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Straightforward "add a letter(s)" theme today, ALADDIN parsing as AL ADD IN = add AL to phrases to produce wacky results. As with these types of puzzles, the keys are 1.) whether or not the base phrases are snappy and 2.) if the resulting phrases make the solver smile or laugh. I think Tom did a nice job in picking strong base phrases; all of them very solid. The resulting phrases generally didn't do a lot for me — humor is so subjective — but A FAREWELL TO ALARMS gave me a nice image of that kooky alarm clock programmed to roll away when it goes off, thus making the owner chase it a la Benny Hill. (cue Yakety Sax music here)

For just his second NYT puzzle, Tom does a nice job. The leap from weekday to Sunday puzzle is dramatic — I remember staring at a blank 21x grid for the first time, wondering if I could actually do it. It was a simple "add an R" puzzle so wasn't accepted (hey, you gotta start somewhere), but it was a giant step for me to realize that a Sunday NYT was within my grasp (well, with a LOT of additional practice and training). Congrats on the Sunday debut, Tom.

Ah, big corners. Check out the NE and the SW, 6x6 chunks of white appearing almost themeless in quality. These are tough to fill, especially when bordered by two long answers. I appreciate the care Tom took with the SW corner — it turned out beautiful. LONG PANTS is a nice enough answer, and Tom puts in PINKIES / RAN DRY / PLANAR with a great Flatland clue. Not even one tenuous answer! That's the way to care and feed for a subsection.

Moving to the NE though, once you throw down IDEALS OF MARCH and PUSSYFOOT (great entry, BTW!), filling that subsection can be brutal. So often they require glue like UNIATE and SO MUCH, which seems to me a six-letter partial, not something that's generally acceptable. I wonder if PUSSYFOOT was just too enticing to leave in the grid. It's one of my favorite entries in the grid, but for me personally, it's not worth the price of UNIATE and SO MUCH.

These big corners are tricky. They can be hard to avoid when your first entry (CHANGE OF PALACE) leaves exactly six white squares to its right. Might have been nicer to break that chunk into a much more easily fillable 6x3 or a 6x4, by shifting black squares around.

Finally, a nice clue to end this post. I was pretty stuck in the SW corner, and I stared at [Lines at a theater?] for the longest time. Turns out putting an "S" at the end wasn't so smart! I liked the a-ha moment of figuring out that it wasn't talking about QUEUES but a SCRIPT. I find these types of clever clues are essential for holding my interest when a Sunday theme is straightforward. Brought a smile to my face.

– puzzle by Tom McCoy

Strong puzzle to start the week. Initialism themes (two-word phrases which begin with the same letters) are commonplace, so one must go the extra mile to distinguish them. Acme does just that, by 1.) choosing superb theme answers, 2.) incorporating five of them, and 3.) throwing in a phonetic revealer, ESSAY. Very well executed, one I would have picked for the POW if it weren't for another puzzle coming up this week.

Aren't you curious now?

Bwa ha ha, I'm not going to say anything! Ah, schadenfreude.

Not only does Acme choose five themers, but they're long ones. A grid-spanner in the center actually is easier to incorporate than a 9 or an 11 or a 13 in the middle, but it still ain't easy. And look at the others — it wouldn't be bad at all if they were 8's or 9's. Tens and elevens are another story completely. Her layout is about the best configuration possible (leaving as much space in between themers as possible), but look at how much overlap there is between SHEER AGONY and SNOOZE ALARM, for example. That's sheer agony right there. Acme squeezes a few blocks between those answers, but that 20A slot is daunting. DO NOT feels a bit partial-ish to me, but a good clue ([Forbidding words?]) helps to save it.

At the opposite corner sits the other tricky spot. It comes out nice and smooth though, only USDA as a small blight. With both SUPERB and SMUTTY in that section, it's a winner in my book. Overall, a very smooth solve for me, one I'd be happy to give to a neophyte friend to try out.

Ah, the pangram. It's subjective, with many constructors (and some solvers!) trying for (or looking for) it at every turn. QATAR and QUEER slide right in, so I'm grateful to see the Q there. Not always the case with pangrams, which can feel to me like a J or Q or Z is jammed in with a hammer and chisel.

Personally, I like the reworked corner better, as KAT is slightly iffy in my book. But in this case, I can definitely see a case being made for Acme's original corner. The smoothness levels here are roughly equivalent, which is not always something I can say with pangram vs. non-pangram.

Finally, a great clue for AXLES, [Ones keeping the wheels turning?]. Fun wordplay here, plus a shout out to Journey's "Wheel in the Sky." I enjoy it when I leave a puzzle humming. Puzzles make me smile in general, and I really appreciate when the constructor/editor goes the extra mile.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels

Such strong theme answers today. LUNATIC FRINGE is one of my favorite answers in recent memory; a joy to uncover. And there's not much better than a cheap beer after a long run, so seeing PBR really did it for me. Everything is tied neatly together with ALL THE TRIMMINGS (RIBBON, CORD, FRINGE, and LACE all being types of trimming). Being the complete moron when it comes to all things decorative, I wasn't aware CORD could be anything besides what you tie around your pants to hold them up. Learn something new every day!

Ah, the central 13, bane of the constructor's existence. Those black squares on either side of the central answer cause all sorts of trouble. Anything that cuts down your flexibility means trouble, and fixing those two blacks squares may seem so minor, but they take away so many possibilities.

I like what Susan has done today with the black square pattern, forming a big "L" block on either side. Unusual to see such a big chunk of connected black squares. Visually it's a bit clunky, but it allows her to work in CYBERPUNK and ENCRYPTED as her long downs. When you have five theme answers, with the central one being an inconvenient length, sometimes you're just happy to escape with a fillable grid. I appreciate Susan's effort in giving us these two strong entries. To me, they're worth the price of REINE.

What with the high theme density and the central 13 difficulty, it's not surprising to see some blips in the fill quality. The NW and SE were bound to be difficult, given that a single word of five letters separates PABST BLUE RIBBON and SPINAL CORD. Trying to find something that works perfectly is not easy. I'm impressed that Susan only has NCR up top as a glue-y entry... unfortunately, it comes at 1-across. Not an ideal way to start a puzzle. The SE suffers a bit more, with LVI and CAGER (does anyone really use this term?) cropping up. I do love TV TRAY and BEEMER in the grid, but I'm not sure they're worth the hiccups in smoothness.

Standards have been ratcheting up over the years. When I first started a few years ago, I wouldn't have blinked at SSTAR or INT next to MCA. I suppose it's the curse of doing a daily puzzle, one's expectations always rising.

I'm a little mixed on whether I would have preferred to see this closer to Thanksgiving? On one hand it's overall a neat theme so I like getting it whenever I can. But it seems like a missed opportunity to run this nice Thanksgiving-ish-puzzle-which-really-isn't on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Anyway, a fun solving experience with a couple of rough spots.

– puzzle by Susan Gelfand

I like variety in my daily puzzles, and I like seeing things I've never seen before. It was fun to experience this one, slowly uncovering the circled letters to find that it was a WORD GAME revealer. A nice touch.

I wasn't familiar with JOTTO or PROBE or... where are the other themers? I highlighted them below because I kept losing track what was a themer and what wasn't. Although SHAME ON ME, now there's a game I'd like to play! KEEP HOUSE, not so much. Seriously though, it would have been great to find some way to distinguish the themers from the fill, given the short name lengths. Perhaps perimeter answers? All across in rows? Not sure how, but the placements as is felt a bit inelegant to me.

Ah, HAEC. Although there's not a ton of theme density, any time you fix words in strewn-about places, you're sure to run into challenges. In this case, not only does Jim run into issues because of all the constraints he's given himself, but the fact that there must be some long fill in order to keep under the word count limit of 78. Usually the themers are the long answers, so everything else is easier to fit in because they're shorter. This sort of reversal of the status quo makes it very tough to find long fill that is both snappy and allows for smooth fill. Having to knit so many disparate sections together often results in a CORM or a BEG TO. Not easy at all.

One example: once you've fixed the circled "W" and placed SCRABBLE, look at that giant slot you have to fill at 17-across. Jim does well to fit in KEEP HOUSE, a solid entry. But then you have a ??PA??? to fill, and once that becomes ESPARTO, oof, that little corner is jammed up. HAEC is an entry I tend to reboot one of my own puzzles for if it's ever required, but I'm sure there are Latin majors out there who are celebrating from the stoas and agoras. Similar action happens in the opposite corner, the heavy constraints forcing MMVI and NEVA. Each of those are fine in themselves, but both in one little subsection is a bit much for me.

