many possible A+ additions exist, I'd have preferred a play on a base phrase that didn't confuse the issue.

I like Mike's use of long Downs in the upper right and lower left corners. Although these regions have to play nice with two themers, the letter combinations are friendly. Even the W in SLOWLY GREW APART doesn't put up much resistance since the T????W?? pattern has many solutions. TUG OF WAR next to EMERALDS is a glittering result.

There's some unfortunate ALLOR SUERS XANDO glue — I tend to notice the longer 5-length bits than the minor TSPS stuff — but it's a solid result for an eight-themer Sunday, especially for a debut.

– puzzle by Mike Hobin

★ THERE ARE NO WORDS is such a colorful phrase to play upon. The connections to SILENT TREATMENT, EMOJI KEYBOARD, and ELEVATOR MUSIC are so fun!

Neat to see an early-week, debut offering feature so many delightful bonuses. With four themers, it's almost always possible to incorporate four long Downs — one in each corner. Tough letter combinations can make this more challenging, but check out how ODE TO JOY so joyfully uses that J.

Many would stop there, placing a black square at the second C of ICE CUBES and/or the first S of LETS SAY, and that would be acceptable. Working in eight long Down bonuses? Most of the time, I'd tell constructors to GET REAL because it's too easy to GO ASTRAY. Even if you can get the extra long Downs to work in the middle of the grid, that often causes the usual four to take hits in color.

There were compromises, like requiring ROTC to make ICE CUBES work, and STET is niche vocabulary that might turn off newer solvers. All the crosses are unambiguous, so it all works, but it left me wishing there were a touch fewer dabs of GOOS.

That said, it was such a pleasure to be confounded until the very end, and the freshness of EMOJI KEYBOARD was so welcome. Such entertaining, well-constructed work from a newer pair of constructors is an ode to joy, indeed.

– puzzle by Katherine Baicker and Scott Earl

BREAK IT UP YOU TWO … Kiran knows my children, apparently. Which is GOZILLA and which is KONG? Depends on the day of the week.

That's my life, MAN VS. WILD.

Curious trio, ALIEN + GODZILLA + … KRAMER? Michael Richards did have his horrible rant, I suppose. (I was going to link to it, but it truly is a monstrosity.) I would have loved a third fantasy fight, like PLANTS VS. ZOMBIES. The punchline would have landed more strongly if I hadn't been thrown by the sudden downshift from high fantasy to a low-down courtroom battle.

Some beautiful bonuses in the fill, Kiran going above and beyond to work in an unusual pair of mid-length bonuses in the center row. Editors tend to prize multi-worders for their greater color potential over single-worders, but this pair of PARADOX and COTERIE are so evocative.

It is challenging to work in Across bonus fill, and the four long Down bonuses suffer a bit. SWEARS TO is an "add-a-preposition" that most constructors wouldn't swear to, and I'm not as down with TORN DOWN as I am with OPEN MIND.

I try to keep an open mind about entries like STD and TVA. The former is a bit more palatable, since it connects to "standard" in a standardish way, but as Will Shortz often points out, what happens if you don't know the Tennessee Valley Authority — from almost a century ago? It rarely feels good to write in what seem to be three random letters.

Although the puzzle's joke didn't make me laugh, I enjoyed the creative setup. Great to get something a little different from an early-week debut.

– puzzle by Kiran Pandey

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

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

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

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

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

– puzzle by Joe Deeney

The first time I saw this concept, I couldn't help but NO NI WOOZ the concept and say how HSIM I could come up with something as genius. No matter how hard I tried, though, my sounding board (Jim Horne) answered in polite Canadian tones, to the effect of E W I. Cock your head and that becomes M E H, but I had the last laugh, as I interpreted his comments as M E —, as in "me minus you nothing for great effort."

I manage to convince myself of so much.

Simeon's point about writing styles is on point. For so many solvers, it'll be impossible to see an I turned sideways as an H, because they write the letter I with one simple stroke. And even if you write a capital E instead of a lower-case one, it takes some creative thought to imagine it as a M. It was similarly a case of Muddy Waters when Alex and I tried to riff on M W — for many solvers, that was hardly an experience of Es.

I laughed so hard at Jim's "for some reason ..." comment below that anything else I say today would pale in comparison.

– puzzle by Simeon Seigel

Erica and Matthew's clue for CALCULATOR WATCH was so Johnny Be Goode! Playing on a "time machine" could only have been improved by riffing on "obsolescent" more — something like [Time machine from the past?]. Then again, past and future are merging, as my kids are both oddly begging for "play time" on my calculator watch … I HAVE TO ASK and I GUESS SO are both appropriate responses.

