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We've seen plenty of pyramid blocks in themeless puzzles, but Ben gives us the Great Pyramid(s)! A full 10 black squares apiece, they sure do draw my eye. (And draw down my printer's toner.) Distinctive look.

The usual pyramid shapes ease the filling process tremendously, and I imagine that these big boys amp that factor by an order of magnitude. Usually, you'd have to worry about intersecting three horizontal 15s with 3 vertical 8s, so not just nibbling but chomping away at all those crossings is so useful. A stack like SO I GATHERED / DANCE ROUTINE / LETTER TO SANTA is something to write Santa about. Ben's on the nice list!

The naughty side is that you take away precious long slots (8+ letters), thus reducing your ability to spice up a solve. There's nothing wrong with THRU / CHEER / LLOYDS, but none of them will get you a checkmark in an editor's scoresheet.

ENIGMATOLOGY, ha! Will Shortz has said that he would never feature his name in a crossword, but featuring his undergraduate degree is something different. Although it's insidery, it's a fun kind of crossword-specific terminology that appeals to the inner circles.

Fantastic cluing all over; impressive to see a new constructor take so much time and care in this area. My favorite category is wordplay that doesn't require a telltale question mark, so DEALER holding all the cards and [Bat signal] as SONAR stood out.

Although there wasn't as much pizzazz within the grid as I expect in a themeless, I appreciated the novel grid design, and Ben made up for a lot of the lack of long slots by making his cluing shine.

– puzzle by Ben Tolkin

★ I haven't been this delighted by a revealer in quite a while. I was underwhelmed as I solved, given that this "stretched letters" theme type has been done and done and done again, but BIG SHOES TO FILL was such a perfect revealer. HEEL, BOOT, CLOG, FLAT are all literally big shoes — and the solver is filling them in!

Such a smooth solve, too. It's difficult to hold my short attention span these days, so if I don't cruise through a grid in 15 minutes or so, I get bored and do something else. Ooh, something shiny! Hey, it's a squirrel!

Stupid social media and YouTube.

Each pair of themers was solid, and the fill around them was buttery. There was even some spice with PROP BETS, RED DWARF, and the awesome sign-off toward the end: IT'S BEEN REAL. Not once through my solve was I tempted to look at my phone and see what else there was to do.

I did wonder, was having singular shoe and shoe and shoe and shoe weird? Yes. Were four types of singular shoe enough to make it feel thematically dense enough? No. However, as with almost all Sunday 21x21 140-word grids, there will be trade-offs. I bet Rebecca and Rafael could have packed in pairs of singular shoes or added another one or even two types of shoe — check out Jeremy's grid, for example — but that might have sacrificed solving flow. I'd much rather accept lesser density for overall quality.

Well-established theme categories are tough to excel in, but this revealer and the silky execution helped LIFT this one.

– puzzle by Rebecca Goldstein and Rafael Musa

Indeed, we're OFF TO A GOOD START this week with an uplifting "disguised synonyms" theme. They say that if you use more positive words in everyday speech, you start to feel those things. KIND, JUST, UPRIGHT, NOBLE? I could use more of any of these in my life.

Excellent job with the themers. Even as a musician — as a cellist, nonetheless! — I would have dismissed UPRIGHT as a possible themer. Great find in UPRIGHT BASS. The former jazz trombone player in me loved KIND OF BLUE, too. I must have listened to that album 500 times now.

All the synonyms are so well obfuscated, their meanings changed in each phrase. KIND is used to mean "sort," JUST as an adverb, and UPRIGHT as in "standing." I didn't know the etymology of NOBLE in NOBLE GASES, so it was fun to learn that it's derived from a German term meaning "inert."

Perfect layout of the four long Downs, Sam alternating MINECRAFT / ART EDITOR / DUMBWAITER / CAN YOU SEE for proper spacing. Trying to get a long Down in the middle would be much harder since you would have to thread it through three themers.

Solid short fill, too. I did hitch at the upper right since ULAN's spelling is outdated, and DAHS isn't the most newb-friendly entry, but otherwise, no PEEVEs. (Except DEATH — thank goodness the theme is uplifting enough to balance this out.)

It's not easy to excel in such a tried-and-true theme category, but Sam did most everything UP RIGHT.

– puzzle by Sam Buchbinder

Hardly the PLAINEST of themes, with all the trimmings of a BURGER — so neatly lined up in the middle! It's like an exploded view drawing of a TOMATO, ONION, PICKLE, and CHEESE that you might see in a McDonald's manual. (If you haven't seen The Founder yet, Michael Keaton puts some amazing special sauce into the role.)

It's nearly impossible to disguise what's going on, given that food is food is food. GLASS ONION is an excellent choice, though, delaying the aha moment a little. Much better than picking something like GREEN ONION, which not only has no misdirection but would also have confused the recipe. Ray Kroc would have snapped his jaws at that.