Not being much of a word-game fan, this was a puzzle I enjoyed more after reading Jim's note. That doesn't often happen, but hearing about his thought process and his interests leading up to this theme made me appreciate it. I'm personally not a SCRABBLE or a BANANAGRAMS fan, so hearing about the intent for the solver to slowly uncover W O R D / G A M E from an avid player was pretty neat.

– puzzle by Jim Hilger

As some of you know, I'm on my third career, trying to make it as a writer of children's books. NPR recently put out a list of their "100 Must Reads for Kids". I've read almost about 90 of them as part of my market research... wish LITTLE WOMEN had been one of those 90! I really could have used that as I struggled in the NE, trying to figure out the fourth girl's name. Blargh!

We've seen LITTLE WOMEN played upon a few times in the NYT crossword, because any grouping of four or five related items lends itself nicely to a crossword. This is the first time we've seen it as a rebus though, and I found it enjoyable to pick through the strong fill to figure out where the heck the four girls would show up. The 72-word grid gave it a themeless feel, even more enjoyable given room for such goodness as OLIVE OIL, BROMIDE, SLEPT IN, and my favorite, NEUTRINO. I appreciate that Will is spacing out his rebus puzzles quite a bit now, which has helped ameliorate the rebus fatigue I had been feeling. I thoroughly enjoyed the search to find the four boxes today, especially given the smoothness of Ed's work.

Ed did a great job choosing his themers, four long and strong ones which added zest to the solve. It took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on with GLO(BETH)EATER, but it sure gave me a smile. Crossing it with (BETH)ERE was a nice touch, although (BETH)ERE OR BE SQUARE is a nice 14 letters and it's so related to crosswords... ah, you can't always get what you want.

What I liked best (among many things about this puzzle) was the flow of the solve (except for AGUE, I see you). I find more and more that I have less and less time in a day, so if I'm going to bang my head to figure something out, I greatly appreciate a strong payoff that doesn't involve many (if any) glue-y entries. I was stuck in the NE corner for the longest time, but finally figuring out NO NEED and LIVERY and Uncle Miltie BERLE was well worth it.

Tough, perhaps highly frustrating though, if you weren't familiar with either the resort of LIDO or Gertrude EDERLE. If that happened to you, I sympathize, as before I learned EDERLE she fixed me for an error a few times. But I'd say the general population really ought to be familiar with EDERLE given her amazing feat.

A small nit to pick, especially small given the strength of Ed's other fill: UNICORN crossed with UNE, with ONE cross-referenced below... typically editors try to keep "dupes" out of a single grid, so this bugged me a little. As much as I love Harry Potter (I instantly dropped in CENTAUR at that space and then tried FIRENZE and BANE), I would have preferred not to see UNI/UNE/ONE all together.

A final note, I was really glad to see GED NOT clued as "H.S. dropout option" or something to that effect. I do think it's extremely important to try for that HS diploma, but for some kids, the GED is a better option. Last summer I worked with a guy through Treehouse for Kids who fell far behind for various reasons, and the GED was just as good for getting him into an apprenticeship program as a HS diploma.

Okay, off my high horse. Fun puzzle today, obviously constructed with care to give a smooth solve.

– puzzle by Ed Sessa

Debut! Congrats, Kameron. Always nice to get a puzzle from yet another constructor's perspective. It always amazes me how much of his/her own style each constructor brings through the selection of a couple of key entries or clues.

Unusual construction today, one featuring quite a large white space in the very center of the grid. Typically something this big tends to be a bit rough around the edges, especially since it has to connect to four different subsections, but Kameron doesn't have a single STINKER in there. (Well, one stinker, in STINKER.) I even appreciated getting a novel and current clue for REE Drummond. It's impressive work in this large swath, even more so considering it's heavily constrained what with JAVASCRIPT and DAKAR RALLY intersecting it. I'm vaguely familiar with NARUTO, although really, what can compete with the joy that is Pokemon?

I've said too much.

Being the pop music moron I am, it took me every crossing to get ARCADE FIRE, thinking that it might be ARCADE TIRE, ARCADE FIRM, ARCADE FARE? I had a good laugh at my own ineptitude there. What made it extra tough was that the grid layout, while allowing for a giant center section, effectively chokes down each quadrant into its own mini-puzzle. The east and south mini-puzzles came quite easily to me, but they didn't help much in terms of breaking open that difficult north.

If a puzzle can be broken into two separate parts with the addition of a single pair of squares, that's generally a sign of potential flow problems. This grid doesn't exactly have that condition (try it; surprising to me that it didn't), but having two sets of places (the H of KESHA / the U of GUTSY and the N of KATRINA / the N of ANT NEST) where adding a pair of black squares could create a choked-off pattern felt constricting to me.

And wow, that west section was tough. I gave up, guessing ATABIOSIS and was initially frustrated by the term, but after pausing to reflect upon it, ANABIOSIS is pretty great. Who doesn't like zombie lingo? And for those of you equally baffled, ANA is defined as "a collection of various materials that reflect the character of a person or place." Learn something new every day. It's too bad that ANABIOSIS didn't have all easier crossings, because the more I think about it, the more I like it. If ANA had been [Santa ___] I think I would have loved learning ANABIOSIS.

Some beautiful clues today. [Printed slip] is such an innocent little clue, isn't it? Probably something like RECEIPT or BILL or something, yeah? Beautiful example of misdirection without the giveaway question mark at the end of the clue — "slip" here means "error," not "paper." [Pickup line?] was pretty good, although it felt slightly tortured to me (RAM = the Dodge Ram truck, methinks...). I liked [Reed section?] better, as it's repurposing the term for clarinets, oboes, etc. in order to make an otherwise boring entry stand out. Neat stuff.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

A fun solve today, plus a nice change of pace. A majority of themelesses feature four sets of stacked answers of 8+ letters, but John shortens things up today. It's often quite difficult to find jazzy answers in the seven-letter length, because the jazziest of answers are usually two-word entries. Not to say that single-word entries can't be snappy — SPAMBOT and FOOSBALL are cases in point — but it's much easier to create flash in a grid with those beautiful MAN-CAVE and FEAR NOT! type entries. John does well to take advantage of all his seven and eight-letter slots.

Integrating Scrabbly letters (JQXZ) can be a tricky endeavor in a themeless, as they often produce compromises. I like what John's done today. MCQ is a slight blight in my eyes, given that the movie hasn't reached the notoriety of The Duke's other movies, but it does enable such a snazzy stack in the starting corner. That's the way to launch a themeless.

And I appreciated the slew of X's in the SE corner too. It was especially fun to see X-AXIS from a math teacher, and the "plotting" misdirection made it even better. I really enjoyed meeting John a few months ago. It's a privilege to know a little something about particular constructors, which often makes my enjoyment of their puzzles even greater.

That's not to say the SE corner was perfect, of course. Given all those X's in there, we were bound to see a MAXENE, who according to the NYT was "the one on the left." Not the most ringing endorsement of one's crossword worthiness. Crossing the TABOR made it tricky, although I did appreciate pulling out memories of Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam on the drum and fife.

There was one crossing that baffled me. LARD for [Enrich] and DUCAT for [Admission ticket]? Apparently LARD as a verb means "to enrich or lace heavily with extra material; embellish" or "to fill throughout; inject." Who knew? (Don't answer that, smarty-pants.) And DUCAT I know mainly as a slang term for money, but apparently it's also slang for "an admission ticket." I do like learning new pieces of information from crosswords, but those two together... well, I guess it is a Saturday. Saturday puzzles are supposed to be hard! (Grumble grumble.)

Finally, what a beautiful bevy of clever clues today. [Sweet Jazz sound?] had nothing to do with music, but the Utah basketball team and John Stockton's nothing-but-net SWISH. [Moral duty?] was a great repurposing of a common phrase, this time with "duty" meaning "levy." SIN TAX! And my favorite in recent memory was [Complex data]. Took me ages to figure out that "complex" wasn't talking about difficulty level, but an apartment complex! Bravo for spicing up the otherwise neutral entry, RENTS. Please sir, may I have some more! I so much appreciate that type of wordplay clue in my Saturday puzzle.

