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Americans love us some dogs. Less than three months ago, we had another dog command puzzle, and I bet solvers would be fine with still another one around the holidays. I mean, who doesn't love those Youtube videos where they put lolcat words over the dog's head? Hilarious!

No?

Right, I totally don't spend hours watching those idiotic videos either. Da hekk are you thinking?

My big question today: why dog orders? There's nothing else in the grid dog-oriented. No dog visuals, no dog title, no dog theme phrases, not even some doggie treats spread through the grid.

GIB ME CHIKMEN, LINDA!!!

Those concerns aside (am I missing something?), I did enjoy most of Finn's themers. It's not hard to find phrases hiding short words, but PLINY THE ELDER and JALISCO MEXICO are great discoveries.

Not as hot on COLOR WHEELS and SEX COMEDIES, which don't break the word across the phrase. Will often points out that these leave solvers with a feeling that the other word is superfluous, COLOR and SEX playing no part in the themer.

Not easy to build a 140-word grid around stacked pairs of themers. I was wowed by so much OLD SCORE, AMY RYAN, HOI POLLOI, IRON MAN … running through themer pairs!

Not so much by ENJAMBMENT.

MIC CHECK, BOOK REC, HIT JOBS, yes!

GLUTENIN, ACTAEON, POSTBAC … maybe?

If you're going to go dog, you ought to go whole dog, so today's puzzle wasn't nearly as strong as it could have been. Interesting idea to stretch those key words though, making literal "tall orders."

– puzzle by Finn Vigeland

I was so close to winning "Name That Theme" today! I knew GORDON JUMP right off the bat, having been raised by "WKRP" (and "Gilligan's Island and "Three's Company" and …). So it had to be HOP SKIP JUMP, the Olympic event!

Nope.

PHOTO SHOOT ... biathlon! They JUMP over little hills along the way.

Well, they do!

CHICKEN RUN ... now I have it! CHICKEN RUN is the very definition of my gait on the third leg of a triathlon — cramping from the long bike ride, hobbling like a chicken in distress.

Huh? What does SHOOT have to do with it? Have YOU ever done triathlons? Then you wouldn't know. So there.

See, ADULT SWIM, triathlon! SNOW FENCE, there are fences that gate off the changing areas for transitioning from SWIM to RUN to bike.

What? Wouldn't BIKE be in a triathlon-themed puzzle?

Who asked you, wise guy?

PENTATHLON, of course. That's exactly what I thought right from GORDON JUMP. Because of the high jump. Or long jump?

FINE IT'S EQUESTRIAN JUMPING, AND I COMPLETELY FAILED AT NAME THAT THEME! TAKE AWAY MY ONE TINY MOMENT OF JOY, WHY DON'T YOU?

I liked the theme, but it didn't click strongly. SHOOT, RUN, FENCE, SWIM, yes. But JUMP? If I could have given early input, I'd have taken the themers out for a test ride. Maybe then, C.C. could have accelerated to maximum ride.

Ahem. RIDE!

(JUMP does allow for intersecting themers, crossing with ADULT, which often makes grid layout much easier when you have to incorporate six themers. It's still possible to use RIDE, though, while RUNning all six themers in the across direction.)

Speaking of maximum ride, I loved so much of C.C.'s seasoning: NO CAN DO. ORIGAMI as something for which you need a "folder" = genius! The I CHING. Modern SHONDA Rhimes to balance out GORDON JUMP. UP TOP, C.C., take some ENCORES for that!

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

Evan's construction abilities have taken a meteoric rise. When I first started working with him, his ability to produce strong fill was … underdeveloped. (As is almost everyone's!) I've seen firsthand how much time he invests in developing his craft, and it shows. It reminds me of Bruce Haight's trajectory.

Mid-length fill is becoming one of Evan's fortes. With a 76-word grid and four themers, I'd expect a solid constructor to produce a squeaky-clean grid packed with about six pieces of colorful fill. Check this out:

• BUCKAROO / IN DENIAL / GOT NASTY
• PECORINO / DRONED ON / FRUCTOSE

In just two corners, he's already hit the mark! But wait, there's more: TYPE AB / WOULDA. BREWPUB. IT'S BAD? No way, it's SUPERB!

Even his short fill: QUIPS. RAMBO. PLAN A. YODA. That's not stuff you see every day.

There was one blip, in TROMPE. It's fair game in general, but it runs the risk of moving the "weird" needle for newer solvers. It's to be avoided in an early-week puzzle, especially crossing APSE. We constructors tend to think APSE is something everyone knows, and we'd be wrong.

The theme works, although it more grazed than struck me. One reason: I've seen many variations on this idea by now. More important is a notion I hadn't considered until Will pointed it out a few years ago: PURPLE, BANANA, and COURTED do nothing for the theme. They spice things up, but ideally, hidden words ought to involve both words of the theme phrases.

Not all editors agree, and no rule says this must be done. There is a reason why Will and Peter Gordon often give me this feedback, though — BANANA is such dead weight.

An alternate concept: sticking with single words, which would have allowed for REINCARNATION. Single-word themes are rare, since they don't bring as much pizzazz as multi-worders, but entries like DRILLMASTER and KASHMIRIS would have been spicy. Heck, DAIQUIRIS by itself is awfully nice!

Now I'm curious to see what other flowers can be hidden at the ends of colorful words. Down the constructor's rabbit hole …

– puzzle by Evan Kalish

★ I love letters-imagined-as-pictures themes, and I love ice cream. Given that PISTACHIO is my favorite flavor, how could I not give this one the POW!?

