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STATE CAPITALS … anagrammed? Not sure why you'd want to anagram LANSING, uh … ST PAUL … hmm … whatever ANTI-US anagrams to.

I enjoy anagrams, but only when there's a good rationale for them. If there had been some real phrase like CAPITAL MIXUP, it'd have been solid.

This grid is a great example of how going to a low word count can actually work (it usually doesn't). For a theme that solvers might not connect to, it's essential to give them something extra in the fill to keep them entertained. Giant corners like the SW / NE, coming up!

When newer constructors ask for grid help, the first thing I do is look at the overall layout, and if there are any likely gridding trouble spots. My eyes would have bugged out at the SW / NE, advising to break up those sections STATE! Er, stat.

I'm not a fan of STELE or SANDP (that's S&P, outside the crossworld), but SAMANTHA / THIRTEEN / THE EU help offset them. And IT'S A GIRL / NET SALES are bonuses, too. Along with entries we don't see that often in crosswords — PARADE, NOUGAT, REPASTS — the grid gave me a sense of being anything but the same-old, same-old. In a good way.

There were trade-offs, no doubt. Having both AGHA and EMIR in one grid isn't ideal. EATER is basically a partial. Overall though, the freshness within the grid made up for the dings.

Joel has serious construction chops, so I think he made a good call to go to a 72-word grid. But the number of constructors who can do it successfully is in the single digits.

It's too bad that not many solvers would immediately recognize BLENDED CAPITAL — a finance term regarding mixed sources of start-up funds. It'd have been the perfect revealer. I probably would have used it anyway. Even with a boring dictionary definition, it would have given the theme a raison d'etre.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

ON AND OFF hinting at two rebus squares next to each other. Sort of an ON / OFF switch!

Sort of.

I wish there had been a sharper a-ha moment, with the revealer slyly giving a rationale for why ON and OFF should be right next to each other. ON AND OFF could have just as easily explained: "phrases that contain one instance of ON and then one of OFF, not necessarily adjacent."

Ooh, here's a clever idea: ON AND OFF so aptly describes a rebus ON in the across direction … which changes into an OFF rebus in the down direction!

(That implementation would have been perfect for ON OFF SWITCH. Writing that down in my notebook of ideas…)

(D'oh! Already been done. Scratching it out...)

Although the revealer wasn't as spot-on as I would have liked, I did enjoy uncovering those dual rebuses in the four phrases. The four great phrases, mind you! CARBON OFFSETS gets a lot of buzz these days, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN feels classic, IMMIGRATION OFFICE solid, and PERSON OF FAITH to round it out. A ton of color from these themers; nice variety.

It was pleasing that two of them broke in the *ON / OFF* pattern, while the other two used *ON / OF / F*. Most solvers probably won't care, or even notice, but I thought it was an elegant touch of symmetry.

It's so hard to work with a big number of rebus squares. Average for a rebus is five or six, so ten is a tough ask. It's even harder when rebus squares have to work with each other. I like what Julie did with OFF TONE — neat solution for a tricky region.

It's also so hard to accept KUNST as a valid entry — talk about deep into foreign languages. But thankfully, there was only some OBJ, AERO, PERI elsewhere. If you can ignore the glaring KUNST, it's a good grid.

I think you could eliminate KUNST (and still have a good grid) by swapping SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and IMMIGRATION OFFICE. But it'd be a complete rework. Probably worth it, though ...

A better rationale for why ON should be next to OFF, and some cleanup in the grid, and this would have gotten POW! attention.

– puzzle by Julie Bérubé

Trenton is one of the few constructors I'd trust with a themeless grid featuring a lot of 7-letter answers. One of his previous ones was a standout, demonstrating his ability to carefully pick colorful answers for those mid-length slots, which are all too easy to fill with neutral material.

Some standouts today in that 7-letter territory: ALI BABA, CODE RED, DOG BITE, IN A HAZE, KUNG PAO, LOST ART, MOON PIE, PARADOX, RADIO DJ, SAFARIS … okay, I'm basically listing out all of his 7-letter entries!

Well, not quite all. TRIMSPA is outdated.

AREOLAE isn't great in the singular AREOLA, much less the plural AREOLAS. Er, AREOLAE. Especially when you already have AORTAE in the grid.

ACCRUAL won't win many awards, except for in the finance community, perhaps.

But overall, most themelesses featuring 7-letter entries have way under 50% of these mid-length slots filled with color. To have about 85% of your slots packed with snazz is fantastic work.

That percentage is high enough that I seriously considered this as a POW! contender. If Trenton's earlier puzzle hadn't came to mind immediately — and there had been one less of AREOLAE / AORTAE and ETTORE — perhaps I would have given this one the nod.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

I like mini-themes in themelesses, as long as 1.) they're amusing or surprising, and 2.) they don't degrade the puzzle by introducing excess inflexibility.

Today's MAY / THE 4TH / BE WITH / YOU was both amusing and surprising — unusual to have a digit in a themeless, and very unusual to have four separate answers connect.

This Star Wars dork says that the force is with Mark!

Splitting up the mini-theme as MAY THE 4TH / BE WITH YOU might have been better, though. It'd be one thing if each of the four pieces could truly stand on their own. But BE WITH felt partialish (and THE 4TH to a lesser extent). So why not go whole hog and run MAY THE 4TH / BE WITH YOU as a cross-referenced pair of marquee answers?

I also wondered if criterion 2.) had been compromised. You might think splitting into four pieces would make things easier, but it's often not the case since that forces (ha) multiple black square placements right off the bat. While I did like PROCEDURE MANUAL and BALANCED BUDGETS, they're more workmanlike than colorful.

In the case of PROCEDURE MANUAL, literally workmanlike!

A bit of ABEAM ATEST EEN SRAS YRS too. Overall, I think the puzzle could have had more of a remastered Episode VI effect instead of an original Episode IV one (read: bright and shiny vs. you can almost see the strings holding the ships) if MAY THE 4TH / BE WITH YOU had seeded two standard 9x3 stacks.