Standout clue in [That's just the way it is], a literal description for STATUS QUO, disguised as my standard parental response. Similarly beautiful trick in [What's the Word?], playing on SCRIPTURE as the "word of dad." Er, God.

A ton of clever cluing today. Other highlights:

Servers working around the clock? Surely, it had to be a dig at Amazon's lack of care around their service center employees! Nope, that's their DATA CENTER computer servers, which will likely unionize via ChatGPT any day now.

[High lands] is an oldie for MESAS, but it's still a goodie.

I was surprised to hear backlash around DATED UP a few years ago. Dating up in my marriage is one of my greatest con jobs. I mean, accomplishments! Tough to predict what will raise hackles.

Interesting choice to clue CARLOS to Carlos Boozer. He was on one of the USA Olympic teams, but last played in the NBA a decade ago, and his chances of making the Hall of Fame are slim. Do I have any latent spite that he underwhelmed on one of my fantasy basketball teams?

[Noncommittal assent].

A wide selection of clever clues and some fun entries. Nothing incredibly fresh, but the blasts from the past are appropriate to CALCULATOR WATCH, indeed.

– puzzle by Erica Hsiung Wojcik and Matthew Stock

DREAMLIKE state today, to have Waldenesque simplicity in a Walden creation. So often I wade around the murky waters of Byron's ponds, asking myself about any particular entry, IS THIS IT? I did cock my head at WAR BLOGS, HEBREW U and NON PUBLIC, but so much natural beauty in the vowel-heavy JUNEAUITE, along with the explosion of rare letters — eight JQXZs! — gave me a dose of spiritual discovery.

I questioned TOSSUP QUESTIONS at first, but having grown up on "Family Feud," I should have known better. I pondered over [They have everyone buzzing] for an embarrassingly long time, before buzzing in with the number one answer.

The engineer in me delighted over the [Round bits] clue, too. I have so many drill bits of every shape and size that I mentally sorted through every single one before realizing that binary code was in play: 0s are literally round bits, while 1s are straight bits.

I'm not wild about partials like IN GOD or the randomness of EXMET or the -ERS of KNEADERS, but in a 68-word creation, they're reasonable prices to pay. Along with so many rare letters and inspiring clues, I came away with a much calmer sense of Walden than usual.

– puzzle by Byron Walden

My son is obsessed with "Grizzy and the Lemmings." I don't get it, but he and his classmates have these hilarious conversations about how much they hate that darn grizzly. BEAR'S IN their collective MIND, indeed, and it's even given me a chance to teach Jake about the different meaning of the word "bear."

I also favored FALLS OUT OF FAVOR, switching meanings from "plummet" to "season after summer." Although I've seen this change of meaning many times before, this particular implementation worked well.

And the coup de grace: such an apt way to conclude this theme: the PUZZLE'S OVER!

BATS FIVE HUNDRED might be confusing to the sportsball-haters out there. Baseball is my least favorite of the major sports, but a friend of mine assures me that "batting five hundred" — getting a hit five hundred out of every thousand at-bats — is a term batted around. Impossible dream, considering that batting even four hundred is extremely rare, but a person can field such dreams.

It was fun to read about the DARK HUMOR that unifies Katie and Scott. Also fun to have AIR GUITAR appropriately next to PLAYS A TRICK.

I wasn't wild about the theme, since there are so many possibilities for an S to be turned into an apostrophe S, plus several of them didn't change meaning much (PLAY as a verb is similar to PLAY as a noun, for instance), but that PUZZLES OVER conclusion gave me many smizes.

– puzzle by Katie Hale and Scott Hogan

A couple of years ago, a teenager I've been mentoring asked me WHAT'S POPPIN'. Wondering if he was telling me he wanted to get popcorn or if he was calling me pops, I figured it'd be best to pretend like I knew what he was talking about and say something that sounded equally fresh. Whatever it was, he burst out laughing so hard he nearly choked.

No CHAMPAGNE BOTTLEs for me.

Now that I know what it means, I can appreciate the literal answers to the question. I especially enjoyed the final entry since popping a WHEELIE slightly differs from the others. Although the meaning of "pop" doesn't change much, it was neat to see the range of objects affected.

Except for the PIMPLES. Where's the "unsee" button when you need it?

Thankfully, that was the only blemish in my entire solve. CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE so tidily spans the grid, not forcing any black square placements, and PIMPLES / WHEELIE are easy enough to tuck in most anywhere that there's no need for grid Clearasil. Solid work, incorporating a couple of THREEPIO PARMESAN bonuses while avoiding short acne.