– puzzle by John Lieb

★ Such a pleasure to open up a puzzle and see Patrick Berry's byline. I know I'll get at the very least a smooth, fun solving experience, and it can easily go all the way up to five-star incredulity. I especially like seeing his byline on a Sunday puzzle, as I personally tend to need a little something extra in order to keep my attention through the entire solve (one of his Sundays from 2008 is among my very favorite crosswords of all time). I got that today, a clever theme involving the crossing out of letters which doubles as the letter X.

The "replace-a-letter" and "add-a-letter" and "subtract-a-letter" type themes are still fine as long as they produce humorous resulting themers, but I so very much appreciate Patrick's desire to push the envelope. This could have easily been "change a C to an X" type theme for example, but he goes above and beyond to find themers which have a nice base (SMILEY FACES) as well as a funny outcome (SMILEY FAXES). And the X doubling as a "strikeout" in the clue is a pretty cool idea.

I would have liked the crossing answers to display an equal propensity to change (with funny results) when X'ed, though. I found it slightly unsatisfying that TIC didn't become TIX, for example. That would have been much harder to accomplish, perhaps having themers cross? Anyway, could just be a personal desire. Even without that extra layer I still quite enjoyed the solve, because...

Patrick always does such a fine job of filling his grids. Sundays are notoriously difficult to smoothly fill, but he both incorporates strong long fill and minimizes his glue-type entries. You might think the latter is achieved through brute force, auto-fill, whatever, but it's often determined very early on, when the constructors fixes their initial skeleton of black squares. With certain arrangements, you're almost never going to get "good fill," so figuring out that initial skeleton is 75% of the work. Patrick always does a great job of maximizing his spacing, and in this case (10 themers!) it's even more impressive that he has very few highly constrained spots in his grid.

That other 25%... check out the NE and SW corners. To have triple-stacked 8's with TWO themers running through each is no small feat. It is helpful that he can swap LESSER APES with BODY DOUBLE (same with THE ART OF WAR and SKIP TO MY LOU) and I'll bet he tried the permutations to figure out which would give smoother fills. He doesn't incorporate many Scrabbly letters, but I'd much rather see clean fill instead of hiccups caused by a J/Q/X/Z. The resulting corners are clean as a whistle, with just a MLLE and an OCT in total.

Finally, the clues. A puzzle can be ultra-smooth but still suffer if the clues are drab (or too dictionary-ish). This is especially important in a Sunday, where a half-dozen great clues can greatly enhance a puzzle. [Sucker?] for VAMPIRE. The clue for I'M FINE evoking images of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ("tis only a flesh wound!"). [Raised on books?] for EMBOSSED. And the beautiful [Give a piece to] for arm ("piece" being slang for gun). The clues made my solving experience even better.

All in all, a wonderful solve.

ADDED NOTE: I can't believe I missed this. The crossed out letters spell CROSSED OUT. So, so, SO cool! And forget what I said about being able to swap out LESSER APES and BODY DOUBLE — making those NE and SW corners even more impressive!

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

★ This puzzle delighted me. It's pretty rare that we see shenanigans on a Monday, because Will tries to keep early-week puzzles fairly accessible for the NYT solving population. So it's a real treat to get a fun theme like this, easy enough for most solvers to pick up on but clever enough to be memorable. Very well done.

A few months ago, I started to realize that I was letting my constructor's brain take over my daily analysis, going robotically through to figure out what could have been done better. Things changed when there was a puzzle I thought had too many compromises, but which Jim didn't mind because it "delighted him." That made me revisit my criteria on what makes a puzzle "good." Puzzles are a fun thing for me, and elevating that "delight factor" (DF) as my number one criteria has also elevated my puzzling joy. So to see a theme like this, where WIDE RECEIVER is interpreted as [T e l e p h o n e h a n d s e t] = great pleasure for me. All four of these themers really did it for me, and to have STRETCHED OUT as both a themer AND a revealer = brilliant.

That's not to say my constructor's mentality ever turns off (darn you, stupid brain!). I couldn't help but notice that there wasn't as much in terms of long fill as there could have been. It was interesting to read Tom's note to that regard. OLD STYLE and SPLENDID are indeed very good entries, as are MAJESTY and RICHTER, but it would have been splendid indeed if Tom had managed to work in another pair of 8's.

And there's really not much that's glue-y in this grid. Pretty well polished. But as I recently told a co-constructor, I have a hard time with "good enough" fill, always (OCD-like) trying for the absolute best possible. So seeing A TRIP, which could have been ATRIA (and possibly allowed for MY EYE! where HYENA is) made me pause. In general, I expect 78-word puzzles to have almost perfect fill, unless the theme density or other constraints necessitate otherwise.

So a well executed puzzle, with a pinch of unfulfilled potential. Knowing that Tom's a CS guy, I have a feeling he'll be upping his game as his constructor career rises.

Overall, I return to what's really important: DF = high.

ADDED NOTE: I corresponded with Tom about that east section, and it turns out he missed that possible improvement because he did this grid by hand. Wow! My first grid by hand was a complete disaster, including the wild entry SUN SON (it sounded like "a thing" at the time). One big advantage of computer-aided design is finding and improving these little sections is much quicker than doing so by hand.

– puzzle by Tom McCoy

What a cool find, to discover that certain famous people's names can be anagrammed to form PASSING NOTES, i.e. obits. I have to admit it took me a while to cotton to what was going on, but it was a neat a-ha moment when it came. MONROE NO MORE, NEWTON WENT ON, EDISON IS DONE... it's even neater now that I look back on it. Very cool to have a more complex theme than on an average Tuesday.

Really interesting grid design today. Instead of putting long fill in the down direction, Pam puts two long across answers into the grid, SIDESADDLE and CLOSE TO YOU. The reason we usually don't see this is that it can be much harder to incorporate these long across fillers without compromises in the short fill. Adding two extra ten-letter answers is effectively like upping the theme density. Not as hard of course, since you can change whatever those long fillers to whatever you want them to be. And Pam does a bang-up job with it, keeping all her crossings clean through those long fill entries, even giving us LEAN IN, the Sheryl Sandberg best seller. Very nice!

Those two long acrosses do produce the only offender to my own personal tastes, MDLI, though. The layout at that location results in the ?D?I pattern, which is awfully tough to fill. There's really nothing else but random Roman numerals possible, is there? I would have liked to seen black squares shifted around to avoid that dreaded pattern. I know it's just a single entry, but with only four theme entries, my OCD constructor's brain tells me that it could have been avoided. The CLOSE TO YOU entry makes that very difficult, however.

I really liked 1.) the anagramming find as well as 2.) the repurposing of the PASSING NOTES to tie the themers together. Ultimately, I felt those two ideas didn't quite mesh well enough for my taste to give it the POW, though. It could be telling that the clue for PASSING NOTES had to be super long as to almost be unreadable? Unfortunately, I can't think of a better way to weave these two ideas together. I might have preferred to see each of these ideas in a separate puzzle. Maybe one with a fourth anagram, and another with famous newspaper obit headlines?

Finally, the fill is pretty good today. Besides MDLI, there's only really SST, AER, EMS, OCTO, and WIS. None of those is bad, really. But it seems to me those isolated sections could be cleaned up, so as to have almost no glue-type entries. (I'll leave that as an exercise to the budding constructors out there. And yes, if for some reason SHANE is important to leave in, SST and AER are likely necessary.) I know it's me being picky and many solvers will gloss right over this point, but I find it difficult not to strive for absolute perfection.

Overall, two very nice theme ideas, perhaps not meshing quite as much to their potential as possible, but still producing a very enjoyable solve.

– puzzle by Pamela Klawitter

Another strong construction from Ian today, this one using circled letters to spell out FLAG DAY. Which apparently is June 14. Who knew? I like that the circles are placed in the shape of a flag. Nice touch.

Nice choice of four themers, ones that are easily recognizable even by those of us who mix up Wyoming and Wisconsin. I mean, those of us who have friends who know so little about geography. And each of the four is a snappy answer in itself, each one I'd be happy to use as fill in any of my own puzzles.