At first glance, there doesn't appear to be much theme material, since there are only two long entries. Not so! SINGLE, DOUBLE, TRIPLE, SCOOP, VANILLA, CHOCOLATE, PISTACHIO, OV, OOV, OOOV. Yes, they're mostly shorties, but placing any ten themers, no matter what length, creates so many problems.

Not only did Patrick figure out how to get the ice cream cones crossing the flavors, but he worked in so much beautiful fill. He kicked off the puzzle with triple-treat bang: ALFREDO GELATIN EDISON. With DECIMAL RABBLE COLUMBO ANOMALY in another corner — and the rest of the puzzle still to go — it was already a winner.

The only cherry on top would have been something to get rid of the pesky asymmetry. I'm not sure what you could do to balance OV, though. Patrick told me he wanted to put an actual cherry on top — a visual in the lone black square above OV. Oh, how I hope Joel and Sam and the digital team figure out how to do that!

A figurative AND a literal cherry on top? We'd be talking about Puzzle of the Year territory.

Bravo, sir! Patrick's been busy with a kid, so his NYT contributions have dropped off in the past few years. Here's hoping that he picks back up.

– puzzle by Patrick Blindauer

Jim and I worried that solvers would miss all the symmetric, but short, theme material, so we've highlighted it below.

Interesting concept, playing on "more than" and "less than." EMOTION is more than a MOTION, but less than a DEMOTION, for example. The concept reminded me of a genius puzzle by David Steinberg that won an award in 2015. Puzzles so rarely blow my mind, but seeing what David pulled off there required a hundred Q-Tips to wipe away the gray matter oozing out my ears.

It made me wonder how many words fit that double beheading possibility. Five minutes of coding showed there are hundreds of them, including many long ones — longer than EMOTION even. My favorite from that list was CHARMLESS HARMLESS ARMLESS. It would have been great to use at least one pair of long ones since all the shorties got lost in Alex's grid.

Obsessive as I am, I wondered how many triple beheading words there are. Surprisingly, also hundreds! My favorite: GESTATE ESTATE STATE TATE, although ISLANDERS SLANDERS LANDERS ANDERS was fun too, as was NASCENT ASCENT SCENT CENT.

We all know I can't leave well enough alone, so onto quad and quint beheadings! Dozens of quads, but just one notable quint: BRAIDING RAIDING AIDING ID'ING DING ING (the Dutch bank).

Overall, Alex's idea was solid, although it was unsatisfying to never see the missing letter, e.g., the D in front of DEMOTION. I wondered if they'd spell something out — now that would have been neat! S T was a good start, but then it all went to hell with S T P B, etc. Given how many double beheading options there are to choose from, having a secret answer would have been doable and would have elevated the puzzle concept.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

What's this, Mark Diehl on a Friday? The man renowned for his diabolical Saturday creations treats us to an easier Friday. And talk about treats! We get SUZY Qs, a PEANUT BUTTER CUP, some 3 MUSKETEERS, and an OREO. That's a tasty — if diabetes-inducing — mini-theme.

Rare to see numbers in a themeless, so I enjoyed getting C3PO, a perfect way to work in that 3.

I wasn't hot on just getting one PEANUT BUTTER CUP. Where'd the other one from the two-pack go, hmm, Mark? Gimme gimme gimme! A couple of extraneous words also bugged me, CAKES and COOKIE feeling tacked on. They are technically correct, but who wouldn't give you the side-eye if you asked for a SUZY Q CAKE?

Mostly I was irritated by not getting that other PEANUT BUTTER CUP. Who can eat just one?

A mini-theme with this density — including pairs stacked atop each other! — usually doesn't allow for that much extra long fill, but this is Mark, a consummate pro, we're talking about. Such a pleasure to get a vending machine full of HARD NOSED / INCOGNITO / LEAD DOGS, and BROCADE / CORIOLIS force.

I hesitated right off the bat, with the pile-up of NUEVA IZAAK LYNDE, all crossing ANIL. Thankfully, the rest of the puzzle was smoother, but it's a shame that the upper themer stack necessitated a rough start to the puzzle. I didn't think it was worth it. Shortening (pun intended) to SUZY Q and OREOS would have made things much smoother (because you can shift SUZY Q back and forth to find a more optimal position).

I was thrown for a loop by the clue for ROPE. Looped for a throw, what a fun reversal!

Not my favorite mini-theme, but I appreciated seeing something a little different.

– puzzle by Mark Diehl

Trenton loves himself some rare letters. His last one was jam-packed with JQXZs, and this one's in the same mold. Knowing his tendencies, JV SQUADS and AZIMUTH came easily.

[Candy sold ...] — stop, that's all I need! It has to be PIXY STIX, because Trenton wanted Xs! Bwa ha ha, I'm a genius!

That insider knowledge makes me feel smug. Jeff likes to feel smug.

I did wonder how many solvers would recognize AZIMUTH. What, you're a Saturday solver and you don't know AZIMUTH? It's obvious! It's that angle … at which the height … star parallax … I DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF, SO THERE.

Fine, it's a tough term even for us engineering geeks. Even for those of us who did an astronomy internship at NASA's Ames Center. Ahem.

It's a shame that SNELL'S law couldn't have been invoked. Along with AZIMUTH, that would have been quite the pairing for us smugineers.

Editors prize multi-word themeless entries for their color, but today brings us many examples of how one-worders can shine. SPHINXES are mysterious. STINKERS is no stinker. And RAPUNZEL with a hair-raising escape, that's hilarious!

A 70-word themeless has to be both jazzy and pristine for me to perk up. The abundance of rare letters helped, but a couple of clues felt off. Does anyone call a vice-president a VICE? And isn't it paper-thin, not TISSUE-thin?