A ton of great clues today. The telltale question mark did nothing to lift the fog from [Fashion lines?]. Hems? Seams? D'oh! That's fashion, used as a verb. Brilliant AD LIB clue.

[Hard to move] also baffled me, especially with no question mark. One sense of [Hard to move] is heavy, awkward, gigantic. Another is STOIC.

TSA AGENT is a great entry on its own. With a tip of the hat to removing one's hat for a TSA AGENT, it becomes even greater.

Loved the Star Wars nod. I bet if Mark had gone with a 9 / 9 split of the mini-theme, it'd have blown up the Death Star, instead of just missing that exhaust port.

– puzzle by Mark Diehl

★ It's not often that I have a Sunday solving experience that delights from start to end — today's hit that mark! Made me a real laughing boy. Amusing re-interpretations of "___ PAPER" phrases — so many great ones! A LOTTERY TICKET as [Scratch paper?] was a perfect way to kick off the puzzle. I used to love scratching McDonald's Monopoly game tickets. Not that I ever won anything, but oh, that anticipation.

[Fly paper?] as a boarding pass? Maybe a bit stretchy grammatically, but it was so amusing that I didn't care.

[Crepe paper?] Oh, as in crepes on a BREAKFAST MENU! Genius that all of these answers are real phrases, in the language!

And SEATING CHART, the best of all. It's doubly apt for Sam, the law professor, who likely has used a SEATING CHART in his day — and written his share of "position papers"!

Sam and Doug are two of my favorite people in the crossworld — could easily be in the top two. Such fun to see their humor and wit come through today. I suppose a review should try to be unbiased, objective. But my commentary, I get to do what I want. So there.

I'm privileged to know these fine gentlemen, happy to consider myself their third Stooge. (Okay, I'm Larry Joe at best. But I'll take it.)

Constructors out there looking to make a Sunday grid, take note of the delightful bonuses: CRASH CYMBAL. GREEN CARD. SCHOOL TIE. STRING ART. TAE KWON DO. BELLY RUB! MADE A SPLASH is so appropriate. They do it right — work in about half a dozen great long fill bonuses, and you make solvers happy.

Their short fill wasn't perfect, mind you. Quite a bit of ABM AERO DVI ELHI IMA … that's a doink in the eye. But think about the qualities of everything I've listed. It's all 1.) short stuff, 2.) easy to figure out from the crossing answers, and 3.) largely innocuous. As long as you stick to the usual suspects — the tiny minor offenders — it's gloss-over-able.

The puzzle accomplished what so few Sunday puzzles do these days — held my attention from the first to the last square. That's no doubt worthy of a POW! (The good kind, not the kind when Moe slaps your head. Wise guy.)

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson and Doug Peterson

Great find, three mid-length words that look like they should rhyme, but don't. The technical term for that is EYE / RHYME. I hadn't heard of that phrase before doing crosswords, but it's no doubt descriptive.

There was a puzzle two years ago that played on all sorts of EYE RHYMEs. I liked that Peter went above and beyond today, finding not just pairs of longish EYE RHYMEs, but a trio.

It made me wonder, is there a quartet that would fit the bill? Anyone brighter than me out there?

(Clearly, yes. Peter reminded me of COUGH, TOUGH, BOUGH, DOUGH. Now, can anyone think of a set using all words of 6+ letters?)

As much as I enjoyed the trio today, it made for a thin-feeling theme. Phrases of length 11, 13, 11, that's it? Only 35 theme squares? Okay, there is the EYE / RHYME revealer, but the way it's broken up into two shorties, it doesn't feel like it adds to the theme density.

I generally am a strict symmetrist — no exceptions to the rule! (Okay, it's not as much a rule, as a norm.) But I'd have preferred something like Peter's last bending of the norm. In that one, TRIATHLON made the theme feel meatier (and the lack of symmetry surprisingly didn't bother me). Having EYE RHYME as one entry would have made it felt more like 11 + 13 + 11 + 8 = 43 theme squares, which is decent.

Tough grid for a Monday. I liked it, but it's not going to be anyone's gateway drug, not with entries like RESTIVE, NETHER, TRADE ON, PATOOT. Those are all fair game though, and along with the plethora of long bonuses in MERCUTIO, EDIT MENU, EPIDEMIC, ATTA GIRL, even PESTLE, FAKERY, SATIRES, it's colorful and fresh.

The theme is tricky enough — especially if you've never been to a PRET-A-MANGER, or if you've never heard the term EYE RHYME — and the grid so snazz-dense, that it's a great Tuesday or even Wednesday puzzle. Not one I'd give to a NYT newb, though.

– puzzle by Peter Gordon

POKE, PET, TAP, STROKE — all appropriate for a FINISHING TOUCH revealer, each word placed at the end of its theme phrase. Ross disguised them well, making me happily fail in my early-week "Guess That Theme" game. The POKE in PIG IN A POKE is so far away from the "touch" meaning, for example. Every one of the four was so nicely obfuscated.

Interesting that Ross used across bonus fill again. The Jeff of today approves of the Ross of today's message to the Ross of yesteryear. Ghosts of puzzles past! (A shame that the queue time from acceptance to publication can be so long.)

Low word counts can be useful when they produce colorful, juicy fill. But ANNOTATORS and BROCAS AREA don't do much for me. The former is dry, and the latter is a toughie. I enjoyed reading up on BROCAS AREA, but I don't think it matches the simplicity of the theme.

The importance of matching fill to theme is something that's only dawned upon me in the past few years. A simple, beginners' theme + a crazy-hard fill can make for a dissonant solving experience, forcing someone to work so hard for too simple an a-ha. Along with BROCAS AREA there was GARRET and ESTADO, XTINA, UOMO, ITZA. All in all, it didn't make for a great early-week experience.

I appreciate the idea behind going down to 72 words in an early-week grid, as it can 1) give the constructor a personal challenge, and 2) have the potential of a fresh, yet still smooth, feeling. Yesterday's 72-word puzzle worked better on the second count than today's.

But overall, the theme was solid, putting a mist over my eyes until the very end. Along with some great long fill in NOT AGAIN, ROTOTILL, PATOIS, there were enough assets to still make for a decent solve.