I paused after solving. Why not use a more complete set of ingredients, like in a PBJ a few weeks ago? No buns, no meat ... just the fixings? It's like Barb designed this for my hamburger-snubbing kids (who won't eat anything but the CHEESE. And heaven help us if that dares to be anything but the crazy-expensive brand of non-dairy cheese they're used to.)

It's not a new concept to weave recipes into crossword puzzles, but stacking the four elements almost directly over each other (my anality forces me to point out that they could have been slightly more aligned by using a 16-wide grid) is a cool touch.

– puzzle by Barbara Lin

I've seen dozens of plays on (nationality) + (food) over the years, so it's a delight to experience a fresh angle. One of my first efforts riffed on [Pain] = FRENCH BREAD — "pain" is the French word for "bread" — but every editor said it felt way too familiar. Given that was ten years ago, it's even harder to come up with something that feels interesting within this category.

There's something beautiful about other alphabets. Featuring them in crossword clues is not only neat from a diversity standpoint, but each one hints at what the entry might start with. I'm terrible with languages, but I could still recognize RUSSIAN and GREEK letters. Although ARABIC and CHINESE took longer to place (my ancestors are weeping), they still served as perfect footholds to figure out the themers.

There's not a lot of traditional wordplay in the theme. On the one hand, I wanted a clever clue written in the native alphabet, like [Game of kings?] presented as [国王的游戏] — how kooky would that be? Yes, that would mean that few solvers would get the wordplay, but how many solvers figured out that 跳棋 meant CHECKERS?

(insert loud ancestral wailing)

Working with five long themers is no joke — there's so much strain everywhere. The 14s are particularly challenging since they stubbornly have to go into rows 5 and 11, jamming things up. Kicking off a puzzle with AGLET isn't ideal, and crossing it with THISBE might make some SLOE solvers complain that this be inelegant. I'm curious if some cheater squares could have helped, perhaps at the T of THISBE and/or the A of AGLET.

It's tough to offer something new in a long-established category, and I enjoyed this angle.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney

A few weeks ago, I heard from Will Shortz that this "valid entry becomes another valid entry when certain letters are removed" category is becoming overdone. As with any theme category entering its "maturity" phase, though, there's still room for growth and even innovation, and Alison achieved that today with her concept.

Given how easy it is to discover Replacement Finds with ME removed, it's not that impressive a concept by itself. At the very least, you need a wickedly clever revealer to help elevate it, and even then, you might only receive a whiff of consideration. An extra level is incredibly difficult to come up with, but having all your resultant words relate to each other is an innovative way to hit the mark.

Get it?

Because the German currency used to be the Deustche Mark?

Fine, I lost, and you WON.

I wish the resulting entries had been more consistent, as COIN is a general term, WON and YEN are general currencies, and the CENT is a fractional unit. I know, I'm asking for the impossible, but perhaps when other constructors try to build on this dual-acting concept, I'd love to see that kept in mind.

On a related note, it's a shame that TAKE ME OUT and MAKE MONEY aren't more strongly related. Again, an impossible ask for this particular implementation, but it's something for future constructors to consider.

I had some hesitations during my solve, especially since four of the themers are so short (editors rarely allow themers less than seven letters), but the overall approach is genius. It's rare for someone in the crossworld to come up with something so creative, and to see it in a debut is inspiring.

– puzzle by Alison Perch

★ Delightful colloquial phrases in WERE SO DEAD, and I WASN'T DONE! Stacking them atop each other makes it even better. Having one on top of the other is a 1 + 1 = 3 effect.

Similarly, placing DNA TESTING and GENETICIST in symmetrical slots is an elegant mini-theme. In today's world of ultra-competitive themelesses, factors like this can help a grid stand out. DNA TESTING stood out even further with its brilliant clue. [Business in which one is paid to establish relationships] made this MBA think of deal brokers.

Such a shame that Adrian got scooped on TRASH PANDA. I laughed so hard when I uncovered it back in November, and my long memory foiled some of the fun today. Glad that Will Shortz spaced them out more than six months, though, as anything closer together than that would have been a travesty.

It's tough for me to remember the exact spelling of AI WEI WEI and EID MUBARAK, but I'm getting better with each repetition. Kudos to Adrian for making every cross 100% unambiguous.

Adrian has such strong gridding skills. It's hard to believe he came onto the scene just a few years ago. Because 72 words is the max allowed, if you're going to work in this sphere, holding fast to fastidiousness is a must. Leaving a single dab of SNO glue is solid work.

You have to do something special to make a 72-word themeless stand out, and Adrian's delightful pairings did exactly that.

– puzzle by Adrian Johnson

MADE FOR TV MOVIE is such a fantastic marquee entry. Not only is it a colorful and fun phrase, but it also lends itself to so many great cluing angles. [Film ineligible to get an Oscar] made me wonder what sorts of shenanigans the Academy was up to.

CAESAR DRESSING also worked well. Although CAESAR has been used many times before, including references to the DRESSING, this is the first time we've seen the full entry in an NYT grid. The clue misdirect helps too, [Ranch alternative] possibly pointing to a dude ranch.