The grid is so clean that I'd love to see what Emily could do if she removed the black square between OPIUM and PANEL to allow for another pair of long bonuses. It's almost always better to offer a smooth Monday fill than a colorful yet crunchy one, but this set of themers should allow for four long Down bonuses.

Inclusion of PIMPLES aside, I admired the creative lateral thinking playing on the fresh phrase (that no one will use anymore, now that I'm saying it).

– puzzle by Emily Carroll

Parsing long words into shorter ones for kooky results is a tough genre. There have been so many in the history of crosswords — one just a month ago — that you have to do something special to get noticed. I appreciated Grant's effort here, always separating out words that rhyme with "rise" but are spelled like "skies" — both words so appropriate when you're trying to elevate above the pack.

I admired the tightness of the theme set. What other -IES words could you play on? Although there are CRIES, FLIES, FRIES, SKIES, and SPIES, I could make only one of them work, with BEL / FRIES. And by "work," I mean "generate idiocy." [Mesopotamian god gets cooking?] supplies many cries.

CAMPINESS next to MOUSETRAP is such a vivid pairing. My son has the board game, and we look like we're in the cringe-worthy '80s commercials when we play. Are these adjacent long Downs worth the price of CMS (and SEPT / USD / AMOI in the opposite corner)? I'm on the fence, like that plastic guy waiting for the Ball of Damocles to fall and send him flipping out.

It's not an easy adjustment to clean things up, though, since the grid is already at the maximum of 78 words. Using fewer black squares in the middle of the grid would have freed up a pair to redeploy around those two big corners, but that's a huge change.

It's tough to make a tried-and-true genre noticeable, but I appreciated Grant's effort to tighten things up with an extra layer.

– puzzle by Grant Boroughs

★ I'm getting dizzy thinking about how much I loved this puzzle! It had been ages since I saw VERTIGO, but who could forget that vertiginous swirl? I've watched a lot of old 100 greatest movies in various attempts to broaden my knowledge gaps, and too often, I get bored by the slow pace or the lack of tension that might possibly hold my attention span that measures in microseconds.

Not VERTIGO. I rewatched it after doing today's puzzle, and it held me captive in the same way that Casablanca or The Godfather does with every viewing. It's a wonderful life to have a few of these grab me so strongly.

Beautiful use of diagonal symmetry to achieve a spiral pattern. I'd have been impressed simply to have a spiral made of asymmetrical entries, but to have it composed of matching 9s, 7s, and 5s is as dazzling as Jimmy Stewart's performance.

AND to get rare 15-letter bonuses in MONKEYING AROUND and I DEMAND A RECOUNT? They're so juicy that I demanded my annoying analytical self to stop monkeying around, trying to figure out if these muddied the theme.

Maybe one could argue that CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a tough way to start a puzzle. As long as the crossings are crisp, though …

Along with evocative fill like APOPLEXY and FIGMENT, it all felt too good to be true. Thankfully, there were only pluses — like the one in the lower right that reminded me of the TOWER!

– puzzle by Aaron M. Rosenberg

The pre-production drafts that Jim Horne and I reviewed had a normal grid with none of the lines removed. We were baffled. Between the two of us, it's almost always the case that at least one person (Jim) can explain what's going on to the dolt (me). Staring at our computer screens, we quickly figured out DOCTORS (without borders) and guessed maybe (no end) IN SIGHT.

Then ATTENTION sure got our attention. What phrase was it supposed to evoke? We came up with ATTENTION (deficit), (undivided) ATTENTION, (center of) ATTENTION, ATTENTION (span), and more, before it lost our attention. Wait, (losing one's) ATTENTION?

I love it when a crossword highlights the benefits of print media over newfangled electronic ‘puters. Give me a pencil and paper any day of the week, gol durn it! There's something wonderful about paper winning a single battle in the war it will eventually lose.

Michael did so well to play on so many edges — sides, bottoms, tops, dividers — each jabbing and punching at computers. Granted, it's like a blind-worm tickling Hagrid, but you gotta root for the underdog.

Featuring TOPLESS DANCERS made me uncomfortable. Tough to figure out what a more family-friendly entry might have been, though. TOPLESS BEACHES? GLASS CEILING?

And even with the pdf hardcopy, I had to think for yet longer about ACCUSATIONS before coming up with (groundless). I did achieve victory eventually, though, so—

Oh. It must be (baseless) ACCUSATIONS!

Now I really need something to TAKE THE EDGE OFF.

Hiccups in my drawn-out solving experience aside, WHAT FUN, indeed. I appreciated the range of ways Michael played upon this phrase.

– puzzle by Michael Schlossberg