– puzzle by Ross Trudeau

Pretty image of a TABLE TENNIS table and its NET! Neat way to employ shaded squares in a crossword.

I get a lot of people asking me about their TABLE TENNIS theme. It's almost as if they knew Will Shortz was nuts about the sport.

There was another TABLE TENNIS theme from a long time back that I loved. Similar to today's, such a great use of circles to create the sensation of a ball actually bouncing.

Why a BACKSPIN SERVE in particular, though? It mostly works (my ridiculous physics-based qualm: wouldn't a backspin serve result in an asymmetrical path?). But I'd have liked something more generalized — THE BOUNCING BALL was so perfect in that previous puzzle. I wouldn't have minded the same thing today, using THE BOUNCING BALL roughly where Stu has BACKSPIN SERVE.

Not much theme today. BACKSPIN SERVE does take up a lot of real estate, what with it bouncing all over the place. But 13 letters + 13 in TABLE TENNIS / NET + 8 in PING / PONG is only 34 total theme letters. Thin, thin, thin. It'd have been great to work in a few more entries like PADDLES and RACKETS, or better yet, something related to BALL..

Impressive work up top, what with so many constraints imposed by BACKSPIN SERVE. Great use of black squares to not only trace the ball's path but to facilitate best fill. No one likes NEER or EEE, but the presence of NEWSCAST and IMPINGE and MEMOREX — along with no other crossword glue! — makes it a smash hit.

Wish I could say the same about the bottom. What with PING and PONG the only constraints, it should have been much smoother. EDS ULAN ESTER SRTA NSW? Oh (bus)man, that's rough. Granted, it's a little tricky what with the biggish regions to fill. But if it's so tricky that you have to end up with so much glue, do something different. Perhaps take out the black square between PLUS ONE and ANATOLE, and put two new ones where the Ns are in those two entries. Use more cheater squares. Don't call it good when it's not.

Thankfully, a lot of excellent clues to help keep up my interest. As a bridge fanatic and a former mechanical engineer, I loved the misdirect of the [Bridge experts] clue.

– puzzle by Stu Ockman

Thursday tricksiness, OFFSIDES indicating that six answers are to be interpreted without their first and last letters:

BALONEY

SKETCHY

I FORGET

TANGELO

UP EARLY

SO THERE

Some good findings, SO THERE -> OTHER my favorite. SO THERE is a fun phrase in itself, and the reparsing required to make O THER into OTHER made it even more interesting. UP EARLY was good too, although UP EARLY isn't as snazzy as a saucy SO THERE.

Two stuck out to me as not as good: KETCH in SKETCHY and ANGEL in TANGELO. Neither KETCH nor TANGELO registered in my head as real words, at least not as quickly as ALONE / BALONEY.

It's easy enough to find entries that become other entries when the first and last letters are lopped off — a quick python script of about 10 lines does the trick. So I'd have liked something extra to elevate the theme more. Some possibilities:

• Longer entries (which would have helped them stand out better in the grid, too)
• Every one of them requiring re-parsing
• The same letters being lopped off the front and/or end
• Lopped-off letters spell out something appropriate

That last one would likely have been tough if you used all the lopped-off letter, but you could certainly spell out something with the first letters.

As it was, I kept wondering what BY / SY / IT / TO / UY / SE might lead to. Seemed too random, not tight enough, if you allow for the first and last letters to be anything whatsoever.

Some fun clues helped to entertain. ANTS as creatures on every continent except ANTartica. A light YEAR going a long way. And what the heck might [Verses versus verses events] be? Ah, poetry SLAMS! That's clever.

The gridwork was good, nothing that slowed me down too much, just some SEL STET NEURO AS YOU. Considering the constraints of having seven themers — shortish, but still seven — it's a decent result.

Some solid themer finds, but with an extra element as listed above, this could have been a real standout.

– puzzle by Lewis Rothlein

Andrew is so good at stair stack trios. PURPLE STATE, DEPECHE MODE, SENIOR PRANK? All colorful entries — especially PURPLE STATE. (You knew that was coming.) Seriously though, what a fantastic term, so descriptive for a battleground territory that's partially red and partially blue.

Nice and open floor plan for the grid, too, a lot of long entries woven through the stair stack making for great grid flow. Huge fan of LENA HORNE, ODOR EATERS (not that I need them, despite what my kids say), FLOOD LAMP. I embarrassingly had that last one as FLOOR LAMP, having convinced myself that FLOOR LAMPs, of course, make for great outdoor theft deterrents.

BERSORES are a thing, aren't they?

BED SORES isn't a delightful entry — evokes unpleasant images. (You owe me one for not putting up the Wikipedia image of them today.) But it does get a fun clue in [Resting spots?].

I wasn't as hot on the other long entries going through the stair stack. DECIMETERS isn't that commonly used, ARRESTED is neutral. And ROSEDALE. Somehow I convinced myself that ROLEDALE is a floral name. DALEs are floral, right? Maybe related to BERSORES?

A couple of clues that might have been confusing to some:

• BISHOPS proceed in a biased way? Yes, when you think of "biased" as "at a slant," as in a chess piece BISHOP.
• How is an APPT a [Receptionist's notation]? I think of receptionists mostly doing greetings and taking calls, but they probably do note down appointments to expect that day.
• [B in music class]? That's a reference to the "three Bs," Bach, Beethoven, BRAHMS.
• If you're a lightweight like myself, you might not know that RON RICO is a brand of rum.

Overall, solid puzzle with a beautiful middle. BEDSORES excepted. And the stray IRT ELO, TCU, plus SRS duplicating SENIOR PRANK. SRS-LY, kids seems to actually text like this!

– puzzle by Andrew J. Ries

★ A month ago, Robyn became the first woman to make the finals puzzle for the ACPT. And it was a beaut! She's got such an excellent aptitude for selecting long entries that delight.

Today's was another win in her string (theory) of great puzzles. STRING THEORY — clued to "The Big Bang Theory," without actually duplicating "theory" in the clue! EVIL GENIUS! SCHNITZEL, such a funny sounding word. INNER PEACE.