NURSING BRA is an excellent entry, and the wordplay around the [Milk duds?] clue is fiendishly clever. So why did that make me uncomfortable? It's possible that I've become oversensitive to certain issues over the years, and that I wouldn't have given things a second thought if the same clue had been presented by a female constructor.

I FEEL SILLY about this in some ways, but that is where I'm at these days. Maybe it's IRRELEVANT. As am I.

The cluing helped the puzzle shine. [Link warning] is quite the sand trap, nudging people to put in FORE instead of NSFW (not safe for work, as in a forwarded link). TIRE SWING literally going out on a limb made me laugh. Repurposing "hunter gatherer" to define a GAME WARDEN was so brilliant that it feels like there's a full crossword theme in there. This dork loved the nerdy {T, H, I, S} mathematical set, too.

I didn't quite FLOAT ON AIR today but I came close to it. Solid gridwork for a 68-worder, with some HIE INT NCO STR to nit-pick.

– puzzle by Brandon Koppy

Kudos to the NYT team for doing something distinctive in the Sunday Magazine! I loved seeing illustrations in the clues, and finding out that they're Iverson originals makes them even better. The informal yet artistic drawings bring so much personality to this puzzle.

So many of the themers are entertaining, too, especially the ones that drastically change the second word's meaning. LOTTO DRAWING uses a different definition of "drawing," and LEGAL REPRESENTATION is even better. The latter reminds me of my favorite representation of a representative, Barry Zuckercorn.

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED sort of works, but a drawn illustration vs. picture illustrations are too similar.

The crossworld has an unwritten rule called "the breakfast test," You wouldn't want to present anything that would make solvers lose their appetite as they're doing the crossword over breakfast. That SPITTING IMAGE evokes so many tales of servers spitting in people's food — ugh! I'd have much preferred an image of someone spitting a watermelon seed.

Such painstakingly meticulous gridwork! Smooth as silk in the short fill — I can't fault a single entry, which only happens a few times a year — plus a few DEAD GIVEAWAY VEAL PARM IRISH TEA bonuses. It MAKES A FOOL OF other constructors who say, "my grid is good enough," when it really isn't. Getting a 140-word construction this clean is tough, but it's not difficult to get close.

I've seen too many rebuses and wacky wordies over my lifetime to get too excited about this concept, but I give a big round of applause to Christina and the NYT for pushing the boundaries, and exploring more of what the print Sunday Magazine can do. Drawings, color, crazy shapes in grids, whatever — the unique canvas gives it so much potential to shine.

– puzzle by Christina Iverson

My latest obsession is "The Bear," a series about Carmine Berzatto's chaotic life as he attempts to run a Chicago restaurant. The family is dysfunctional, with tons of tension and stress causing characters to push each other's buttons. POKE THE BEAR is right!

Fun set of themers, all following a "(verb) THE (animal)" format. I appreciate that each isn't simply a literal phrase about an animal (like WALK THE DOG) but a figure of speech imbued with meaning. JUMP THE SHARK originated from an embarrassing "Happy Days" waterskiing stunt, but I bet many solvers only know it metaphorically.

I also liked that I couldn't think of many others. BELL THE CAT came to mind, but what else? Eat the … marmoset? Taunt the … quokka?

These should be real phrases.

Employing a near-complete set lends elegance to a theme. Most of the other metaphorical phrases I could think of were most definitely NSFW.

I love Brad's humor, which comes through in his Constructor Notes and also his cluing. It's a rare Monday treat to have something like "field of vision" repurposed to hint at OPTOMETRY.

And WORD SALAD makes me laugh, as some people call the XWord Info home page a "link salad." Great work injecting color throughout, with JOE COOL, ONE SEED, SPIED ON, AGELESS. When you have only four moderate-length themers, you ought to have this many bonuses, and Brad delivered. Hardly PLAYed THE GOAT today.

– puzzle by Brad Wiegmann

★ Such creative thinking! Constructors have been playing upon magazine titles for decades, but it's been a long time since I've seen an angle as this fresh. Not just plunking in magazine titles, but coming up with phrases that all mean "no more of that magazine available"? I love the out-of-the-box notion.

OUT OF SHAPE is perfect. Not only is it a fine phrase in everyday use, but it says, "We don't have any more Shape issues available," to a tee. LACKING VARIETY is also strong, although the phrase itself isn't one I would strive to use in a themeless crossword, as it lacks a little spice. Ha!

Why ha?

Because variety is the spice of life?

It's a good thing that Aaron made this one, not me.

MISSING OUT is also strong, but it, unfortunately, duplicates OUT in OUT OF SHAPE. It would have been great to separate these more. Starting and ending with OUT OF SHAPE / MISSING OUT would have helped it not be so noticeable.