In terms of specificity, I did pause a little. It was really nice to see [Canada] up top, followed by [U.S.A.] close to the middle. I was anticipating [Mexico] next, perhaps followed by a revealer? So it was a little jarring to see [U.S.S.R.] next. My knowledge of geography is bad, but it's not THAT bad. Although I could probably be convinced that [Japan] is somewhere down south. It would have been perfect if the themers were geographically correct, or if they were the four biggest economies in the world, or all members of the G-7, etc. Eh, can't have it all.

Neat layout today, more difficult that it might look at first glance. Ian does well to space out his themers so as to account for the circled letters. This does force the two grid-spanners very close together, which can often create problems. My expectations are always quite high when I see Ian's byline, so it was noticeable to get EEE in there. Tough to avoid, though, unless you want to use EOE or DR. N (um... Newton's nickname?).

Beautiful way to start the puzzle, with DAFFY and ["You're dethpicable" toon]. I grew up on Looney Tunes, and getting a reminder of those halcyon days when I used to watch hours of cartoons (also known as "yesterday") makes me smile.

Hoo boy though, did I ever get stuck in one spot. Who knew a female SWAN is called a "pen"? Apparently there's also a famous pen brand called "Swan." Considering NO FAT could easily have been LOFAT made it even harder.

As always, Ian gives us good long fill, even what with the tough puzzle constraints. POKER ROOM going through two themers, and FOUR ALARM doing the same — that's excellent grid design. He places his black squares very well in order to isolate those sections, making them easier to fill. YEAH MAN!, good stuff.

– puzzle by Ian Livengood

Neat idea today, words/phrases which can follow THE WHOLE but can also stand on their own. Ultimately it falls into the "words that can follow" type theme, but it goes a little bit further to distinguish itself. I had no idea there were so many. BALL OF WAX wasn't familiar to me as a term on its own, but it sort of seems to Google okay (mostly it comes up with WHOLE preceding it). MEGILLAH was a neat one, a term I wasn't aware of. I'm going to start using it (randomly). It sounds so awesomely illicit.

A 72-word themed construction is a difficult task. A 72-word themed construction with five themers and a central 13 is just plan nuts! But Mark pulls it off pretty well. He quasi-separates the grid into four quadrants which makes constructing easier, as that allows him to work on one part at a time, without affecting the other three areas. It does hurt the puzzle flow a bit though, as I found myself working on one quadrant at a time. It's much nicer to flow through a puzzle without feeling dammed up, IMO.

One way to eyeball how hard a subsection will be to solve is to gauge how big the biggest white space chunks are. What would you guess, just by looking at the NW vs. the NE? To me, the NE would be much tougher, as the big 5x5 swath looks daunting. And indeed, the NW corner is pretty darn good, just a short ENOL and EDO as a price to pay. The NE is a little shakier, the awkward ALL IS holding the section together, right next to PLATER. Perhaps the latter would have been a little better as [Part of an Iron Chef's team] or something? Having been around a lot of metal workers in my first career, PLATER sounds a bit off. "The #$@$! moop who plates %#$%#!," more accurately.

Similarly in the symmetrical corner, A TOWN and RESHIP hold things together in the 5x5 chunk. A very tough spot to fill cleanly.

Each of those subsections would be a bear to fill. I'm pretty impressed with Mark has achieved in the SE, a smooth ride for me except for SERACS, which seems to be a real thing. I didn't know it, but after looking it up, it appears to be more a deficiency in my knowledge base than anything. There isn't any single outstanding entry in the SE (except for I got HUMIDITY instantly, thanks years of engineering classes!) but sometimes it's what's NOT in a puzzle (gluey stuff) that's most notable.

A couple of beautiful clues today. [Email attachment attachment?] is clever, alluding to the Trojan Horses that come with much spam. And [In groups] made me think about SORTED, ALIGNED, ORDERED, etc. so I loved seeing ELITES pop up. Now that's some good stuff. Non-question-marked-clever-clues, how I love thee!

Finally, it's a mystery why we see ERGS and DYNES all the time, but SNELL is hardly ever clued with respect to Snell's Law of Refraction. We get the uncommon ERG but a basic optics law doesn't get its due? How about a little love for the physics junkies out there? I'm not asking for double integrals or flux density calculations or anything, just slip one in under the radar for poor Willebrarod Snellius. Tee hee. What a tremendous megillah that would be.

– puzzle by Mark Feldman

One aspect I really like about David's constructions is that they're hardly ever derivative. Sometimes it gets a little tiring to see the same (or similar) themeless skeletons used. There's something really cool about opening up a file and oohing and aahing about the empty black and white pattern. Today is no different, as I studied the skeleton for a few sections, admiring its beauty, before jumping in.

With these puzzles featuring 15-letter entries, it's super important to make your grid-spanners count. I SHOT THE SHERIFF was one of my favorite songs back as a young 'un. And AUDIO VISUAL AIDS was a good one too, hearkening me back to the good ol' carefree days of being sat down to watch movies in class, day after day. It's a wonder I learned anything, really. Or did I? Because I had no idea about...

SOULJABOYTELLEM makes me feel... old? Deprived? Cranky? Just for fun, I tried to parse it before looking it up. Apparently Soul Jaboy Tellem was incorrect. I ended up recognizing the phone kissing song, remembering some of the kids I work with singing it. But hoo boy, that was a toughie. I was very, very glad each of the crossings was fair. Thanks, Will!

I like how David draws from so many different walks of life. A SKINNER BOX is commonplace in animal experimentation, and it provided for a great misdirect. I cycled through all sorts of workout devices before realizing it had nothing to do with exercise at all. Great entry.

And GOOGOLPLEX (10 to the googol power, where googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes) was another beautiful entry. I couldn't remember if it was GOOGOLPLEX (the number) or GOOGLEPLEX (the Google facility). Made me think of when one of my MBA profs was talking about the arbitrary nature of marketing. "I mean, what does any name mean? Why 'Google', what a ridiculous word!" Makes you wonder about MBAs (even more than you already do) ...

I've noticed that David tends to be a constructor who's okay with a little glue-y stuff if it means it can enable his great stuff. Seeing ROSAS, EDO, OESTE, MCI, MIES, RETAR is a little much for me, but heck, if I get MADE MAN, ECOCIDE, PACE LAP, and XD OUT, I think that trade-off is fair. And I appreciate how David just double-stacks, not triple-stacks, which I'm sure would have made the puzzle crunchier.

Finally, two neat things to point out: ADRIEN over BRODY is a masterwork of fill. Now that's the way to cross-reference. And [Brat's place] is such a brilliant clue. I was thinking about timeout corners, in his/her room, hung up by his underwear on a flagpole, but that wasn't it at all. And I would never hang a brat up on a flagpole by his underwear, of course. Unless he looked at me funny.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

This might look like a typical themeless construction, with a set of triple-stacked 8's in each corner, but it's not. Alex travels an ambitious road by adding two aspects, both of which make this construction much harder than the more typical ones.

First, note the four long entries crossing the triple-stacked 8's. EDWARD NORTON, POINT OF ORDER, CRANBERRY BOG, IDIOSYNCRASY, they're all great. We don't often see four EXTRA long answers like this, all intersecting each other in a windmill pattern.

And Alex could have made this easier on himself by blocking off some of the puzzle flow. Note how each of the four corners flows in either direction? Might not seem like a big deal, but it's so much harder to get a puzzle to knit together with an open construction like this. If Alex had blocked off the start of DENARII / TOSCA for example, his SCHAEFER / CRONKITE / HASTENED stack wouldn't have had to "turn the corner" there.

Given these ambitious constraints, Alex does a nice job. Starting with the four aforementioned long entries, all great, he expands from there into his four triple-stacks. I loved the NW one, with the Scrabbly JOAN BAEZ to kick it off, and INNUENDO and LETS DOWN are both very nice. The other stacks aren't quite as nice, but that's to be expected given the constraints. Typically I wouldn't consider NORTHERN, HASTENED, even OLEASTER to be great themeless entries.

And there are a few blips here and there, most interesting to me was that they almost all came from the "turning the corner" areas. EDER and SORBS. CHA and ENHALO. IVO and ELEC. DANO and ETERNE. Alex keeps the rest of the puzzle pretty lively and clean, but those small areas get tricky. Any time you have to knit sections together in multiple ways, things get tough. Alex does do a nice job of keeping everything solvable with fair crossings, although the F in SCHAEFER / FINIAL was a bit iffy for me. Big fan of everything from our local Manny's Pale Ale to Bud Light with Lime. (Only after long runs, I swear! Don't tell anyone.). But I wasn't aware of SCHAEFER. Perhaps someone needs to telex me some.