LAST PLACE's clue cleverly misdirects. [Rough finish]? Last is a rough way to finish, indeed. It's even more devious once you note that MATTE is in the puzzle too, subconsciously tipping you toward thinking about photo finishes.

Er, finishes of photos. Not races. A double-cross misdirect!

Beautiful disguises for Gal and Berry, their capital letter hidden at the first word of the clue. There have to be tons of gals in superhero movies. And berries featured in cosmetic ads. D'oh! That's Gal GADOT and HALLE Berry.

Speaking of great clues, [One may get stuck in an office] isn't an overworked person, but a POST IT NOTE. STICK SHIFT — a manual shift — employs the common term [Car owner's manual?] in its clue. Two fantastic entries in their own right, made even better by wickedly sharp clues.

Even two ho-hum shorties got the star treatment through great cluing. [Message on a tablet] — a drug company's tagline? Nope, that's an EMAIL on an iPad or Surface tablet. I must admit I groaned when I figured out that SEALY (a big mattress brand) was literally for the "rest of the people." But it was a good sort of groan.

I had so much fun solving this one that it made me want to figure out why. It's not often that I feel like I have a lot to learn from any one constructor, but Robyn's ability to entertain and elate through her themelesses is astounding. She's caused me to rethink my own philosophies on creating themelesses.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

Four measurements, literally ON A SLIDING SCALE. Reminded me of a recent puzzle playing on OBLIQUE REFERENCEs.

It's nice that the scale intersects the measurement, i.e., MOHS coming off the M of MINERAL HARDNESS. That's much better than if there had simply been a bunch of diagonal scale names.

While the idea of intersecting a diagonal scale with its measurement is decent, it's not Sunday material. A 21x21 grid is so big that a theme needs to hold a solver's interest for an extended time. Here, once you discover one pair, what's left?

Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to perform a rescue by making the rest of the puzzle essentially a themeless, injecting so much color and snazz that a solver can't help but be wowed. I heard some kudos about Patrick Berry's Sunday themeless, after all.

Today, we get SAN SIMEON, THE TUDORS, POTLUCKS, SPOILERS, SUNKIST, that's all pretty good. Not nearly enough to qualify as a themeless-grade solving experience, though.

And oh, the crossword glue. That's going to happen when diagonal entries come off themers; so hard to work around. I was impressed through the top half — TELESTO and OTIOSE are tough, and ESS isn't good — but that's solid work around a diagonal themer.

Everything was copacetic … until I hit the west region. RSTU ought to be a puzzle-killer, and to leave that region with ENOL CORT RTE and RETHREW? It's a sad result of two tough factors smashing into each other: the inherent difficulty of a 140-word grid, and the inflexibility of diagonal theme answers.

Victor did an admirable construction job, considering the crazy constraints. But bending at least one of the limitations — maybe going up to 144 words — would have resulted in a better overall solving experience.

I hope Will and Joel listen to my pleas to turn around the flagship of the NYT crossword. I was first attracted to the NYT crossword because of so many brilliant Sunday puzzles. My 10+ years of solving experience has probably jaded me, but I think many factors came together to create a shortage of great 21x21s.

To better draw in more creative ideas, changes must happen. More money is great, don't get me wrong! I'm grateful to Will for increasing rates — astronomically, at that. But I'd be actively reaching out to specific constructors, asking for theme queries. Otherwise, it'll be more of the same, passively sifting through a (very) limited pool of Sunday submissions.

– puzzle by Victor Barocas

Cool finds, five guys whose first names are baseball terms. I'm a big "Simpsons" fan, so it was a head-slap moment to realize that HOMER SIMPSON could, of course, fit into the mix. I'll always think of MITT ROMNEY as "Mittens," but of course he's right at home in today's DIAMOND grid. Er, square grid. About a diamond. You know what I mean.

The revealer, DIAMOND JIM BRADY, didn't feel sharp enough at first. I got that a DIAMOND is where you can find a DH, HOMER, BAT, MITT. But it made me wonder if DIAMOND was hinting at the four other baseball terms arranged in the shape of a diamond?

Man, do I overthink things.

It's a fine revealer, and perhaps even clever, given how one of the five theme terms sort of describes the set. I might have preferred MLB or a more Monday-straightforward BASEBALL as a revealer, though.

Monday smoothness took a bad hop. R AND R is slightly better than others of its ilk, i.e., S AND P or B AND B, since I've occasionally seen R AND R written out. But such an olio of OLEO, TITER, TROI, ESTAS, EERO, AKINS, ESSEN. All reasonable(ish) entries for later-week usage; not so much for early-week territory, where not scaring off newbs is of paramount importance.

So, what happened? Biggest issue is the horizontal long fill of DEVIANCE / AVIATORS crossing METAPHOR / MAMMA MIA. The latter two give a lot of color to the puzzle, but the former don't do much, and they cause so many problems. I'd have broken up the horizontal long entries, as they're too big to fill around, without needing a lot of crossword glue.

Overall though, a fun theme. It made me wonder why I'd never put those five guys together. Now I'm curious to see how they'd play on the baseball diamond together.

– puzzle by Gary Larson

I can just see all the "Hitchhiker" pagans out there scratching their collective heads. WTF does THE MEANING OF LIFE have to do with the number 42? Basically, this supercomputer chugs along for decades to figure out the meaning of life, and it finally calculates the answer as "42." It's an amusing gag. Not as life-changingly funny as some make it out to be, though.

(ducking the onslaught of hate mail)

JACKIE ROBINSON's number 42 has been retired by all MLB teams. Great inclusion for this puzzle.

PRESIDENT CLINTON was POTUS 42. I liked how 42 was indirectly referenced in the clue. Made you have to think for half a second.

I wonder how many people will write me today with confused emails asking what the theme was. Check out 42-Across: THEME. Get it? Three themers that all reference the number 42?

"But why is the meaning of life 42, Jeff?"

GAH I JUST EXPLAINED IT WEREN'T YOU LISTENING oh never mind.