That reordering would have made gridding more difficult, though, as Aaron would have had to work around three long themers jammed together in the middle. It's already a troublesome-enough challenge, with the black square in between LACKING / VARIETY forced into place. Solid work in the tricky middle region, Aaron even working in TEA BREAKS / THE BYRDS and BILLY GOAT / STARGATE. Those big NW and SE corners would have been much easier to fill with BILLY GOAT broken at the Y, but the extra effort to inject more bonus material was well worth it.

I enjoy this "reinterpreted phrases" genre, especially when someone comes up with such a novel angle.

– puzzle by Aaron M. Rosenberg

Ah, TU ES BELLE. I remember doing C.C.'s puzzle, my Spidey-sense going haywire when I filled in the mystifying TUESBELLE. I took five years of high school French, yet I somehow convinced myself that it was probably TUES BEL, LE.

Needless to say, I didn't get a 5 on the AP exam.

Part of me enjoyed the smugness of being able to identify the theme so quickly this time around. The other part braced for the coming onslaught of "what's the theme?!" questions. Seven entries are starred, but it's not simple to figure out that each of those answers with SUN MON TUE(S) WED THU FRI SAT.

It's too bad that TUES is the only one that can be a four-letter abbreviation, but what else would work? TUEBIGEN would raise some "Ach!"s, and TUEBROOK has a ways to go before its population of 14,000 gets it into the realm of crossworthiness. So, smart choice to reuse TU ES BELLE, and it's likely that only the analest of the anal will know about C.C.'s prior art.

Lots of strong fill helped to keep up my interest. Even the most constrained bonus slots stood out, with the fun NOURISH running through SUNNI, not to mention a auspicious crossing of KWANZAA through SATAN.

Given that there was no revealer like in C.C.'s, it would have been great to have seven long themers rather than five plus two shorties. That's an incredibly difficult feat, as some of them would need to be squinched tightly together, but Brooke and Brian are constructors who can deliver a SUNdance-level solve even with SATurnine constraints.

– puzzle by Brooke Husic and Brian Thomas

Clever concept; a new and interesting way to play on the old "para words" trope. DIE + DIE = DICE as a phonetic part of PARADISE takes David Kwong's rebus concept one or even two steps further.

The themers, in case you're still mystified:

GANGSTA'S PARADISE

LOGICAL PARADOX

PARABLES OF JESUS

SHIFTING PARADIGMS

If you're not familiar with GANGSTA'S PARADISE, check it out. The lyrics are Biblically poetic.

Being a heathen, I wasn't sure if PARABLES OF JESUS was a term in widespread use. I'm familiar with the Parable of the Sower and such, but apparently this is a general blanket title encompassing all of his storied sayings? Looks like it ... but I'm not convinced enough to use it in a future crossword.

Oh Jeff of little faith!

Given how few phrases include the words PARADISE, PARADOX, PARABLES, and PARADIGMS, it's amazing that Hanh managed to find a symmetrical set at all. It's even tougher given that PARABLES (BULL + BULL = BULLS = -BLES) cannot be singular, so none of the specific Bible parables would have worked.

Well done to thread long Downs through most of the rebus squares, too. ED(DIE)BAUER, SPIN(DOC)TORS, and NEWS(BULL)ETIN are all strong. It's a shame that there wasn't a fourth, through one of the DIME squares ... although, I don't know if that would have been possible, since the special squares come at the ends of three themers and the start of the fourth. If it had been two at the starts and two at the ends, that would have been much easier to achieve. So much inflexibility … you couldn't swap out GANGSTA'S PARADISE for PARADISE LOST, for example, since your themers would no longer pair up by length.

Pesky crossword symmetry!

Well-executed rebus-and-then-some; I appreciated the challenging solve.

– puzzle by Hanh Huynh

I CAN'T TELL.

WHAT IN THE HECK?

DON'T BE THAT WAY!

Talk about SPEAK ONE'S MIND! Love the conversational tone.

Themelesses heavy on 7-letter slots often don't have as much color as I expect. Longer-length slots have a higher percentage of multi-word entries, while 7-letter slots contain a ton of neutral material like PENCILS, PRESALE, PRIMERS.

However, Jonathan did a nice job of pushing his 7s, achieving reasonable pizzazz with CITADEL, KEYNOTE, ONLY NOW, YES LET'S. Most tack-on-a-preposition entries are dull, like LED INTO and TUNES IN, but RIDES UP is a standout, given its cluing potential. If only the clue had played on "boxers" getting "cramped," it would have been hilarious!

Much appreciation for the SLURP clue. Some previous uses of this entry didn't feel great, and this Asian slurped today's up.

Standout clue: [Ones unlikely to rule in your favor] had me spinning my wheels about various judges. No giveaway question mark, as in [Defense mechanisms?] (which refers to an oral defense that doctoral candidates must undergo). What a delight to piece together DESPOTS, who are most decidedly not going to rule in anyone's favor but their own.

It's difficult to squeeze enough juice out of a themeless mostly featuring 7-letter slots, but Jonathan did well to pack his six long slots with enough sparkle to help compensate.