Along with a couple of words that might get the weirdometer clicking — SNELLS, SHIRRS, SAPID, SPILLAGE, singular ALGA — there were more trade-offs than I like. I can imagine solvers asking themselves, "What the snell?"

Solid Saturday workout, though — nearly mind-breaking as I tried to pull ITASCA, ANIMAS, GAMETE from memory. Sometimes it's arbitrary as to whether a puzzle runs on a Friday or a Saturday, but this one was a Saturday through and through.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

What's in a name? More like, what name's … in the final word of the theme phrase?

Shakespeare, I'm not.

Even after I uncovered three themers, I still wasn't sure what was going on. I thought I figured it out with "BURY THE HAT" CHET, but then I hit HEART BRO KEN. What's a HEART BRO — frat dude who's aiming for cardiology? No, that couldn't be right. My cleveradar told me I had to be missing something.

My equipment may be due for a tune-up.

A mix of thematic results, with some falling flat, but I did get a kick out of GROUND NUT MEG being an NFL fan nutty over the running game.

140-word 21x21 puzzles are never straightforward to build. They always require a bunch of long fill, which is usually the root of construction problems. Joe is such a pro — check out what he did in the SW corner. That diagonal line of black squares nearly segments the corner from the rest of the grid, with only three entry/exit points. This isn't ideal in terms of grid flow, but it's satisfactory — if a solver gets stuck at one point, there are still two others.

This sort of pseudo-segmentation does wonders for grid building. Once you have ROLLERS KATE and FORT LAUDER DALE in place, you can work on the SW corner almost independently of the rest of the grid. It's such a huge boon in construction to be able to tackle a big grid in sequential chunks, breaking down the Herculean mythos into minor labors.

Great results in that SW corner. FARMERS TAN and I GOT NOTHIN are sizzlers, and there's little evidence of the glue usually necessary to stick together adjacent downs — just ESTE and DAK. It's much easier to achieve this type of solid result when the rest of the grid doesn't affect what you're doing in the local region.

This is the type of trade-off that serves both the solver and the constructor.

All that great fill helped keep me entertained while I shrugged at entries like ROLLERS KATE and POP IN JAY. Jam-packing a grid full of TENNIS PRO, ASIAN PEARS, COME TO PAPA, HES DEAD JIM, THE RIDDLER, VIRGIN WOOL is such a boon for solvers who don't connect to the theme.

– puzzle by Joe DiPietro

★ Loved this puzzle from start to finish. My first impression was that it was novel, fun, and nicely consistent. But was there more than "single words broken in two, in a fun way"?

It took me a while to realize what was going on with the theme, and I appreciated it more and more as I cottoned to the details. I wondered, aren't there tons of possibilities? It's easy to break words rhyming with RYES in two parts, right?

Then, it dawned on me that it wasn't just "rhymes with RYES," but "ends in -IZE." That's much more restrictive, lending a feeling of tightness. But there had to be a bunch of other short words Dan missed, right? SIGHS for example. And … PIES. BUYS!

Turns out there aren't any good options with any of those three. ROMANTIC SIGHS almost works, but it's not quite like the others. And there are few (interesting) words ending in -PIZE or -BIZE.

Perfect tightness makes the theme so elegant. Beautiful.

Lovely early-week grid, too. Dan worked in a good number of long bonuses — BODY SHOP, TED TALKS, EATS IT UP, DIET SODA. Note how widely-accessible those are, nothing cutting-edge flashy like the latest pop single or movie that will elate some and turn off others.

Along with squeaky-clean fill — the only nit I could pick was a bit of SORE AT and GOES TO, filler that felt like wasted potential — it's a fantastic product. Sticking to a 78-word grid is so smart. Some constructors feel like going to the max number of allowable words is beneath them (me included, sometimes), but it's a great way to achieve the epitome of Monday-ness.

Top-notch work. This is exactly what a newb-friendly NYT puzzle should be.

– puzzle by Dan Schoenholz

I've had hundreds of BLTs in my life, but I've never thought about the order of ingredients. Does it matter? Seems like it should — it'd be weird if someone described our nation's flag as the good old white, blue, and red, yeah?

Only one way to find out! Now I have to figure out which deli will give me the least side-eye when I order six different BLTs, using the six different permutations.

Great theme phrases. I LOVED TO BITS every single one of them, LOWER BACK TATTOO a great find for LBT. It's not as colorful a term as the more well-known one, but sadly, T S (warning, hilarious but NSFW!) doesn't fit in a B L T permutation theme.

I also appreciated how careful Ethan was to avoid duplicating any one word. It'd be all too easy to use TO or TOO twice. That attention to detail made the theme set stand out even more.

Five themers aren't easy to work into a 15x15 grid, especially when they're fairly long. If this had been a meatier theme, one that could have run on a Wednesday, I'd have given it more passes. For a newb, though, seeing ALBEE VERDI ULTA KVELL EPOCHAL might elicit a sensation of THIS LOOKS BAD.

All of these words are fair game, entries that educated NYT solvers ought to be (at least vaguely) familiar with. As a whole, though, they might take away from a victorious finish. As a constructor, you want to deliver a shout of "I DID IT!" instead of an "uh … I think I might have kinda sorta maybe finished?"

Black squares divided the grid into two halves, upper and lower. I'd have asked Ethan to rework, creating openings somewhere along that black diagonal. It'd be one thing if you could only have good grid flow or clean fill, but I'm positive that with this theme set, you can have both.