This is a rare case where the concept might have been better as a Sunday grid. I say this so infrequently that I can't remember the last time it happened. But it'd be easy to make some sort of grid art, forming a 4 2 out of black squares. It wouldn't have had perfect symmetry, but that'd have been fine.

That would have opened up the possibility for other 42-related things. The 42^nd element? The 42^nd US state? Some neat mathematical property of the number 42? I'm sure there are dozens of cleverly indirect relations to 42, too.

Fantastic clue for DANTE. Maybe I should start writing about the underworld so that people would call me one hell of a writer too.

The clue for ITHACA confused me. It's ... Gorges? Apparently it has a lot of gorges. Maybe it's a snooty New York thing.

Fun idea to riff on the number 42. I wish there had been at least one other themer, and that the clues had more explicitly referenced 42 (so people would STOP ASKING ME WHAT THE THEME IS PLEASE STOP), but an entertaining idea.

ADDED NOTE: Constructor extraordinare Matt Gaffney astutely observed that it would have been perfect to run this puzzle exactly six weeks ago. I'll let you figure that one out.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

★ I'm envious. It takes a great constructor to transform a stale theme — I've seen dozens of "salad dressing" concepts over the years — into something incredible. Who would have ever thought to riff on CROSS DRESSING, interpreting it as "a revealer literally crossing dressings"? And to attempt the impossible, crossing CROSS DRESSING through FIVE symmetrical dressings, incorporated into great phrases?

It should be impossible. There's no way that Crucivera, the crossword goddess, is benevolent enough to allow such a fortuitous happenstance.

You'd have to come up with a way to intersect five salad dressings through CROSS DRESSING, at symmetrical rows. That's hard, but doable.

But add in the constraint of having the five phrases also be symmetrical in length? And have those lengths match up in position, so the dressings still fit properly?

Nah. I wouldn't have even tried.

Sure glad C.C. did! Wow. I uncovered the revealer and figured out the theme early on. But I kept stopping to admire the feat. It didn't seem humanly feasible. I mean, getting CAESAR and RUSSIAN to intersect in rows 6 and 10, that's pretty cool. But to have HAIL CAESAR and RUSSIAN MOB just happen to fit into total, absolute, mystifying crossword symmetry?

Screw HAIL CAESAR. HAIL Crucivera is more like it.

Fantastic clue in RECESS, too, reimagining "trial separation" in a funny way.

A couple of blips in the fill: a little more crossword glue than I like, and a ton of 3-letter words that broke up solving flow. Not the most elegant of finishes. But:

1. Much of that is expected with six interlocked themers. After looking carefully at the grid design, I don't think I could have done better.
2. Who cares? When a theme is this eye-popping, such trivialities matter not.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

Seems appropriate that MACHU PICCHU has UP in the middle of it. The Incas and their clever wordplay!

I don't often build crosswords around short themers, because these shorties tend to get lost amongst all the long fill that (generally) has to go in a puzzle. But I liked the concept and theme set well enough, that I decided to give it a try. How hard could it be?

Hard, as it turns out!

Just placing the symmetrical pairs and laying out black squares to separate them was tough enough. It took a couple of dozen tries to come up with an arrangement that seemed fillable.

But I had to deploy so many black squares in the center of the grid — four sets of three diagonals takes up a lot of real estate — that I ended up needing at least a few long across answers (where STAGE ACTOR and STATIONARY are now). That felt problematic, because wouldn't solvers wonder how these two were related to the theme?

Hmm.

Why not go whole hog, I reasoned, and throw even more long across fill in, that it felt more purposeful as fill? Surely that would fix the issue.

What? You wondered how SUPER SLO MO was part of the theme? Darn you!

Finally, I rarely use cheater squares in the way that I did just before KRAFT. It just looks fugly to me; seems cheap. But darned if I couldn't figure out a reasonable fill in the SW corner without it. I tried every usual trick in the book, but every single one dead-ended at some bizarre piece of fill.

Bah!

If you haven't gotten the chance to go up to MACHU PICCHU — and more importantly, even higher to the peak at Huayna Picchu — that's one to put on the bucket list. Not for the faint of heart, faint of breath, or faint from fear of falling to one's death off of towering heights that have virtually no safety measures, though.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Dazzling clue alert! [Country superfans] had me puzzled, making it tough to break into that middle triple stack. What a delight to first figure out it started with a rare letter, J — not often that a rare letter anchors a triple-stack.

And then an even bigger pleasure to realize I'd been duped. Not a country music star like I'd been worried about, given my terrible knowledge of pop music. Country, as in nation! I'm not sure how common the term JINGOISTS is, but I don't care. What a great misdirect.

Solid triple-stack. None of them is as brilliantly clued as JINGOISTS, but MAJOR LEAGUE GAME, PRIVATE PRACTICE, GENERAL AUDIENCE are all good. I wish at least one of them had been given a wickedly clever wordplay clue — PRIVATE PRACTICE seems ripe for one. Something related to the army?

Hey, wait! Hold on just a second! (I admit, I skimmed over Adam's note, missing his point entirely at first.) MAJOR, PRIVATE, GENERAL? Okay, that's cool. Triple-stacks have been done to death, so they have to have fantastic entries to make them stand out. I'd never considered an alternate way to achieve stand-out-itude. How is it even possible to get three army ranks in a stack? That's an impressive feat.

I was revving up to grumble about the usual issues with triple-stacks; especially the gluey bits holding them together: APA, MCC (CD = 400, x3 = 1200 = MCC), and the terrible EEE. EEG TEST is a weird phrase, too, usually seen as just EEG. But heck, in the service of something cool, I can give that all a pass.

I'd have liked a little more zing in the other long slots. TABLE TOPS and GOOD SENSE are good, but AT THE ALTAR (feels like a partial) and RESTORED ain't gonna win any awards.

DEAD AGAIN was a well-made movie, but it literally didn't win any awards. At the time, I thought it wuz robbed. But I'm not sure it has staying power within the crossworld.

I hope other solvers figure out the mini-theme, because that was memorable. Along with the brilliant clue for JINGOISTS, I was thoroughly entertained.