Some great clues today. [Provider of bang for the buck?] was a fun one, alluding to a buck using his antlers as weapons. [Sitter's choice] looked so innocuous, making me think about TV vs. movies while watching tots. Devious!

– puzzle by Alex Vratsanos

An experienced constructor and fellow CrosSynergy member, Tony gives us a straightforward "add-a-letter(s)" type theme today, ENRICH being construed as "add richness by adding an EN." Some funny resulting phrases, LET ER RIPEN being my favorite. Beautiful base phrase (LET ER RIP!) and an amusing image of a fruit picker maniacally stripping green apples off a tree. CAN I BE FRANKEN also gave me a chuckle.

LEAVENING LAS VEGAS has a nice base phrase (LEAVING LAS VEGAS, possibly the most depressing movie of all time), and I got a kick out of someone sprinkling leavening all over Sin City. So the clue confused me. There is one dictionary definition for "leaven" that goes: "to permeate with an altering or transforming element." But that doesn't seem like a comic's job as much as a city planner's? Perhaps too nit picky on my part. I suppose I shall have to prolong my wait for the leavening fairy's arrival.

Ah, the "breakfast test." This term is bandied about by editors, as to whether or not an entry (or a clue, for that matter) will cause distress for a person doing the crossword over breakfast. Even though Preparation H was disguised within PREPARATION HEN, it gave me a bit of an ick factor. I'm not really a fan of picturing that yellow and blue container, people in ads making all sorts of pained faces as they point at their... apparently this commentary doesn't pass the breakfast test. Sorry about that!

Some nice fill today. P B AND J, now that's a way to start a puzzle. And PONIED UP is good stuff, as is TAKES AIM, and PERFECT TEN is, well, a perfect ten. At first I wondered if it would have been better if there were no other ENs in the puzzle (especially not in the long entries like PERFECT TEN which could possibly be mistaken for themers)? But that seems pretty picky. Silence, stupid constructor's brain!

As with most every Sunday puzzle, there will be compromises. They're just so much harder to create than 15x's. It's a bit unfortunate to see two (var.) tags in one puzzle, one on ALINING (aligning) and the other on ASANTE (Ashanti). And woo-wee, did I have trouble with the ASANTE/SHEREE crossing. Apparently I'm not watching enough "Real Housewives" (okay, so there is a show more depressing than "Leaving Las Vegas"). And ARE NOT/CAN TOO felt a bit much. It's tricky. You want to give the solver great stuff like SHINBONE, but not at too great a price. Very tough to balance, even going up to Will's maximum word count of 140. Tony's grid skeleton is pretty good, lots of space between themers. It's just tough to fill a 21x cleanly with a lot of zest.

Finally, I loved the cluing on [It comes as a shock]. Similar sorts of wordplay have been done before on TREMOR, but I still got fooled, thinking about surprise announcements. But OH NO HE DIDNT didn't fit. Okay fine, I watch "Real Housewives"!

– puzzle by Tony Orbach

Man oh man, that's a lot of B's! Perhaps appropriate for a guy named Bruce, eh? Sorry Bill Ballard, Bruce Bliven, and Barry Boone, you guys got scooped by a non-double-B. For shame, it's the BTEAM for you! There's a kid in my boys' group who we call "Big B" — I'm going to have to give him a copy of this one.

There are a lot of answers with two B's today. We keep track of various records (not that you should construct strictly to break a record or anything) like most B's in a puzzle but not "most words with two B's." I like data, but not THAT much.

A lot of strong material worked into the grid today. Look at those nice long acrosses, BIRD BRAIN and BELA BARTOK being my favorites. Even BIG BAND and BARBELL are nice bonuses. Four pairs of long across themers makes for quite a construction challenge. Then you throw in four long downs, intersecting everything? Jinkies! But wait, there's more. A couple of BULB BABAS and... where are the others? I originally highlighted the theme entries, but it became too much of a blue blur, so I just highlighted the B's. Nice touch that there aren't any extraneous B's.

For me, less could have been more for this one. Studying it, I think I would have liked just ("just," he says idiotically) the four pairs of across themers and the two pairs of downs. I stopped paying attention to the asterisks on the clues after roughly the second one. So it would have been nice if all of the themers stood on their own. And as much as I liked B TEAM as a revealer, it felt odd to me to get it so close to the start of the puzzle. I much prefer my revealers in the very middle or a bottom corner of a puzzle. Plus, it might have allowed a reduction of ABRIM, which felt like a price to pay for that extra BABE. And it felt a little inelegant that the themers weren't all symmetrical.

Given the spectacular number of constraints, it's pretty impressive that Bruce keeps the puzzle as clean as he does. I felt like there was a touch too much MNO, AMOR, MOUE, LAHR, ABRIM stuff for my ideal Monday puzzle, but that's my subjective opinion. And all of those answers had fair crossings.

Finally, I hope Will eventually uses Bruce's clue for KLAN, if it's ever necessary for a puzzle. Man oh man I got a good laugh out of that one.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

Neat idea from C.C. today. We've seen many puzzles based around silent letters, but I really enjoyed how she added an extra layer on top of that by choosing SILENT movies, e.g. ones which start with a silent letter. Clever concept and really cool that she managed to find an iconic one, PSYCHO, which happened to match the revealer, SILENT, in length.

A six-letter revealer might seem trivial, but it's one of the harder things to integrate. Seems bizarre, doesn't it, that a teeny lil' ol' six-letter word would cause so much trouble? But typically, a revealer is most elegant at the very SW or SE of a puzzle. And when you stack another theme answer on top of it (KNIGHT AND DAY over SILENT in this case), look at that 6x3 chunk, constrained on both the bottom and the top. It can be quite a challenge, especially if the letters aren't friendly.

I like the NE quite a lot, a real feat of cleanliness given those constraints. The SW is surprisingly fun with AMBIEN and BOOTIE (BOL is sadly not clued to my favorite bball player of all time, the stick-thin Manute Bol, often seen heaving up three-point shots), but SPINET as a small piano is going to be a roughie toughie for many. Even as a former cellist and trombonist, I hadn't heard this term before. At least all the crossings are fair.

Speaking of fair crossings, that MEHTA / MEADE cross is going to be a hair-puller for some. I think both are more than fair game, especially for the NYT solving audience, but that's a challenging square right there. I love JOHN GOODMAN and "The Big Lebowski" reference. I abide, after all. But I wonder if a different choice of long down fill might have been better there. It is quite a pile-up of names, with GOODMAN, MEADE, MEHTA, and ALITO all in a small subregion.

And POWER PLANTS, that's a beautiful piece of fill. It does create some filling challenges in the NW though. I think I might prefer C.C.'s original fill up there, although both ATRI and AFORE are tough pills to swallow. Perhaps a cheater square at the A of SCHWA could have helped things? I tend to play fast and loose with cheater squares (extra black squares which don't affect the total word count).

Really nice to get a clue I haven't seen before for ALI. Nice piece of trivia. And SHARK clued as [Jet fighter?] was just brilliant. Good stuff, especially for an early-week puzzle.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

Scrabble puzzle! I almost always find it interesting to get an in-depth look into someone else's favorite hobby, hearing about the crazy details that no one but a fanatic would get. For all my word-related ruminations, you'd think I'd be a decent Scrabble player. But I only do well enough to play a horribly annoying defensive game, not caring how much I score as long as I block off the board well enough to keep my margin of losing to a minimum. We engineers are a fun bunch, aren't we?

We've had at least one Scrabble-related crossword before, but this is the first one I can remember to focus on high-scoring starting words, ones you'd need a BLANK TILE to play. Never in a googolplex years would that have occurred to me, and that's what makes this puzzle quirky and interesting in my eyes. Apparently there are only one J, K, X and Z tile apiece. There have to be many more words that would fit into this theme, so I asked Amy why these four? Fun to hear that they're simply ones that she likes. Man, I'll never understand Scrabble types.

Nice construction today, a tough one considering the need to work in two J's, two X's, and two Z's. Along with a layout that feature so many seven-letter across entries, it gets tough. Those constraints force Amy to use longer-than-average fill in general, and she accomplishes this by using a lot of six-letter words. XANADU, ZOOM IN, COHORT, that's the way to use those slots well.