– puzzle by Jonathan Kaufman

Even after a decade of constructing crosswords, I still learn from my mistakes. I learned quite a lot from making this themeless.

Given the ultra-high competition in themelesses, you must do something extraordinary to get noticed. That might be a unique grid pattern, wickedly sharp clues strewn throughout, or a dense packing of star entries that Will Shortz can't help but notice. Best to hit all three marks.

This one started well enough. Playing around with mirror symmetry and a pair of pyramid blocks for a couple of days finally resulted in something that looked both fun and not impossible to fill. The most constrained region was the bottom, with those long slots serving as an inflexible backbone.

After a week of hacking, I landed on ON THE INSIDE / AMERICAN LIT / EXPLICIT CONTENT / CASE INSENSITIVE, and it felt right. CASE INSENSITIVE had great cluing potential, playing on "capital punishment," and EXPLICIT CONTENT made me think about "sworn statements." So I filled the rest of the grid, assuming the clues would gel.

Three weeks and many sworn statements later, I still couldn't phrase my clues to my liking. The best I could do — after nearly a hundred rewrites — was this:

EXPLICIT CONTENT [Warning issued before sworn statements?]

CASE INSENSITIVE [State that forbids capital punishment?]

I figured Will and team would polish these up and call them good. Why didn't I think from the start that joking around about capital punishment would likely never fly? Or spend more time trying to word something much better around "sworn statements" that would actually seem innocently clever instead of a dead giveaway?

I #@!EXPLICIT CONTENT#$! swear, next time, I will.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Another puzzle for sneakerheads — it's gotta be the shoes! BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD are a pair of loafers, and CAMPAIGN PROMISES come before no-new-taxes-style flip-flops. LIQUID PLUMR is a noted name in (drain) clogs, and ARTIFICIAL HEARTS are custom-fitted pumps, of a sort.

I wasn't quite as hot on WATERGATE BURGLARS, since the phrase is from half a century ago, but it makes me laugh to think of their Hamburglar-like hamhandedness.

I liked the idea behind the PARKING TICKET clue, but [Slip before putting on a boot?] felt like it slipped a bit in its awkwardness. Not enough to give it the boot, though, thankfully.

Will Shortz and the NYT team are cracking down more these days on Sunday grid layouts, especially those with excessive short entries and ones exhibiting choked grid flow. When you have seven long(ish) themers, it's tough to avoid using a ton of short entries, so the best you can often do is to make them as unnoticeable as possible. Solvers might hitch on stuff like MKTS and QAT, but everything else is impeccable.

As for grid flow, the NW and SE corners are nearly cut off from the rest of the puzzle — they are only connected through two themers apiece. This helps immensely in construction, part of the reason that Michael was able to achieve such smoothness, but it does risk solvers getting stuck in what feels like one of three mini-puzzles. If you have to sacrifice one or the other, Michael made the right choice to prioritize a smooth solve.

Hardly a puzzle that fell FLAT.

– puzzle by Michael Schlossberg

Congrats to Alexander, who recently was named a Fulbright Scholar! While it's impressive that 62 Fulbright alumni have received a Nobel Prize, how many have published three NYT crosswords?

"Embedded letters" puzzles are a crossword favorite, so it takes an extra layer or even two to merit consideration. ARE YOU OKAY = RU OK works perfectly phonetically, and it's such common textese that riffing on it is A-OK.

What makes this example stand out above so many others is that it's tough to find great phrases with this pair of digrams. It'd be much easier if Alexander relaxed the constraint, allowing R U O K to be anywhere within a phrase, and I'm glad he didn't. That would have required circling all four letters, and that would give away the game immediately. Not only that but check out how few phrases there are with RU and OK (with at least one character between them). Besides the ones Alexander used, I only turned up:

• RUSSELL WESTBROOK
• RUNS AMOK
• RULE BOOK
• JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE
• PRUNING HOOK
• RUG HOOKING

Those last three might be tough asks for poor newbs. Even Russ — who was on the OK City Thunder! — could draw ire from sportsball haters, since he's likely not on a path to the Hall of Fame. (Ask the Westbrick chanters.)

I would have loved to see less ANAT ERST TSE UNI from Alexander, but there are so many great bonuses like BEEF TACO and ULTIMATE, hardly making for a boresome solve. Ah, there was that last BORESOME bit of unfortunate fill, plus a tricky LIENEE … perhaps less trading off of color for cleanliness would be prudent in the future, but overall, I say U R O K to this Monday offering.

– puzzle by Alexander Liebeskind

GRECO-ROMAN wrestling in today's grid, pairs of analogous gods crossing each other — fun concept for this lover of all things mythological. A shame that ARES and MARS didn't get a chance to go to war.