– puzzle by Adam Fromm

I appreciate when people work with new themeless grid types. If you press the "Analyze this puzzle" button down below, you'll see that there are zero identical grids — and even zero with similar topology. That's a rare occurrence for themelesses, which usually have black square patterns that are similar to previous themelesses, if not precisely the same.

Why does this matter, Jeff, you ridiculous pedant?

I'm glad you asked! I usually don't care about statistics or measurements in puzzles — it only matters to me when they directly correlate to solver pleasure. In this case, the grid helped me break out of the staid themeless sensation of "feature answers packed into each of the four corners."

Not only did I get TIGERPROOFING across the middle, but it felt like everywhere I turned, there was a CASABLANCA. BETA TESTER. HERE'S HOW. BOER WAR. SEE IF I CARE? I sure do!

I enjoy it when the entire themeless feels relevant, rather than when it's all about the four corners, and the rest of the puzzle serves simply to join those corners together.

TIGERPROOFING comes at a relevant time, just a few weeks after Tiger's career comeback, winning this year's Masters. Amazing that he's persevered through all the surgeries. It feels like eons ago that golf course designers used TIGERPROOFING to try to give other people a shot against the wunderkind.

(As an aside, there's a program called "Dr. Fill" that competes in the ACPT. Some constructors have been accused of DR FILL PROOFING. Probably not a crossworthy entry just yet…)

As with most 66-word puzzles, a bit too many slots filled with neutral material like RELATE TO, TELECOMS, ALL ALONG, TEAMING. Easy to be SORE AT these, or at least call them not that ENTICING.

But there were a lot of strong feature entries sprinkled throughout, VR HEADSET, SOME PEOPLE!, HANGMAN with a fantastic clue about bad choices costing you an arm and a leg. And the clue [Hard core] made for a delightful moment of discovery; a PIT is a literal hard core. Helped keep my attention through this challenging solve.

– puzzle by Andy Kravis and Erik Agard

I like that Natan didn't stick to a standard "words hidden within phrases" theme, but took it a step further. Apt to "hook up" the fish buried in the theme phrases, pulling them all the way up to the top. It still may be boggling people's minds, so here's an example of how it worked:

WORKOUT ROUTINE -> TROUT WORKOU INE

I made a puzzle like this once for the WSJ, where the letters B I R D "flew south," in a similar manner. Some people loved it — I got a lot of fan mail. And some people hated it.

HAAAAAAATED it.

While I didn't receive any death threats, some notes were pretty close. It was just too hard a puzzle, even with the crossing answers dumbed way down.

I learned a lot from that experience. It's easy to go overboard and make a puzzle unenjoyably hard. Themes where a solver must depend on every single crossing answer can be especially frustrating. Think of a quote puzzle, where you have to solve based only on the downs, unable to see what's going on in the quote until the very last minute. That's essentially what we are working with today since it's so difficult to figure out each base phrase until you are close to uncovering the entire entry.

Natan's 136-word grid is well done — a rarity in Sunday puzzles. Big ups for that feat of cruciverbalistic wizardry. But figuring out the theme phrases was tough enough, and having so many long pieces of fill made the solving process even harder.

As much as I enjoyed the great bonuses — A VOTRE SANTE, COLD FISSION, PAUL SIMON, STEAMPUNK, and more — this particular theme was so challenging to uncover that a more standard 140-word grid might have made for a better solving experience.

As for the themers themselves, I'd have liked each of the fish spanning words within themers — the MAGIC and RIDE of MAGIC (CARP)ET RIDE felt superfluous, whereas LA(B ASS)ISTANT felt like a much more interesting discovery. But I can see how some would prefer the relative simplicity of ones like MAGIC (CARP)ET RIDE, given how hard the theme was to suss out.

Overall though, the twist on the tried and true theme type was appreciated.

– puzzle by Natan Last

HIT IT! An appropriate way to kick off a week, and an apt revealer for HIT the CEILING, HIT the SAUCE, HIT the SACK, etc. Reminds me of a funny clue I once saw: what might [Hit it on the head] be? Answer: NAIL.

Consistency was perfect today, every themer following the HIT the ___ pattern. Gary could have delved into (HIT) PARADE, (HIT) MAN, (HIT) a HOMER, but he chose to stick with only HIT phrases using THE.

I also appreciated that he put each of the six words at the ends of his phrases. Many solvers won't notice, but that attention to detail helps increase a puzzle's elegance.

Tightness was only so-so. At first, I thought, how many HIT the ___ phrases could there be? Didn't take long to come up with BOOKS, BOTTLE, BRAKES, DIRT, HAY, MOON, ROAD, SKIDS, SPOT. I'm sure there are others.

Don't get me wrong. I did like that Gary picked six that are colorful. It doesn't have that feeling of elegance or inspired amazement, though, the way discovering a perfect, unalterable set would have.

Some blips in the gridwork, not a surprise given the six themers plus HIT IT revealer. OGEE should never be in an early-week puzzle. That west section, with ROTC ROLF OTOH OTOE is bound to trip up newer solvers. I have some friends who are just starting to get into crosswords, and I wouldn't give them this one.

Intersecting themers, like HACKYSACK and CLAM SAUCE, can often create valuable spacing for gridwork. Here though, an all-across layout would have produced a better result. Start with CLAM SAUCE or LOWER DECK all the way to the left in row 3. HACKYSACK or CHECKMARK to the right in row 4. DEBT CEILING or WESTERN WALL to the left in row 6. The overlap in rows 3 and 4 make it like you're working with just 4 themers, not 6.

Not only would that have produced a smoother result, but it would have made the all-across themers easier to pick out for solvers.

A solid and consistent theme, with a couple of nice bonuses in SEGWAYS, I KNEW IT, TARTARE. Not smooth enough of an early-week product, though.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

Anagrams are often too difficult to figure out, which risks solvers not bothering to go back and untangling them. I like that Evan chose sequences on the easier side to decipher. VESUN starts with a telltale VE-, letting us know that it had to be VE-SUN. You know, the allied Victory in Europe on the SUN.

I admit, the presence of SUN confused me a bit.

Also confusing: the different planets are worlds? I get EARTH, but there's life on MYRECRU?