I'd have loved some rationale behind permuting the B L T letters — there are dozens of words indicating anagramming, so I'm sure there's some food-anagramming revealer out there — but overall, the snazziness of the five themers made up for that omission.

– puzzle by Ethan Cooper

There's a great seed of an idea in here. Take "X in Y" phrases, and find theme entries that mean Y, such that you can spread out the letters of X within? As much as I dislike the scattered appearance of random circles strewn through a grid, that would make up for it, in spades.

However, the theme entries ought to be solid in their own right, not made up. There are so many "X in Y" phrases out there, and so many solid themers meaning Y, that making up whatever you want is the easy way out. As a solver, it's not enjoyable to work so hard, just to uncover something as contrived as MARS FOR INSTANCE.

Let's take a look at the first theme clue, [Bird in the hand?]. There are dozens of birds that could have been used, a lot of them short, with friendly letters: OWL, DODO, DOVE, JAY, EMU, HEN, etc. There are also many meanings of "hand" that lend themselves to snazzy, or at least non-made-up-sounding phrases. APPRENTICE, ROUND OF APPLAUSE, UNIT OF MEASUREMENT, FULL HOUSE, etc.

It's possible that no combination of bird + snazzy phrase would work. If that's the case, you move onto the next "X in Y" phrase and start over.

Gridwise, I stopped my tally of gluey bits after ANAT STET SDS AMI SNERD, and it kept on going. Far from a polished product.

With several more rounds of rework, improvement, and finessing, this could have been a solid offering.

– puzzle by Ned White

MARQUEE MARK, that's a great one! If you know who Marky Mark is, that is. "Mark Wahlberg" is a better name for a serious actor, but it ain't no Marky Mark. Boo!

I get so many theme queries playing on homophones that I'm more tired of them than ever. They have to have something special to make me sit up a little straighter. I appreciated Grant's take, restricting his to ones using a Q. That's a nice way to tighten the concept.

It's not what I want out of a Thursday — I deserve a bigger payoff after working so hard to finish — but there are some solvers out there who'll be proud to hold this one up as one of the few Thursday NYTs they've ever finished. It's okay to throw people a bone every once in a while.

I'd have liked a touch more elegance in the grid, what with ERI ETD NOI UND, and the odd clue for ONE A. That last one is undesirable in the first place, and to force solvers to think about Elvis's middle name (Aron) is an odd decision, making the entry even worse.

Thankfully, there was enough bonus material to balance things out. Working in ER NURSES, KNEE PAIN, OUTTAKES, BAD FAT, BAR B QS, I DUNNO, LOQUAT, PARODY? MAN OH MAN that's good. I'd have asked for one or two fewer of these in exchange for a smoother overall product, but I can buy the trade-off. That's a lot of sizzle.

Because you can throw a stone 50 feet in any direction and hit a homophone puzzle, it's so important to do something above and beyond. The Q restriction helped, but I'd have liked something even more. Perhaps a revealer would have helped pull it all together. Well, that's my cue to go, so I'm--

Hey, THAT'S MY CUE!

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

Debut themeless from one of the young guns — and his sister! Neat to see them work together. I keep suggesting to my four-year-old that we make a crossword together, so she can smash the record. Her reading/writing vocabulary is impressive already, so if I were a betting man, I'd set the over/under at age ... 10.

Not that I'd place bets on my own daughter! I'd never wager with other fathers on how many times she'd poop in a day or if she'd get across the monkey bars on the first try, no sirree!

(At least I bet ON her, never against her. Results: four, and she didn't.)

There's a lot to love in this 72-worder. Note that I didn't say "standard 72-worder." It's unusual to keep one's corners so wide open, because it's so hard to "turn the corner." ARCADE / COUGAR / TIRADE is a beautiful result coming off that ACT OF GOD / ROID RAGE / CURE ALLS triplet.

There were a couple of toughies, EREBUS, PEALE, and LATH having the potential to throw solvers off, but other than those hiccups, I was impressed by the quality of fill. It did take me 30 frustrating minutes to finish — about 3x as long as usual for a Friday. Perhaps that tough vocab was the culprit?

Puzzles that have such wide-open corners usually can't help but use a couple of neutral entries like EXPERTLY, INTERVAL, RANDALL. Nice clues for the last two, though, INTERVAL having potential for a clever musical clue, and [Tony with an Emmy] wonderfully confusing.

Speaking of wonderfully confusing, WTF does [Hear "here!" here] mean? It took me a few readings to realize how brilliantly that hinted at ROLL CALL.

I liked the modern touch of YELLOW VESTS (the recent French protest movement) and FRAPPUCCINO to balance out more tired material like SET SHOTS and ED O'NEILL, especially when the latter is clued to "Married with Children" instead of his more recent (and better) work.

Solid overall. I'd love to see more family duos pairing up.

– puzzle by Anne and Daniel Larsen

Figuring out the starts of the two marquee across entries was such a treat. I blanked on ___ HOME RUN for the longest time, scouring my mental archives for types of homers. Walk off? Inside the park? Great moment of relief to finally land on PINCH HIT HOME RUN.

Although, I'm still furious with Kirk Gibson, even 30 years later. FIST PUMP ALL OVER MY A'S, SERIOUSLY? WELL JUST REMEMBER, KARMA'S A BITCH YOU FRIGGIN' (censored).

Not that I'm bitter. What does my therapist know, anyway?

The second horizontal grid-spanner was so much fun, as I was stuck on ___ DELIVERIES for five full minutes. My deficiencies in golf are only overshadowed by my atrocious knowledge of golf terminology, so I could only think of OPEN DELIVERIES. Brilliant a-ha when I realized "slices" meant PIZZA slices. The clue's grammar is as tortured as my golf swing, but heck, it was worth it.

Great vertical backbone connecting the two feature entries, DETAILS TO FOLLOW.

I wasn't as hot on SENSATIONALIZE, as it's a one-worder that feels pedestrian. I begrudgingly read up on VIRTUE SIGNALING because I supposed I should, but it frustrated me during my solve, as I struggled to piece it together, letter by letter.

Breaking up these last two vertical grid-spanners would have given a better overall result, since such a massive and rigid skeleton places too much constraint on a grid. In the SE, for example, BOOTLEG is good, but fewer constraints could have eliminated something no one likes, EDATE.

If only Siri did crosswords.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

You like the bowling ball image Jim chose? (See grid below.) I love that round-mouthed expression — appropriate for the ball staring at 5-Across, NSFW.

I immediately thought of another bowling Sunday NYT, but this one's different enough that I appreciated being able to compare and contrast.

I like that the ten PINs aren't rebusized today. It was fun to slowly uncover all ten instances, mostly well hidden through the grid. Note how the pins are neatly laid out in the correct pattern.

Some of the puns are solid — as solid as puns can ever be, that is. STRIKE ZONE and LANE CLOSURE were a bit too literal for me, and NO TIME TO SPARE has such awkward grammar, but SPLIT DECISION is perfect. Personally, I've given up on trying to figure out the 7-10 split.

(I've also given up on trying to figure out why certain puns are funny and others aren't.)

There were some compromises in the fill — someone needs to wipe up the alley of its AMOR ANSE ISE PINY spills — but these misdemeanors are understandable, given the theme density. All those puns plus ten PINS is no joke. It's a reasonable result, overall.

– puzzle by Andrew Kingsley

I love Ross's drive to help underrepresented demographics get into crossword construction. How apt to have UBERMENSCH in the grid!

JUST FOR THE RECORD, Amanda's debut is a solid example of a "how are these seemingly disparate things related?" theme. GUINNESS records, STUDIO records, and records kept by a STENOGRAPHER — different enough that the revealer gave me a decent a-ha moment.

Some might wonder if GUINNESS OFFICIAL is a real thing, but it most definitely is. I admit I watch too many "Dude Perfect" videos — their raw enthusiasm is irresistible. Some of my favorite episodes are those where they break ridiculous "world records," always needing a GUINNESS OFFICIAL to be present.

I wasn't so sure about a STUDIO SINGER. I've heard of studio musicians — I never got good enough to be one, sadly — but there's such a thing as a STUDIO SINGER? According to the Goog, yep! It's unfortunately not as catchy a phrase as "studio musician" or "backup singer."

STENOGRAPHER works for the third type of record, although it's not an entry anyone would write home about.

As much as I like UBERMENSCH, it'll be a tough word for some novice solvers. If all the crossings had been no-brainers, I wouldn't have mentioned it, but TCM (Turner Classic Movies) could be a killer. Along with another hard piece of vocab in CARPACCIO, I'd have asked for the difficulty dial to be turned down from eleven to ten. Something like PRIDE MONTH feels much more accessible to a wider audience, while still being a great entry.

All in all, a well-made debut puzzle, the overall smoothness demonstrating careful craftsmanship. If the themers had been punchier and the grid more Monday-friendly, I'd have given it some POW! consideration.

– puzzle by Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

★ It's tough not to smile when a puzzle is all about happiness. Great interpretations of five catchy phrases; Paul imagining them as they'd apply to appropriate professions. Of course, a happy meteorologist would be ON CLOUD NINE, and an astronaut would be OVER THE MOON.

Even IN GOOD SPIRITS made me smile. My first impression was that a medium wouldn't be IN spirits as much as "within" them. I mean, it's not like the medium gets sucked in and swallowed by a ghost. Furthermore--

At that point, I delivered a kick in the pants to OCD Jeff, choosing to simply enjoy in the kookiness of a medium floating WITHIN GOOD SPIRITS.

Bah! Don't put WITH in bold! Bad, OCD Jeff, bad!

So many fantastic clues, too. Early-week puzzles often get toned down so that newer solvers won't get tripped up on their way to a victorious solve. What a treat to get [You drive it on a parkway and park it on a driveway] clue for CAR. [They're game] indeed describes PHEASANTS. YOYO MA taking a bow — his cello bow, that is — before his performance. A LAB being "chocolate-coated." Such joyful clues match the joyful theme.

A couple of blips though, in VINGT (tough foreign word), DEOXY (esoteric prefix), MOUE — gaaaaAACK!

That was the sound of a sock being stuffed in OCD Jeff's mouth. A puzzle this uplifting is allowed to have a couple of misdemeanors, especially when there are nice bonuses like IDIOT BOX to balance them out. No AW MANs today.

Above everything else, crosswords should entertain. If you don't deliver a few minutes of joy to your solvers, you've failed as a constructor. Smashing success today, Paul!

– puzzle by Paul Coulter

Drink up everyone, DOWN THE HATCH!

Er, DOWN THE WRONG PIPE!

Would you believe, DOWN THE PIPE?

As in … a perfectly pitched baseball? Isn't that best described by "right across the plate"?

Man, my baseball knowledge is minor league.

It was difficult to figure out if DOWN THE PIPE is a term used in the MLB since so many of the search hits were grammar wonks wonking about the "down the pipe" vs. "down the pike" debate. Most of them described "down the pipe" as "impending," as in "coming down the pipe." No mention of baseball.

Eventually, I did find a site that supports DOWN THE PIPE as a baseball term (warning, NSFW!). Not the most compelling case for featuring it as today's revealer.

That said, the grid presents such a pretty image of appropriate words coming DOWN THE PIPE. It didn't take long to figure out that something was missing in those five answers, but that didn't take away from the aesthetic value. There's something so elegant about the five theme phrases perfectly stair-casing down.

It's bold to kick off your puzzle with HO HUM. I found the gridwork anything but, with such nice bonuses as WATER TOWER, GAS STATION, OIL PLATFORM.

Hey, wait a second. Is this a crossword, or Sim City?

Working in all that long material, plus AIRSHIPS and CLUB SODA — with just a bit of ORO TERA as speed bumps — is SPIRITED work.

It's a shame that OIL PLATFORM wasn't directly tied into the theme somehow. So much potential left on the table, maybe that OIL PLATFORM kicking off an underground PIPEline leading to the GAS STATION? Or perhaps the Brothers Mario and Luigi could have been invoked? (Said the nerd who spent most of his teenage years trying to complete every version of Super Mario Bros. ever released.)

I enjoyed the pleasing visual of those pipes, so regular and regimented, but I was left wondering what could have been.

– puzzle by John Wrenholt

Every rebus puzzle needs some rationale, a raison d'etre, and this is as strong as any. Emmy-winning shows with M-E (say it out loud) contained within? Great stuff. It's almost as if George R.R. Martin titled his series a GAME OF THRONES for that exact purpose!

I don't watch much TV these days, so it's tough for me to tell how familiar I should be with most of the rest. MAD MEN? I've never seen an episode, but I've heard many talk about it, both pro and con. No bones there. HOMELAND, too.

AMERICAN CRIME / STORY … looking it up … ha ha ha, how appropriate that Felicity Huffman was on the show! Sad; she's a great actress. Not so great a criminal.

PANTOMIME QUIZ.

Let me rephrase that: PANTOMIME QUIZ?

Huh. I suppose it's worthwhile, as a winner of one of the first PRIMETIME EMMYs.

I suppose.

Maybe.

I'd have loved for each featured show to contain just one ME, or better yet, the number of Emmys the show has won. The latter would have been impossible, so I'd have settled for removing AMERICAN CRIME / STORY, and using simply EMMY as a revealer instead of PRIMETIME EMMY. It's confusing to have just one themer with two rebuses, without any reason except for BECAUSE REASONS.

I'd have also liked the game to be more intriguing, a la GAME OF THRONES (except for that last season, WTF Daenerys?). As much as I liked SHOW ME STATE, it's such an obvious answer / clue pair that it tipped off the fact that some trick was in play.

I often push constructors to integrate more long bonuses in increase solver pleasure, but what with LAH and NTWT required to get SANTA ANITA and SHOW ME STATE, breaking up the former would have better served the puzzle.

Overall, an enjoyable concept that directed me to look up some kinda sorta interesting trivia.

ADDED NOTE: Oops! Astute reader Agnes Davidson points out that AMERICAN CRIME is different than AMERICAN CRIME / STORY. Curiously, they've both won Emmys.

– puzzle by David Kwong

I had an eye-opening discussion with Jim about this themeless. In our regular jibber-jabber about the week's worth of puzzles, he noted that for today's, EVE CURIE was his favorite entry / clue pair, by far.

I didn't literally fall out of my chair, but I wanted to. (That'd have given people at my local coffee shop something to pep up their day!)

I struggled with EVE CURIE, eventually piecing her together, and grumbled that the puzzle was being teachy. Okay, EVE CURIE is crossworthy, no doubt, but why not save that trivia for another puzzle, to spice up the usually boring short entry, EVE?

Jim usually summarizes his feelings about each puzzle with a single line or thought, but here, he wrote a theme paper. His well-thought-out discourse:

1. The clue is an amazing piece of trivia.
2. There's no way I know that answer.
3. But wait, families with Nobels? There can't be that many.
4. Oh, yeah, Pierre and Marie Curie both won.
5. So the last name must be CURIE.
6. And we have a three-letter first name that we can easily get from crosses.

It's rare that my opinions change so drastically, but it does happen. EVE CURIE shall hereafter stick in my mind, with a positive connotation.

Perhaps I'd have been more tolerant of learning a new name if I hadn't already struggled with ENESCU, ZACHARIAH, and ALISON Lurie.

Because they're so difficult to construct, 68-word puzzles will generally have some wastage. This was a perfect example, as DETESTED, ASSAULTS, even EMPHATIC weren't emphatic enough to make me sit up. Thankfully, Luke included enough solid phrases — SPEED DATES / HEAVEN SENT / ON RETAINER made for a snazzy triplet, just for starters — to make up for some of the potential left on the table.

– puzzle by Luke Vaughn

joon and Erik, two of my favorite people in the crossworld! A reader accused me the other day of favoritism; that I gave better treatment to puzzles written by people I like.

Well, duh. You don't like it, get your own blog.

joon and I first met at an ACPT when people kept calling me joon or Kevin. The three of us bonded over that — there's a silver lining to racism!

And Erik. I've had the privilege of trading tons of thoughts with him about everything from construction techniques to clever cluing to diversity within our sphere. We even have a co-written Thursday puzzle that's been waiting for over a year to be published.

(Hint hint, nudge nudge, Will.)

IMPRESSIVE work in today's puzzle. (Note to constructors: putting not-so-subliminal messages into your grids works.) The 66-word grid features some juicy entries — TEA KETTLE, REPAIR SHOP, KUNTA KINTE, THE MASSES, CAMERA CREW, to name a few — which doesn't happen all the time for low-word-count grids.

It does have some drawbacks, notably the walls of black squares that cut the grid into five parts. Bring down those walls, sirs!

4x7 corners rarely come out both clean and colorful, but check out the SW. MALWARE, LEBRON over WNBA, the SOPRANOS, all JABBING at the supposed limitations of 4x7 corners!

ALAS (see, not-so-subliminal messages work), the NE doesn't compare, what with DISTRICT, EAT OVER, AGEMATE more neutral than positive. It's a clean corner, but hardly colorful. I'd like to see what joon and Erik could do if they moved the black square after OPAL one column to the right. That would not only make it easier to squeeze more juice out of the remaining three long downs in the NE, but would open up grid flow.

I often dislike being forced to learn things from my crossword, but AGENDER didn't feel teachy, since it's easily inferable from the A prefix modifying GENDER. There's so much I don't know about so much, so this is a welcome way of introducing me to the concept. (Read: don't mess with my victorious finish.)

Might have been a POW! contender, what with all the juicy clues — LEBRON more than a little forward, and the Sun a bloc member of the WNBA, just to start — if they'd only been a little less audacious, shifting to a 68-word grid.

– puzzle by Joon Pahk and Erik Agard

Solvers sometimes flood me with questions about certain theme types, and today's is near the top of that list. It's a tough call — do you make the conceit blatantly easy by circling the relevant tricksy entries? Or do you risk solvers not understanding what's going on, leaving with a feeling of frustration (that they then take out on me)?

Honestly, I don't write all the puzzles! Nor does a computer!

Tried and true example of this theme type, which I've seen playing off both UP and DOWN. I appreciated three aspects of Tracy's theme execution:

1. Each shaded word is both a real entry, as well as a fine ___ UP phrase when reversed.
2. The shaded words all come at the start or end of phrases, never the middle.
3. There's a nearly 50/50 mix of starts and ends. While there would be more consistency if Tracy had put them all at the beginnings, that would have flooded the left side of the grid with shaded squares, making for an unappealing visual.

I wasn't a fan of all her themer choices, though — HIGH-SPEED DIAL-UP in particular. I asked a couple of IT friends, and they all gave me that sneery eye roll that defines the industry. (No bitterness about Centurylink and its intensely horrible customer service, not me!)

REVERSE PHONE LOOKUP is better. At least it Googles well (millions of hits when in quotes). I wouldn't use it to seed a themeless, though; more a utilitarian term, like BITWISE OPERATORS or DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURIBILITY.

Along with SIT UP BENCH — we call it an inclined bench at my gym — and PIN-UP GIRL — I'm glad it wasn't a dude who wrote this puzzle! — I wasn't wild about the themers as a whole.

It's not easy to come up with sizzling, long phrases with some of these ___ UP phrases. Can you think of anything else for DIAL UP besides DIAL-UP MODEM? So this would have played out better on a Thursday, allowing for snappier themer selections. "(KOOL) IN THE SKY!" (it's a bird …) would have been awesome.

Excellent gridwork helped keep up my interest, thankfully. Hardly a blip in the short fill, which is tough to do with so many L-shaped themers — some of them crossing! A couple of long goodies like BEER GARDENS, PRESS PASSES, BEE STING, BASE TAN, EGO TRIP, TORN MCL, too. High-quality craftsmanship can go a long ways toward retaining solvers' attention.

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

Yak yak yak … yak! Four colorful words describing a person (or in this case, a crossword) who runs his/her/its mouth makes for an interesting Monday puzzle. BLATHERSKITE stood out, such a curious word, something a cranky old man might say.

Okay, I admit it, I'm that cranky old man.

Masterful gridwork today, ACME peppering the puzzle with strong bonuses. Just two long entries in CREVICES and LECTURES — both fine, albeit not outstanding — but check out the sizzle she injected into her mid-length fill. MALAWI, SAHARA, THWART with its delightful THW start, TRASHY! Cap it off with NAME IT and SEZ WHO. The mid-length fill stands head and shoulders above the average Monday puzzle.

ACME used a clever constructors' trick in her grid layout. Look at the SE corner — it's fairly well connected to the rest of the puzzle, three different points allowing for entrance / egress, which allows for passable solving flow. But when you drop in the last three themers, you can construct the SE corner in near isolation!

It's a great balance — enough solving flow, while also making for easy construction. You can try out pairs of words where LECTURES and CREVICES sit, and once you settle on two that you like (and that test out well), you can work on the grid in three separate pieces. Divide and conquer!

With just a bit of SHLEP (I'm used to "schlep") and ATIE, it's such a clean overall product; so accessible for newbs.

Tying the theme clues aptly together amused me enough to give some POW! consideration. If there had been a turnabout punchline to the joke — some funny entry like ENOUGH ALREADY at the end — that would have been as satisfying as storming up to that one annoying person who's loudly talking on his phone, so no one in the coffee shop can work and DOING A HULK SMASH!

You know you want to. Said the cranky old man.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels

Three GREEK CROSSes = pairs of themers intersecting at their hidden Greek letters. The LAT published a bigger version of this concept just two weeks ago, unfortunately. I liked how that one crossed the same letter with itself, forming GREEK CROSSes with equal length arms.

But then I wondered, maybe John's done something brilliant by picking out Greek letters THAT SPELL OUT SOMETHING! That would more than enough make up for his unequal CROSS lengths.

ALPHA = A

RHO = R

IOTA = I

ZETA = Z

ARIZona? Maybe there are Greek artifacts in Tempe? This is actually happening!

OMEGA = O

THETA = T

Huh. Would you buy Judas IZcARIOT?

Humph.

The grid contains several rough spots, enough that I stopped keeping track after ANSE ALYN ARTE RIAL SECY. Five strikes and you're out for an early-week puzzle! (That number could easily be three or less, for some solvers.) Not nearly smooth enough to be accessible to newer solvers.

What happened? The biggest problem is the size of the real estate around each pair of crossing letters. Take FINAL PHASE and AIR HOLES, for example. It's usually wise to put a black square close to that intersection, probably at the first P of PPM. If you don't, you're effectively trying to build a themeless-esque grid — but with several constraints already locked into place.

There's no easy fix, unfortunately, since if you put a black square at the first P of PPM, you'd form a two-letter word. That means you'd need to move that black square to the left of LEMON ZEST. The shocks ripple through the puzzle, and require a full redo. Unfortunate, but that's what was necessary.

I did like that John managed to work in so much snazzy long fill. LEMON ZEST and REST EASY are welcome surprises in the middle of the puzzle. LEAD APRONS, RAMS HORN, and PIT AGAINST would have also added to the quality of my solving experience, except for the problems they caused in short fill.

– puzzle by John Guzzetta

I like this twist on the usual "letter removal" theme. Typically, BREXIT would serve as a revealer for base phrases that had BRs removed, i.e., TOO BIG FOR ONE'S ITCHES. (Hee hee!) Neat idea to pair the original BR word with the resulting (minus BR) word to generate kookiness.

It wasn't until I hit HOMBRES HOMES that I started to appreciate what Natan, Andy, and the class was doing. BRITCHES ITCHES and BREYERS EYERS felt suspiciously close to a rhyming theme, which has been so overdone that they're no longer viable. Thankfully, HOMBRES HOMES and CEREBRAL CEREAL piqued my interest. I enjoy curious wordplay finds like these.

Will Shortz and I have (sometimes wildly) different tastes when it comes to kooky themes. He's often given me feedback that resulting phrases can't be TOO out there, and they ought to be something solvers can imagine.

I have no idea how CEREBRAL CEREAL fits those criteria.

I do appreciate the attempt at a clever link to "food for thought," but that doesn't explain how the cereal is cerebral. CEREAL ISN'T ALIVE, HOW CAN IT BE CEREBRAL?

Humor is subjective.

I like it when constructors go down to low word counts — if they have as much experience in making themelesses as Natan and Andy. Using a big corner to work in TAMARIND and SLY LOOKS is a big win.

Unfortunate about HUAC (if you don't know it, it's impossible to infer). That's a problem with the basic grid design, as there are woefully few choices fulfilling that H??C pattern — maybe HVAC is okay, but even that's a toughie. As much as I love the potential of 8-letter bonus fill slots, I'd have thought long and hard about moving the black squares after TAMARIND and SLY LOOKS to the left, forming a much friendlier H??C?? pattern. (HEPCAT, HICCUP, HONCHO, HOT CAR, HUBCAP.)

Overall though, fun take on the typical letter removal theme, along with strong gridwork. It's not easy dealing with 12-letter themers in a 14-wide grid, but Natan and Andy led the class to a grid skeleton that's relatively easy to build around, and aesthetically pleasing to boot.

– puzzle by Natan Last, Andy Kravis and The J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

So many beautiful touches: TWOSOME, ALLU(RING), AMANDA crossing ENGAGEMENT RING, and even ADORER brought me a smile. All of this, worked into what seemed like a solid, if run-of-the-mill, rebus puzzle to millions of unaware solvers. Well done, Doug, and congrats to the happy couple!

It's a good thing her name isn't Svotivaniaska.

– puzzle by Doug Peterson

Jack's NYT debut! I've had the pleasure of working with him on a few crosswords now, including his debut in the WSJ two months ago. Hard working, with a drive to improve, Jack is going places in the crossworld. He was even featured in a local TV interview!

A few months ago, he sent me a draft of this themeless, asking for my opinion. It's one of the questions I dread the most — not for my sake, but for the constructor's. Themelesses are so ultra-competitive, why would you want to get into them? I usually try to nudge newer constructors toward better using their time; brainstorming themes, where the supply/demand balance is more favorable.

I like that Jack had a goal in mind, though, and he stuck to it, no matter how much work it was going to take. I gently pointed out some of the weaker spots of his draft, a couple of slots that wanted more pizzazz (FOOT BRAKES, PRECIPICES, OSTINATOS, and EL ROPO), along with some clunkers (ABM, RIN). All in all, it was decent, but I guessed it wouldn't pass Will's bar.

A few weeks later, he sent back a revision. Some improvements! FOOTBRAKES became SNOWFLAKES. OSTINATOS became US CAPITOL — but that forced a strong entry, I WANNA SEE, to morph into the weaker BRENDA LEE. And EL ROPO had twisted into PELAGE. Not great, to say the least.

Round three: no PELAGE! And TIE BREAKER + ITS ALL MINE = fantastic! But: OTA. ERL. ESSO? Just so-so. So we prepared ourselves for round four.

Not many people last past three rounds of freedback (that's not a typo; take freedback for what it's worth).

I rolled up my sleeves and got in the trenches at this point, tearing out the SW to see if we could smooth things out while still retaining enough sizzle. Took a while, and it sacrificed ITS ALL MINE, but the overall result (what you see today) was much better than before. Jack agreed — progress!

We tried to do the same with the NE, trying to squeeze more out of the BRENDA LEE slot and replace PUT BY, but everything we tested felt weaker in comparison.

Themelesses are so competitive that my assessment of whether one will get accepted is usually "low" (read: fat chance, buster). After all this work, I upgraded my guess to "medium." It was great to hear Jack's excitement a few months later when Will took it.

– puzzle by Jack Mowat