There are some areas with a little more glue than I like to see. In particular, the NW and SE corners are so sectioned off from the rest of the puzzle that having an STD and an AMER in there felt unnecessary. Same goes for the other corners, where it's not necessary to have an SSTS or OTRA. I know that all must sound uber-picky, but I feel like it's important to minimize glue entries wherever possible, even if there aren't that many to begin with. Not everyone agrees with me, but I put a high priority on solving smoothness.

It's always nice to see Scrabbly letters in a puzzle (JQXZ), assuming they don't cause too many compromises, so a puzzle which by nature is Scrabbly is pretty cool. Quite an enjoyable solve for me.

– puzzle by Amy Johnson

★ Man oh man do I love visual grid elements! Such a beautiful question mark made out of black squares; what a cool graphic. This grid doesn't display normal crossword symmetry (or any, for that matter) but I don't give a hoot about that, because the visual is so stunning. Well done!

TWENTY QUESTIONS is a really nice entry for the theme. And I believe there are twenty question, although I got a little tired of counting at around three, so I'll trust that it adds up. As Bill Clinton said, it's just arithmetic. All that counting made me TOO TIRED TO THINK. So I suppose that's kind of thematic?

Generally it played like a themeless, which was a nice change of pace for a Thursday. I typically seek out the crazy, twisty type of puzzle on Thursdays, the ones that break your brain as you struggle to figure out what the heck is going on (and then gasp when you find out the insanity in the creator's head). But I know that's not everyone's preference, and lots of people love themelesses, so this will be especially good for them.

Like with most themeless puzzles, there's a huge amount of solid long stuff. EROTIC ART, SPIT AND POLISH, CONTORTIONIST, and my favorite, CUE STICKS. That last one was made even better with a brilliant clue, referring to the opening break of a pool game. Love, love, love that kind of cluing!

And also as with most themeless puzzles, there are such big open white spaces that there will be some compromises. Inside the question mark was my first guess as to where we'd see a little crunchiness, but Tim actually does amazingly well there. NEAPS isn't pretty, but it's a single glue entry that enables the snazz of GRANDPARENTS, THIN AS A RAIL, CAN IT BE, etc. Really impressed with the care he put into that section.

I was a little surprised to see the blips pop up in the NW and NE corners. There was enough of the APER / ALAR, ISSA, PREX kind of stuff that I almost wish Tim had broken up POWER LINE and MONETIZES to give us a net of two more words with a cleaner overall fill. Tough though — it is a treat for the eyes to see such big open areas on the sides of the puzzle. And I do love the word MONETIZES. It's so "Shark Tank," my favorite show on TV.

Overall, I love the amazing visual spectacle of the grid. Perhaps some untapped potential, although I'm not sure how more thematic material could have been incorporated. A memorable piece of grid art, to be sure.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

Ah, another from the quad-stack master, MAS. I really liked the open layout of this one, the puzzle flow being pretty darn good. That bottom stack sure contains a lot of great stuff. When your 15's have to carry so much of the burden for pizzazz, WISDOM OF SOLOMON is the way to do it. ASCENT OF EVEREST felt a little newsy at first, but I think I like that one quite a bit too.

I like the direction in which MAS is moving, not just being content with quad stacks in themselves. The crossword art form is always evolving, and if you don't try new things as a constructor, you'll get left behind. In the past, we "just" saw triple stacks and quad stacks, but MAS's recent ones have all given us such nice long answers crossing through the stacks. NEON TETRA and HERSHEY BAR through those stacks? Yes, please! And note how those long guys keep the puzzle flow open. As a solver, I really appreciate that.

WHEN IM GONE... I'm a complete moron when it comes to pop music, perhaps only better than my (identical twin) brother, who once asked, "Who's this 'eh-my-nem' guy?" Ha ha ha, he's so out of it! (Sadly, I couldn't identify Eminem at that point, either.) Anyhoo, WHEN IM GONE is a song I recognize now, so that's saying something. Still, I like prefer the NEON TETRA type answers, unless the song is wildly popular, like BABY GOT BACK.

The top stack isn't quite as snazzy, especially given the two ONES phrases (glad MAS is humble enough to admit this issue up front) and the abundance of common letters. So many RSTLN E type squares. And there are some rough crossings, as with most quad stacks. The SOHNE / TRE area, STAFFA/SNERD... well, I won't belabor the point.

The first ever quad stack was a huge eye-opener, a visual stunner. Now that we've had a good handful of them, it's going to require raising the bar to keep them interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how MAS can evolve, what different types of grids he can give us in the future. I'm betting we'll see more innovations out of him.

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

Another nice themeless from the BOY WONDER duo, Brad Wilber and Byron Walden. An interesting grid layout I haven't seen before — always neat to see a new skeleton. It features a lot more seven-letter entries than normal, while leaving less room for entries of eight or more letters. This can make it tricky to fill a grid with snazzy stuff, as most of the time pizzazz comes from those 8+ letter entries. But fill like SKI TEAM and PINE NUT help to take advantage of those spaces.

Some beautiful entries today, NADERITE is not a term I knew but it's highly inferable. And TAD LINCOLN, what a nice entry. That crossing OUTLANDERS was awfully nice. And E LEARNING is a great example of an in-the-language term adding some recency to the NYT puzzle.

There are so many interconnects today. On one hand, this helps a puzzle flow for a solver, making it so easy to move into different parts of the grid via multiple entries. That NW corner is so wide open, with so many different ways to break in. However, it does make grid-filling a real challenge. With the long OUTLANDERS and TAD LINCOLN running through it, it causes all sorts of constraints. I have such a high standard for both of these guys' work that it was a bit of a surprise to see ASK AN, even with a neat clue.

And look at the SW corner, SUCH a great triple stack of STALIN ERA / HOVER OVER / E LEARNING. Beautiful, top-notch stuff. However, check out the huge spaces that allow a solver to get in there. What with OUTLANDERS already being fixed in place, it becomes super hard to find clean crossings. AVERYS is a bit inelegant, in that it's difficult for me to think of one famous AVERY, much less two. And exiting that SW corner is a bit of a rough patch, with DIONE / ROODS / ISERE. All fair entries for a Saturday NYT solver, but not ideal to have them all lumped together.

I was wowed by the SE though. With all the aforementioned constraints, that corner by all rights should contain at least a bit of junk or glue. Framed by SOURCE CODE and ANTHRACITE, they do wonderful things in that space. Even DOZER is fine by me, although I would have much preferred a clue related to "The Matrix." Dozer and Tank, two of my favorite characters in the flick. All that, plus a Z and an X? Masterful.

Some great, Saturday-ish clues today. [Handy talent?] was so confusing, until it finally dawned on me that the clue was talking about the composer Handy. And [Spots likely to smear] for ATTACK ADS, that's just brilliant. My favorite though, will not be everyone's cup of tea. The clue for SERF took me back to all those times I've watched that movie — I can't help but laugh every time I think about those two mud-flinging serfs discussing systems of government. To each their own, eh?

So perhaps a little bit more glue than I typically see from either of these guys, but that's relative to an ultra-high bar. Great Saturday workout.

– puzzle by Brad Wilber and Byron Walden

Nice concept today, ten theme entries containing the word CENT, with the C of CENT doubling as a cent sign. Additionally, the cent sign looks like an "I" atop a "C," so crossing words use the vertical line within the cent sign as an I. Finally, the entry TEN CENTS ties everything together. Lots of layers! At first I didn't see that all the cent signs started the word CENT — neat a-ha moment when that snapped into place.

So many constraints today. It's hard enough to work with ten theme answers in a 21x grid. It wouldn't be any harder than a typical Sunday construction, except that Liz connects several of her theme answers. Check out how PAIN PILL runs through both VICENTE FOX and CENTRIST — nice touch. Liz could have put a black square on the second P of PAIN PILL, creating PAIN and ILL, along with HOT and LATE in the across direction. I like the extra touch, giving the solver some nice fill in PAIN PILL and HOT PLATE.

Speaking of long fill, I liked seeing STATE DEPT, too. What an odd sequence when unparsed: STATEDEPT. I usually don't like abbreviations, but this one's so crazy it's pretty neat. It was also nice to see HEALTH FOOD and NO RELATION in there too. Uncovering that bonus fill in a Sunday really helps keep my attention through a long solve.

As much as I liked having long theme entries in the down direction (WRITEUPS, I SWEAR, IRON ON, PAIN PILL), I was okay seeing shorter ones like TAIL, AIDE, IAN. The longer ones are so nice, but incorporating them requires so many constraints to be placed upon the puzzle, so much inflexibility, that there were a bit too many bumpy spots for my taste. I don't mind seeing an occasional ISLIP or POLA or AME, but there were enough of them that I noticed them during my solve. The IRAE / TAL / LURIE section in particular was rough for me — I know that musicians tend to think DIES IRAE is a freebie, chess players consider TAL as quality fill, and literati like LURIE, but all together they make for a tough trio.

[Times table?] tricked me — what a nice moment when I realized a MASTHEAD is a sort of table on the NYT front page. And [Mountains have developed over them] had to be CONTINENTS or LAND MASSES or something, right? Wrong! Over EONS = clever stuff. And my favorite of the day is [It may be a credit to you], where "credit" refers to a college credit. That's the stuff that keeps me JONESin for more.

It would have been fantastic if all the cent signs were arranged in the shape of a cent sign, but that would have likely caused all sorts of compromises. Still, a guy can wish for a neat visual element, especially when he sees Liz's byline.

Finally, it was a nice touch that Liz didn't put any other C's in the puzzle. Not sure that many people would even notice this, but it adds a layer of elegance that I appreciated.

– puzzle by Elizabeth C. Gorski

I love weeks like this. Hardly a puzzle that I didn't consider for the Puzzle of the Week. This snappy Monday was no exception.

It's a rare Monday that brings the joy of "oh hey, that's cool!" and that's what I got today. I used to be quite the yo-yo master (surprising I wasn't more popular in school, huh?) and getting the YOYO TRICKS revealer after wondering what the heck all these nice long answers had in common = cool. I didn't recognize FLYING TRAPEZE at first, but a little Googling made me remember what that was.

BEQ's skills are impressive. Putting together a crossword with five long them answers (10/13/14/13/10) is a Herculean task. There is no way to avoid a ton of answers crossing two or more theme answers, and when you have multitudes of constraints all in close proximity, it's bound to cause problems. BEQ goes to an unusual 15x14 grid (one shorter than a normal 15x15) in order to accommodate the central AROUND THE WORLD. And he does a great job placing his themers (down, like a yo-yo string!) and his black squares in order to spread around his constrained sections. Note that there isn't one big block of white space that stands out as bigger than others.

A word count of 75 might seem audacious, but for a 15x14, you'd except a maximum of 75 words. Consider the bottom row of the puzzle: three words. If you were to extend the puzzle to 15x15, you'd add three more words to 78.

You might think the west and east sections would be the hardest to fill? I actually think the NE and SW hold that honor. Those two single black squares floating out in space help break up the west and east a bit, giving BEQ more flexibility in those regions. And the results are smooth. I'm not a huge fan of ARTY, but it's legit. Both the west and east come out so nice

Where a few blips crop up are in those NE and SW corners. BEQ does well to place two sets of cheater squares to relieve some pressure, but when you have so many crossings to take care of in an open corner, there are bound to be issues. The ORONO / ORSAY crossing is going to be very tough for some Monday solvers, and there's the MDI / UP MY and YWCA / ASSN region in the opposite corner. Very difficult to fill with total smoothness.

That reminds me of a thoughful note I got from Erik Agard a few weeks ago. I tend to be persnickety about reducing partials to (ideally) zero, but he reminded me that they can actually be a positive, especially for a Monday solver. And certainly, I can see how ["Nothing ___ sleeve"] could help a novice solver gain traction. I still prefer reducing partials to zero, but I'll think twice when it comes down to A TRIP or ATRIA.

Enjoyable solve, neat that BEQ was able to find four common YOYO TRICKS that could be disguised as other things.

– puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Really nice theme, Wish I had Thought of That (WITT). COVERT OPERATION being re-imagined as "math operators hiding within longer words / entries" is clever. And a debut! Congrats on a well-executed puzzle, Heather.

I uncovered SUBCONTRACT first, and really appreciated how SUB and TRACT break up so nicely. The other ones felt a little less elegant, as there have to be dozens of words / entries that include A D D or D I V I D E. It's probably not possible to find answers that break up into words like SUB and TRACT, but even a split into two pieces like MULTIPL / Y felt a bit more elegant than the A D D randomly hanging out within STANDBY MODE.

Good choice of themers otherwise, though. STANDBY MODE is a snazzy one, and I liked both DRIVERS SIDE and its clue quite a lot. MULTIPLAYER with its WoW clue was nice too. Amazing that Heather was able to incorporate such nice long themers, considering she needed five of them.

Not an easy task of construction, and Heather executes well. I appreciate the extra mile in leaving enough space for the long RATS NEST and RAMPED UP, with ICE MELT and SO TO SAY in close proximity. Heather could have broken up a pair of entries and gone up to the max of 78, which would likely have gotten rid of EWER and EA POE, but both of those are very minor blips. I like the trade-off a lot. For a first construction, it's amazing how smooth she kept her grid, really only the esoteric KENAI being forced by the awkward ?E??I pattern. Heck, what am I saying? It'd be smooth for most people's tenth construction! Clear that a lot of polishing went on.

Hoo boy, I had a rough time with the last square, the X of REDUX. I should have known it from "Rabbit Redux" by John Updike, but apparently I've been reading too many children's books. Darn it Updike, get with the program! Along with my blanking on the fact that Simone de Beauvoir was a prominent French feminist, I ended up with a mistake. Perhaps making one of those clues a tad easier would have been preferable. But as Will says, this is the NYT, not USA Today. So it's tough to say if the clues for those two entries were "fair" or not.

Finally, a beautiful clue in [What covers many blocks?], making me think about SMOG or COPS or something before realizing the clue was talking about MORTAR holding blocks together.

Impressive debut; looking forward to many more from Heather! As a reminder, the split in crossword constructors is heavily skewed toward males, so anything we can do to encourage female constructors, yeah? If you have thoughts or want help in putting together a grid based on your idea, don't hesitate to get in touch through our home page.

– puzzle by Heather Valadez

★ So many strong puzzles this week, but this one stood out for me. How do I decide these things? No doubt, it is subjective (Jim and I often differ on which puzzle we like the best for any given week). I really liked the previous two puzzles and also think there are a couple more humdingers coming up this week. So I relied on gut instinct, giving great weight to the feeling of immense pleasure I got as I solved this puzzle.

I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick two American Crossword Tournament Puzzles ago, where he had authored a devious construction that tripped up many solvers. Today's is much more straightforward, three grid-spanning entries containing "LESS" and re-interpreted with funny results. Sense of humor is hit and miss (just ask my poor wife) but these three all made me laugh. Each one of them is a strong base phrase, and I thought each of the re-interpretations was clever.

People might complain that there are only three theme answers. This was certainly the norm ten years ago, so it did seem like a throwback at first. But when it comes to "wacky" puzzles (themers designed to generate a laugh) I'd much rather have three strong line-drives than two homers, a base on balls, and a batter hit by pitch. I'm not sure what that last one really means in terms of crossword answers, but I can think of a few "wacky" themers I've winced at in the past.

And look what freedom the fewer than normal number of themers opens up. Patrick, the consummate professional constructor, takes full advantage of it, giving us three pairs of long downs, all great: GREEK MYTH / SLAPSTICK, LEGOLAND / BUS ROUTE, THE DUDE / OBSCENE. And if that wasn't enough, he grabs hold of two six-letter entries to give us MRS WHO and NO SALT. Along with CT SCAN and OH BOY worked into the grid, that's the way to jazz up a puzzle.

Like any puzzle, it's not perfect, at least in this ultra-picky constructor's eyes. Those west and east sections get highly constrained considering the SLAPSTICK / CT SCAN borders on the east, for example. I'm not a big fan of ENGS, as I've preferred to call myself an ENGR. So perhaps I would have preferred SKI instead of ABE and ASEA instead of ADDS, turning ENGS into INGA. But that's a matter of personal taste. In the west, seeing OST bugged me. I like some foreign words if they're relatively common, but OST and ANGE and ESEL (a Germanl donkey) strike me as quite inelegant. There are other options there, why not use them? Of course, this is also subjective — I'm sure there are German scholars who will be writing in.