Er … MR. CEURY?

MERCURY, bah!

I'd have preferred using different worlds that have been inhabited. Like VULCAN. ENDOR. HOTH. I suppose we could allow MARS, given how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos will soon be terraforming it into a battleground for their dominion robot armies. My money's on the Bezobots.

(Jim pointed out my existenceism bias; that "world" doesn't necessarily mean "containing life." In fact, this dictionary does include a direct definition making the theme valid. It is definition #12 out of 12, but still, it does work.)

Maybe that theme would be a bit too nerdy, but crossword people tend to be (gasp!) a bit nerdy.

In cryptic crosswords, CHANGES is a common indicator for anagramming. It works today, but something like PLANETARY MOTION would have been better. And it would have given a better reason for using planets!

Strong gridwork; I'm impressed at the level of quality Evan is producing these days. Hardly a drop of crossword glue to be seen, and even some goodies in WENT STAG, TD PASS, FANTASY, MALAISE, GYM RAT, WHO ME? No AW MAN from Jeff!

I even briefly considered some POW! love for this one, based on the solid gridwork. The theme didn't quite work for me, though.

P.S. (WARNING: NERD ALERT) There's an easier approach to searching for scrambled strings. Take MERCURY, for example. You can inspect all the 7-letter sequences in your wordlist, checking to see if they have exactly one of M, E, C, U, Y, and two Rs. About five minutes of code and five seconds of run time turned up ARMY RECRUIT(S) and MERCY RULE but nothing else. VENUS was more interesting, with ANY GIVEN SUNDAY, EVENS UP THE SCORE, LEAVES UNSAID, LIVENS UP, and my favorite, NATURE VS NURTURE.

– puzzle by Evan Kalish

★ AES has some of the best theme ideas in the crossworld today. (A shame that he shares initials with Adlai "Madly for Adlai" E. Stevenson.) How could it be possible to come up with strong, in-the-language phrases for:

• One for the money
• Two for the show
• Three to get ready
• Four to go

I wouldn't have even tried — feels impossible.

LEATHER WALLET cleverly fits [One for the money], a bit of wordplay we might see within a great themeless puzzle.

BROADWAY TICKETS are certainly [Two for the show].

ALL WHEEL DRIVE is another deft interpretation, for [Four to go]. Brilliant!

If it hadn't been for STOP DROP AND ROLL not feeling apt for [Three to get ready], this would have been an automatic POW! pick. Even POY! territory.

I liked this idea so much that I spent a lot of time thinking about what else might have fit. (I wasn't a fan of any of Alex's original suggestions.) The best I could come up with was there's an old saying about the Three S's needed to get ready for a big event. But as spot-on as it was, it wouldn't have passed the NYT censor. (S___, shower, shave. First one rhymes with "hit.")

Ultimately, I couldn't think of anything that worked better than STOP DROP AND ROLL. So I gave it a pass in service of a great overall idea.

Strong gridwork, too. MAKES WAR, FIDELIS, JETWAYS, OPHELIA, WAVE SKI, all reason to APPLAUD. CAN'T LOSE!

Well, there's COLICKY. I don't know that much about Alex since he likes to keep a low profile (we still haven't convinced him to put up a pic.) I can guess that he has no kids though — for us parents of little kids, COLICKY is too soon, Alex. Too soon.

Good use of cheater squares. It's tough to work so many down entries through LEATHER WALLET and BROADWAY TICKETS. So I'm sure the black square above COLICKY was key in allowing Alex to make that NE corner smooth.

Even though STOP DROP AND ROLL didn't work for me, I managed to overlook it. Great idea and excellent craftsmanship earns Alex another POW!

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

Wilson's FOURTEEN / POINTS played upon today. Can you imagine a president trying to lay out fourteen points today, the first worded as:

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

People would get about three words in before they'd tweet #TLDR.

The idea works for a Thursday, 14 grid entries missing their final POINT. PIN is really PIN POINT, NEEDLE is NEEDLE POINT, etc. I liked that Alex chose mostly ones that made no sense until adding the POINT. For example, WEST is much better than PLOT, since WEST is clearly not a school, while both PLOT and PLOT POINT can fit the story-related clue.

Laying out 14 themers — actually, 16, including FOURTEEN POINTS — is no joke. I started to highlight them to better help them stand out, but the grid began to look fugly.

Note how many themer intersections there are — PIN / NEEDLE, BROWNIE / FOURTEEN, TIPPING / STAND, etc. — as well as pairs in close proximity. It's a nightmare of a gridding task.

I was pleasantly surprised to get some goodies in the fill; GUT PUNCH a standout, but also DEAR GOD and LAY ODDS, CRECHE, LOUVRE. As a constructor, I think that's pretty good.

As a solver, though, I felt like there wasn't enough snazziness in my solving experience. With barely any long themers, there ought to be more juicy long bonuses to keep me interested. Such is the challenge of a daunting theme construction.

I'd have preferred something less audacious, maybe SEVEN POINTS as [Score for a touchdown + extra point], allowing for more breathing room in the grid. Also allowing for a smoother product, not needing gluey bits like ANE ASTA CLU ORNE (yuck!) SWAGS (?), SCI THU, etc. to hold everything together.

I'd have even been okay with FIVE POINTS — the old Manhattan neighborhood featured in "Gangs of New York" — which might have allowed for longer POINT examples, like EXCLAMATION, INFLECTION, VANISHING, etc.

Maybe that's beside the.

– puzzle by Alex Vratsanos

QUEEN VICTORIA's 200^th birthday! An excellent feature entry to build around, and so nice to catch the bicentennial. Can you imagine people naming an entire (Victorian) era after you? Unfortunately, "Chennian" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Stan's "Saturday Stumper" puzzle in "Newsday" is often the hardest puzzle of the week, of any publication, bar none. It's great for the top of the tip-top solvers who want a devilish challenge. I gave it up a while back because I averaged approximately zero point zero zero letters filled in.