Why not, you might ask? Couldn't they cross at the A or the R? Yes, but I like Karen and Paul's choice to employ long names. POSEIDON, ARTEMIS, DEMETER, and DIONYSUS are hard to ignore during the solve, as they're some of the beefiest entries in the puzzle, whereas poor ARES and MARS might have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Fun touch to have IM SO DEAD crossing GRECO-ROMAN, too, considering how those old bastards' penchant for killing on a whim. That story of Apollo and Marsyas always spooked the heck out of me, not to mention Procrustes' habit of chopping off legs.

Not MEDIA SHY, were they!

Excellent bonuses woven into the fill, a la Athena. There's so much beauty in D LISTER, SNOW PEA, SPARE ME, TUMMIES, IMPASSE, which is a Sisyphean task in a grid featuring four pairs of crossing themers plus a central revealer. Every time you have one, two, then three corners done, whammo! That stone flattens you, and you have to start back up the hill.

There is some SSE EIN ESO and Zeus-forsaken MNO, but every crossword grid must have flaws or risk the wrath of the great goddess Cruciverba. We all know what happened to Arachne when she dared to risk perfection …

Such an apt revealer to breathe Promethean life into this puzzle.

– puzzle by Karen and Paul Steinberg

Directive clues … some solvers call them a hit, some bare their fangs at them. (You can search for more using our Clue Finder, with the search string "it!")

[Get on with it!] is a perfect way to clue BOARDING PASS — everyone needs their BOARDING PASS to get on the plane. Unless you're my friend who recently sold his software startup and flies on a private jet now. I envy his success, but I just have to [Get over it!].

DECK OF CARDS gets a [Deal with it!], but it's not as sharp since you deal it, not deal with it. If the answer had been AUTOMATIC POKER HAND DISPENSER, that would have been much more accurate. Then again, a pun is supposed to make you groan, so I should probably just deal with it.

Similar issue with ADHESIVE TAPE — you stick (things up) with it, as my crafty daughter knows all too well. Scotch tape fragments multiply exponentially, flaunting conservation of matter. I attempt to stick with getting her to clean it up, but Tess sticking things up is a fundamental law of nature.

[Roll with it!] for a BOWLING BALL … why that and not a PAIR OF DICE? Or better yet for this mechanical engineer, BALL BEARINGS? Sigh, maybe I should just—

You know the impending punchline.

Well-made puzzle, with plenty of juicy bonuses like the OH WOE IS ME / I MEAN THAT pairing. For those solvers that don't connect with the theme, these long bonuses are a SUREFIRE way of tamping down the SARCASM.

– puzzle by Billy Bratton

Quite a sleepy concept — in a good way! Drew takes the "hidden word" genre and guns the engine, playing on SLEEPING CAR to replace hidden car makes with Zs. The themers:

• UP(FORD)EBATE
• I(BMW)ATSON
• S(KIA)REA
• ICL(AUDI)US

The "hidden words" genre is so overdone that Will Shortz typically insists on the hidden word spanning across two words of a phrase. Mission accomplished for three of them — BMW in IBM WATSON is such a cool standout. AUDI doesn't measure up, but it is much more disguised than it would be in AUDIENCE, and something like TALAUD ISLANDS would be way too hard to figure out.

(I'd suggest ROE V WADE, but perhaps not in today's charged political climate. It is fun that LIGHTNING MCQUEEN is meta!)

The gimmick was so hard to uncover that I nearly got stumped, especially since I couldn't predict how many Zs there would be. A few much-appreciated gimmes, like Chloe ZHAO, told me where at least one Z was, but it still turned out to be a game of Battleship where my opponent kept announcing, "hit! Or maybe miss! Bwa ha ha!" That rough [___ Sunday] clue, plus ONZE and GAZANS, took more solving time than the rest of the puzzle combined.

Gridding around Zs is such a challenging task. Gridding around 14 is masochistic. Well done in the upper left, setting the tone for the rest of the puzzle with a clean result. I might have asked Drew to go up to 80 words to clean up some LST ORO RTE SGT, but that is a reasonable result, given the constraints.

I still hitch on SLEEPING vs. SLEEPER CAR, but I loved the creativity. Brainstorming ways of making it less like to blow solvers' gaskets would have been fun.

– puzzle by Drew Schmenner

YOU GUESSED IT, yet another Robyn themeless that could have upped her POW! tally. Such a Weintraubian feel, with a cheesy clue referencing "cheesy dinner parties" for FONDUE POTS and a groaner with "out" = aSLEEP and "about" = WALKING. My favorite, though, was a fantastic entry, PLAY PHONE TAG, made so vivid by misdirecting to a wedding ceremony. [Exchanging rings?] is a blessed moment of inspiration, repurposing a common phrase for something completely different.

And don't forget the little touches! So many themeless constructors focus on their cluing for long entries and then toss in a bunch of fluff for the shorties. DORM can be such a neutral entry, so I appreciated the extra aha as I flipped from "I have to be able to name the parts of a Jewish temple?" indignation (although APSE does appear a lot, so it would be fair) to elation as I figured out that temple was Temple University. Beautiful use of the old "hidden capital" trick.

I did pause at [Kitchen variety], wondering if that was a similar phrase to "garden variety." Even after uncovering GALLEY, I still wasn't sure, as the book and the boat definitions are more familiar to this writer.

Hmm … a book galley about a kitchen galley on a galley boat …

Don't be SILLY.

I was also confused by the TEN-YARD LINE clue. [Boundary for "first and goal" plays] should be GOAL LINE, yeah? I suppose you could argue that the TEN-YARD LINE bounds the space where most first and goal plays occur, but yikes, that's stretching it.

Speaking of stretching it, I'll end with one of my kids' favorite jokes. Want to hear a joke about pizza?

Eh, I shouldn't tell you. It's too cheesy.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

Super cool grid design! Those black pyramids lend an 8-ball feel, and the clasping arms from the sides are so evocative. Check out our Grid Art page for more.

[Turnovers on a football field, maybe?] is a great way to kick off (ha) a Saturday puzzle. The question mark tells you that it's not FUMBLES or INTERCEPTIONS, but what could it be? Such a mischievous way to hint at cheerleaders doing CARTWHEELS down the sideline! HOME REMEDIES isn't as fun, especially given the straightforward clue, but DOUBLE DOG DARES is playground-level fun.

I wasn't as enthralled by the opposite stack. EPICENTERS had the start of a clever clue, but [Places to find faults] doesn't misdirect much. Tough to figure out something sharper … perhaps [Focus of a fault-finding mission?] That doesn't work either, but it would be fun to brainstorm. Riffing on "shake" might be fruitful, too.

Robert wasn't kidding about a 62-word grid. Here, he pinched up the top and the bottom to make them more tractable, but that makes the middle much tougher. I'm not up on my cabinet members, but SUSAN RICE certainly has cred. VASO is a perilous crosser, but it's hard to imagine SU?ANRICE filled in with anything but an S. ATWT isn't great, and PANAMAS is an odd way to refer to panama hats, but it all works reasonably well.

Even after uncovering HANG GLIDERS, it still took me a while to figure out the clue. "At the bar" … because HANG GLIDERS hang onto a bar? It's tenuous, but it does work. And "a few drafts" is clever. All in all, it's almost brilliant.

Generally a smooth solve, with a couple of places to find faults.

– puzzle by Robert Logan

★ I've brainstormed so many concepts around various barriers, including the SOUND BARRIER — Chandi's is a WITT! (Wish I'd Thought of That.) She takes commonplace phrases and breaks up their phonetic equivalents in cool places.

The results:

• WHO TOWEL = HOOT OWL
• LAUNCH HEIRS = LAWN CHAIRS
• HIGH DOUBTS = HIDEOUTS
• FORK WARTS = FOUR QUARTS
• NEIGH MITT = NAME IT
• PLAGUE EARL = PLAYGIRL
• QUEUE BRUTES = CUBE ROOTS
• SLOPE OAK = SLOWPOKE

I often complain when it's hard to figure out what is theme and what isn't; this is a rare exception that works well. After I got over my initial scowl over WHO TOWEL being so short that it got lost in the fill, it dawned on me that this is precisely why the concept succeeds. It would have been much less interesting if all the pairs had been grayed out.

Working with so many pairs of short entries is a tough ask. It might seem like it's equivalent to gridding around nine themers, eight of which are shortish, but each pair fixes a black square into place, taking away so much flexibility.

Also, staying at the 140-word maximum means you'll need to incorporate more long fill than usual. Chandi was meticulous with her short fill and included loads of BOHO CHIC, I GOTTA GO, TRASH TALK, WHERE WERE WE — in the top half alone!

I hitched on the OTTESSA / PATENT cross, since I didn't easily recognize the [Easily recognizable] definition of PATENT. It'd have been great to go with a more explanatory clue, perhaps going toward the intellectual property definition instead.

Great concept, with a revealer that screams "make me into a Sunday puzzle!" A POW! well earned.

– puzzle by Chandi Deitmer

Appropriate for John Ewbank to create a "letter bank" puzzle!

Alas, no U?

Ew.

"Letter banks" are difficult for some newer solvers to grasp. Note that CATTLE CARS, SALT CELLAR, STEER CLEAR, and ART CLASSES are all formed from the set [A C E L R S T].

Thankfully, John developed more interest (get it? bank? interest? okay, fine, it wasn't funny) through another constraint that I didn't notice until much later. Not only do these four phrases draw from the [A C E L R S T] bank, but they all use every one of the letters at least once.

I was all set to muse over why John didn't use more colorful entries like ALL STAR CAST, STATE SECRET, TASTE TESTER, and TEASER RATES (appropriate for a bank puzzle!), when I noticed that each of them lacked at least one of the seven letters. This one goes out to all the Spelling Bee pangram fanatics!

I wonder how many solvers will notice the extra layer. I wouldn't have if I hadn't shifted into analysis mode.

(Emphasis on anal.)

Fantastic gridwork; so many bonuses with zero gluey bits. John had to deploy so many of his black squares around the middle that he was forced to leave big, open corners in the SW and NE. Thankfully, the [A C E L R S T] are easy letters to grid around, and John did his DARNEDEST to juice up the joint with not only doubles like GOOD LOSER and NEWS ALERT, but additional touches like TIP JARS and IM ALL IN. Yes, he is!

It's tough for me to get excited about letter bank concepts these days, but I appreciated John's effort to make his stand out.

– puzzle by John Ewbank

KISS AND MAKE UP = two things associated with Gene Simmons? Gene-ius-level wordplay! Both elements changed meaning in such clever ways. TOSSES AND TURNS worked well, too, as two things associated with a game of horseshoes. I don't know much about the intricacies of the game, but I know that people toss horseshoes at stakes, taking turns.

TOWN AND COUNTRY wasn't as fun, since I couldn't remember what the base phrase referred to (the magazine, or the film, or other?), and also because neither word changed meaning. I did enjoy remembering the trivia, that the Vatican is indeed both a town and a country.

I suppose ROCK AND ROLLER is a decent phrase. Not as juicy as ROCK AND ROLL STAR, though. I definitely associate a ROCK with Sisyphus … ROLLER felt more awkward.

Sisyphus with a perm is a funny image, though.

So much fun in the clues! Not a surprise, given that Doug is hilarious; one of my favorite people in the crossworld. There's a lot of humor spread around the short fill clues, like a DEN with lions, thieves, or TV, and the amusing use of "noggin" in the ACORN clue. Even the everyday SIT stands up when you use the word "keister." If only the clue had referenced a whoopie cushion …

Needless to say, Doug and I crack up at fart jokes still. Oh, and buy our book, why don't you?

Great idea here, with a couple of stellar examples of lateral thinking.

– puzzle by Gary Larson and Doug Peterson

Break it up! Although relationship conclusions are nothing to laugh about, Mary's reimagined FINISH LINEs sure are. SHRINK WRAP, as in "that's a wrap," made me think of my therapist buddy who's been trying to break up with some of his clients who don't need him anymore. SHALLOW END is even better, employing a flippant throwaway comment in parting.

Some solvers might not recognize the phrase STOCK SPLIT — a psychological maneuver involving a company artificially inflating the number of shares while reducing the per share price to make it seem more affordable — but the reimagined concept is solid. What more stock (trite) line is there besides "It's not you, it's me"?

Not a dab of glue in sight! It's awesome to see a debut constructor take so much care in their craftsmanship. There is more segmentation than is desirable — the NW and SE corners are only connected to the middle through two entries apiece — but that quasi-trisection allowed Mary to stuff those corners with juicy material. AT THIS RATE, she's building a DREAM HOUSE, all right.

When I first heard solver complaints about FRIEND ZONE, I didn't get it. Researching more over the years has made me see more context, though.

Some great cluing touches, too. The [Sad trombone] noise always makes this former trombonist laugh. I might take it up again one day, just so I can WAH WAH myself when my daughter asks yet again to watch "Barbie DREAMHOUSE Adventures."

FINISH LINE is a slightly awkward way to describe "sentence uttered to conclude a relationship," but its punniness more than makes up for that. Great examples here, with such high-quality gridwork. Looking forward to Mary's next offering.

– puzzle by Mary Crane

I'm with Guilherme — curious choice to place this on a Thursday. Some nice finds, though, along with a fun way to execute on the "parsing" genre:

EPIC + ENTER = EPICENTER (CORE)

LIME + RICK = LIMERICK (VERSE)

DISCO + VERY = DISCOVERY (FIND)

CONS + TRAIN = CONSTRAIN (BIND)

Parsing themes — ones involving a space addition, deletion, or shift — are so common that IT'S A NO is often the answer. In the past year alone, we've already had one Sunday then another, less than two months afterward. I'm glad that Guilherme went with a different angle, chunking up his DISCO VERYs in a way that features the FINDs so well.

Fantastic UPC CODE clue. It's an amusing entry in the first place, since "Universal Product Code code" is weird (this concept was featured in a variety puzzle), and I was so confused by [Bars for checking people out]. Although I've seen takes on lines at a store and even checkout lines, this one misdirects so wickedly.

Solid gridwork. Four cut-up themers turns out to be harder that four unbroken grid-spanners, since each themer forces two black square placements apiece. Guilherme wisely made sure that each of his triplets spanned from the left edge to the right, avoiding any other forced black square placements along the sides.

Guilherme made top-notch use of his mid-length slots, packing them with LACTASE, CANASTA, SET FREE, GERMANY, BRAILLE. Tons of added color.

Given how many parsing puzzles we've seen recently — here's yet another — it's tough to get excited about the genre. However, I appreciated Guilherme's fresh presentation that would have made for a killer Wednesday or even Tuesday puzzle.

– puzzle by Guilherme Gilioli