Finally, as if I didn't already admire the puzzle enough, two clues that sparkled. [Round one] had to be some sort of boxing-related answer? Nope — FATSO! Hopefully that word itself won't offend people, but it's a perfect misdirectional clue for one exhibiting an ovoidal nature. And to start a puzzle with [Breather] which just had to be REST was devious. I loved figuring out that I was totally wrong, LUNG indeed being a type of "breather."

Wednesdays can be hard, straddling the line between being relatively accessible and relatively clever. This puzzle does it really well.

– puzzle by Patrick Merrell

Clever theme idea, the type of tricky Thursday puzzle I like. Words are "hidden" IN BED, i.e. there's a ROACH hidden in B(ROACH)ED. I like having that struggle on Thursdays, grasping at straws until you finally cotton to the twist.

I admire the audacious construction. Tough, tough, tough layout today. As soon as I opened up the puzzle I wondered how smooth each of the quadrants was going to be. Each one of those corners looks like it's straight out of a themeless puzzle, and each one turns out to be even harder than filling a themeless grid. Why is that? Each area has a pair of crossing answers, and anytime you fix two crossing answers into place, you're bound to have trouble (or at least sacrifice a little smoothness). The letters around two crossing answers just tend to be tough to work in without making at least a compromise or two.

I was quite impressed by the SW corner. ERENOW is something many constructors avoid like the plague, but if it's the only piece of glue that holds a corner like this together, it's well worth the price. LENNON next to YOKO ONO, worked in as fill around the BROOMED / BROKERED crossing themers? Setting aside the fact that most people say "swept" instead of "broomed," this is a really nice corner. With so many six and seven-letter entries crammed together, this is an outstanding result. Must have taken a lot of time, a lot of trying out different options.

The others suffer a little, though. To be expected. Not ideal to have SOARERS crossing ALERTER, with AMBS kicking off the puzzle. ED MEESE is fine once in a while, but with a couple of ISS / LYS / DSL type entries, it made that corner feel a bit weak.

What a nice revealer, IN BED. If only it had been clued to the fortune cookie game (all fortunes are made more interesting when IN BED is added). And it would have been nice to have IN BED centered. Its position did allow for a piece of good fill like DRUM SET (and its fantastic clue!), but how much more elegant would it have been if IN BED was smack dab in the middle.

So perhaps I would have preferred a puzzle with a more traditional layout? Or adding a pair of blocks to turn it into a 74-word puzzle? Tough to say, since it's difficult to incorporate nine theme answers, especially when some are short (seven letters or less). A little more puzzle flow would have been nice too — having four mini-puzzles can give a feeling of isolation, not having the feng shui of a puzzle that moves like water from start to end. It is a unique layout though, and there's something to be said for trying out new things, giving solvers a grid they haven't seen before. I do like the stretch to innovate.

Beautiful idea. I really enjoyed the moment when I figured out what was going on.

– puzzle by Pawel Fludzinski

It's not easy making a themeless with multiple unstacked 15's. Often, the grid-spanners take over the entire grid and don't leave very much room for other good stuff. I like what Pete's done today, not only giving us four super-strong 15's, but finding a way to incorporate two 10's (STRIKE ZONE and BOOK RETURN) as well as a couple of 8's. Nice work.

It's a heck of a skeleton, for starters. It looks to me like Pete chose his favorite three grid-spanners, placed them into locations, and tried to see what might run through all three of them. BARON MUNCHAUSEN is a great one fitting those constraints! Having the flexibility to swap TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, DOUBLE ENTENDRES, and HOT AS BLUE BLAZES gave him the ability to move things around until he found a really nice central down entry.

And then those two tens. STRIKE ZONE and BOOK RETURN are both such great answers, and they fit so nicely. That's a difficult task, considering that you need answers that 1.) cross two grid-spanners and 2.) allow for smooth surrounding fill. So now we have the skeleton fixed in place.

Some constructors would be okay with just that, deploying blocks up to a 72-word grid. But not Pete! Why not stick with a 70-worder by opening up those SW and NE corners, allowing for two pairs of 8's? Those two corners would be daunting for most constructors, such big swaths of white space. BASS ALE running straight through that chunk of white makes it even harder to fill smoothly. It's a tough and ambitious goal.

There's a lot to admire in the fill today. There aren't as many marquee answers as usual, but the 15's and the 10's do a lot of heavy lifting. And NAKED EYE helps out too. Everything else tends to be a little shorter, just because the long answers have eaten up so much space. So I appreciate the clues picking up the slack, elevating a lot of the short answers.

SCREEN, for example, could be a pretty blah word if clued as [Projector ___] or something. Getting a misdirection with [One getting the picture] makes it stand out. MENDEL is already pretty good, but punning on his work with genetics through peas makes it even better. And my favorite, [Easily taken in?] has nothing to do with being a fool, but everything to do with foods that are TASTY. There is so much great cluing here today.

It might be a little much for non-baseball fans today. For those of you still confused on the clue for STRIKE ZONE, "battery" is slang for a pitcher / catcher combination. I liked the idea behind that clue, but I don't think of portable batteries having halves. Perhaps something more along the lines of [What a certain battery terminal is next to?] would have been more devious? Alas, if you don't know baseball lingo, the clue's cleverness will be lost. Along with PNC Park (who knew?), and ON BASE, it felt a bit baseball-heavy to me. Then again, Pete's a baseball fan, and why shouldn't a constructor favor his/her hobbies and interests? It is nice to get the variety.

What with the rigid skeleton and those two big open corners, it's not surprising to get a bit of glue here and there. The WAITE / GIMEL crossing will be tough for some, and although I know TRANE well from my mechanical engineering days, it's also going to be tough. The constraints and trade-offs can be most strongly seen in the tough SW and NE corners, where we get a smattering of TPKE / AS AN / IT HAS, and the DRS / SSGT corner. And as much as I love "Casablanca," even I have a hard time putting UGARTE into puzzles.

Neat construction, nice to see all those 15's anchoring the puzzle. And delectable clues today, a filling palate. I'll finish with my favorite, [Drop in library use?]. It's a beautifully-written clue for a place books get dropped... a BOOK RETURN.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

A Josh Knapp! He's one of the younger constructors whose name I love seeing on bylines. Josh has a knack for what entries sing, and has the skills to incorporate a lot of them without too much glue. Plus, he works for Jimmy Fallon; hard to argue with a guy with perhaps the best job in the world.

Josh uses a standard-ish grid today, highlighting four sets of triple-stacked 10's, one in each corner. I like that he gives us a little extra, tossing in four 8's, each of which cross through a triple-stack and head into the center. That TSINGTAO / BAD SANTA crossing was fantastic.

Man oh man what a snazzy NW corner! A GUITAR SOLO crossing JOJO, along with a clue that makes you sing that Beatles' song (WARNING, EARWORM ALERT! "Jojo was a guy from Tucson, Arizona..."*), and the crazy set of consonants in AZERBAIJAN. Wow, what a stack of great answers. I might have preferred a set of cheater squares up in the corner in an attempt to get rid of A GAS, but that one entry is a teeny-tiny price to pay for such beautiful work.

And the SE. Double-wow! Normally I'd expect to see a glue entry to hold such nice long stuff together, especially given than Q in KAFKAESQUE. Not a stinker in there; with just STA, the entire quadrant just HUMS along.

The grid did feel a bit more segmented than I like, especially since I got stuck in the NE corner. I finished everything else and then... then... then... there was a lot of staring. You'd think that this uber-dork would know ELVISH off the bat or that PRIAM was Paris's father, but I couldn't pull them out. There are multiple ways into that corner so it's more than fair, but I couldn't help wishing that the entries into it were a little bit bigger, giving me more chances to gain an entry somehow.

I talk about "puzzle flow" a lot, and this is the sort of reason I really appreciate when a puzzle has wide-open flow. It's easier for a constructor to be able to segment a grid and work on one piece at a time, whereas something with multiple interconnected areas make for giant constructing headaches. In more wide-open grids, you might finish one corner great, only to find out that the roots it shoots out make it impossible to fill the rest of the puzzle cleanly. This puzzle would lend itself to segmenting a little more than some others (like Josh's original grid!). You can probably imagine that by putting in two or three middle-section entries, you can isolate a corner somewhat easily.