Today's puzzle had a stumper-ish vibe: not many playful clues, and a ton of difficult (to the difficult power) ones. Even the one delightful clue, [London or Manchester] for WRITER made me stop and think. Jack LONDON, yes, but MANCHESTER? That's ... William MANCHESTER, who confusingly was an American? It's clever, but it would have a bigger impact on someone more well-read than me.

TIX are [Passes, informally]? Yes, when they're passes to the movies. [Tool used on foot] is an EDGER? I suppose so, although I've used them while sitting down, too. Why so specific about using them on foot?

Satan is the DEUCE?

Yikes! This is supposed to be the easier of the themelesses, Fri vs. Sat. I bet it's tough for Stan (you ever notice how Stan and Satan only differ by one letter, hmm?) to make things easier when he's so used to aiming for harder than diamonds.

I liked some of the other feature entries, like SLAPDASH, OPEN BAR, LEND AN EAR, US SENATE. There were so many entries that felt out of my generational grasp, though. I do like PASCAL and MANTLE, both timeless fellas. But with the addition of ABRAM, NONCE, LINDY, the puzzle as a whole had a past-tense / historical vibe.

Not a bad thing, considering how many older solvers there are.

However, with how hard it played for me — more a hard Saturday than a Friday — it wasn't my cup of Victorian tea. I'm a big fan of Earl Grey's spicy bite, so I appreciate Will asking Stan to lively (liven?) it up. Could have used another round of iteration in that regard.

– puzzle by Stanley Newman

HAWAIIAN SHIRT / CATE BLANCHETT (wow, what a performance as Hela in "Thor: Ragnarok"!) / MICHELIN GUIDE made for a beautiful stair stack. I wasn't entirely sure what CHRISTIAN MINGLE was — been a while since I've used dating sites, thankfully — but it's a colorful and evocative brand.

Most stair stackers don't try to run a full-length 15 down the center, because it creates too much of a constraint. I like how Paolo tackled his grid, segmenting it a bit so that he could work on his NW / SE corners with relative ease. It didn't cut off those corners too severely, and it gave him a lot of flexibility.

LAPEL MIC and ANIMATOR are pretty good; ANIMATOR made better by a great clue playing on "drawing power." ON A LEASH was more filler than standout, but two out of three ain't bad.

Paolo did better in the SE corner; GLADHAND / LINGERIE / EASY READ all solid. Making it happen with no crossword glue, too! The GLE ending of CHRISTIAN MINGLE is easier to work with than the all-consonant CHR, so I wasn't surprised that the SE outshone the NW.

Delightful clue for DELIS, which serve DELIS(H) food, indeed!

The one sticking point was the ASHMAN / MIDRASH crossing. This is a Saturday puzzle, so it should be difficult. Is it fair to expect a solver to know a Hollywood lyricist and/or a term for Hebrew scripture? I happened to guess correctly, but I'm sympathetic to people gnashing their teeth over ISHMAN, ESHMAN, OSHMAN, or USHMAN.

Interesting to compare yesterday's themeless with today's. Stan's puzzles often feel a bit old-school to me, while Paolo's sometimes leave me in the dust with all his cutting-edge references (CHRISTIAN MINGLE, ASHMAN, HACKATHON, HEDER might all be tough for an older generation). Will has a tremendously difficult job, trying to cater to as many of his solvers as possible. What with the huge range of ages and backgrounds, it's often a no-win situation.

– puzzle by Paolo Pasco

My kids love the "Fly Guy" series. YEZZZ they do!

Standard sound change, Z dulled down to an S. Ruth found a lot of neat examples requiring huge spelling changes. I admired PEERS to PIERCE, FOURS to FORCE, EYES to ICE.

I often harp on consistency, consistency, consistency, but I liked that the central themer had a double change — a cherry on top, HIS AND HERS to HISS AND HEARSE.

The one themer that didn't quite work (speaking of consistency) was WARM AND FUSSY. Every other themer's base phrase ended with the Z sound, but this one ended with a long E. It wouldn't be noticeable if there had been a mix — some sound changes at the front of words, some at the back, some in the middle — but this one was the sole themer not like the others.

Doug Peterson and I just had an exchange lamenting how hard a 140-word 21x21 grid is to make, with color and cleanliness. I'd like to see Will change his spec sheet to "140-words, or 142 if you can still integrate a lot of colorful long non-theme entries." That would have helped today, what with ASA EDY ERN ILRE ITSA LTD NEY ORLE YMA, not to mention TENTER.

ORLE ought to be a puzzle-killer at this point, and crossing NACRE makes it especially guilty.

I did like many of the bonuses. CANDY CANE, HARD CIDER, RUDIMENTS, START DATE, BRUCE LEE, DATA PLAN were all solid. But breaking up ABRASION and ARMENIAN, going up to 142 words, could have facilitated a smoother final product.

Standard theme types are perfectly fine to tap, and sound changes may never go by the wayside because there are so many interesting ways to do them. Since so many have been done over the years, though, it's essential to make them nearly flawless.

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

MULTIPLE CHOICE — interpreted as "three instances of OR"?

Huh.

The best crossword themes are consistent, tight, and have a beautiful revealer to tie everything together.

• Consistent? Each phrase has exactly three ORs. Check!
• Tight? How many other triple OR phrases are there? I could only find INTERIOR DECORATOR (too long), FOR BETTER OR WORSE (middle OR isn't hidden as part of another word), REPORTED FOR WORK (would duplicate the FOR in WORD FOR WORD), MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR (too repetitive). So, check!
• Raison d'etre. If the answer to "why three ORs?" is "because that was what created consistency and tightness," that's not good enough.

You'd think two out of three is fine, but that last one is the most important of the three.

Today's theme does work as an average idea, but what if MULTIPLE CHOICE had been interpreted as things like:

• APPLE ORCHARD [Choice between fruit and veg?]
• LABOR POOL [Choice between work and play?]

Much more playful and interesting.

Thankfully, Bruce's smooth and colorful grid — just a TSO as crossword glue, while achieving some fun TURBO BOOST, TORCH RELAY, SPATTER — made up for some of the ho-hum feeling of the theme concept. Pulled up the product into a decent early-week offering I'd hand to a newb.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight