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Crosswords are an unusual puzzle type because your experience as a solver depends so much on your life experience. Bloggers and other crossword commentators have to be careful with their "this puzzle is running on the wrong day of the week" objections. It's a normal tendency to assume that "stuff I don't know isn't common knowledge" but that's a trap.

If you grow up loving Shakespeare, DRAMATIS PERSONAE is a gimme. If you love classical music, Claudio ARRAU drops right in. This puzzle is too easy for a Monday!

But, wait a second. 51-Across asks me about some random stupid American college team? How is anyone supposed to know that stuff? Put this disaster of a puzzle on Saturday where it belongs!

Seriously, though, FIGHTING ILLINI is the kind of answer I love. I didn't know the term, but it's inferable enough. Once you parse the theme and when enough crossing letters drop into place, it seems correct. It may well have been a gimme for you. That's how this game goes.

– puzzle by Chuck Deodene

Editors work mostly in the background, so we rarely know for sure what their contributions are. They select which submitted puzzles get published (the vast majority don't), they choose the day to run the puzzle on, they vet every clue.

Whether puzzle brilliance comes mostly from constructors or from the editor himself, at least we know that the editor has approved of the various decisions, and the decision today of how to reveal the theme is brilliant. Maybe.

"Megacorporation? [1996, 1970]" turns out to be BIG COMPANY. That's likely to be the first theme answer you uncover, but whatever does it mean? A quick scan shows there's no classic "revealer clue." There are lots of big companies and some probably have something to do with the listed years, but, uh, what?

If you love musicals, you'll get about halfway through the grid before the penny drops. Each theme answer is a combination of two one-word musicals, and the numbers are the years of their respective Broadway debuts. That revelation sneaks up on you and, if the light goes on, it's very satisfying. It's also a great nudge that the unnumbered GUIDE DOG and MAKE GOOD are not thematic.

But, if you're not a theater geek and you never make the connection, the puzzle won't be satisfying, and that's the crucial editorial choice. How do you balance a satisfying aha moment for drama nerds against the certainty that some solvers will be confused? Today, Mr. Shortz decided on the brave route. There will be letters.

Before I leave BIG COMPANY, those are both worthy of comment. Maltby & Shire's BIG was based on a hit film, but the play was a BIG BUST. Ah, but there's life after Broadway, and touring companies and regional theaters have turned it into a favorite.

COMPANY debuted to mixed reviews, but time has shown it to be one of the most popular and significant musicals, even plays, in American theater. Broadway tunesmiths had tended toward escapism, but Stephen Sondheim's musical (book by George Furth) took a gritty look at real people with real problems in real relationships. Once you open that Pandora's box, it's impossible to go back. I've seen at least a half-dozen different productions of this musical; all different, all revealing, all engrossing. A new gender-reversed production starring Patti LuPone recently opened. And now "Barcelona" is stuck in my head.

– puzzle by Paul Coulter

Cassiopeia is one of the easiest constellations to spot if you live in the northern hemisphere, and it's visible year round. Look for the bright stars near Polaris forming a big W. It will immediately evoke an image of a beautiful Ethiopian queen chained to a throne. Or, at least it did to ancient Greeks. The fate of Cassiopeia's daughter was even harsher. Andromeda was tied naked to a sea-side rock, to be devoured by a sea monster. Good times, back then.

Yes, Jeff does obsess over grid work. That's what you want from a constructor. I appreciate outstanding word-crossing skill too but, he's right that, for early-week puzzles, a delightful theme will atone for a few duds in execution. This is a near-perfect theme, combining astronomy and mythology. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out 21 years ago, but Greek myths are even older. Mark my words, they will withstand the test of time.

Did THE NEREIDS feel like a cheat to you? The definite article was necessary for grid symmetry, but it made it harder to suss out the word.

GUS Van Sant mostly directed smaller films like My Own Private Idaho, but his Good Will Hunting was a hit. MARX, sadly, gets a non-Groucho clue. "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" is, indeed, from EVITA. Do those lyrics make any sense to you? Listen carefully the next time you hear that song and ask yourself what, if anything, they might mean.

– puzzle by Jennifer Nutt

We've been conditioned to expect something radical on Thursday — words turning corners or going backward or busting out of the grid or, well, anything goes. So, we approach Thursdays with a combination of excitement and trepidation, knowing that things are unlikely to be as they appear.

"It might pop out of a kids' mouth" turns out to be BUBBLE GUM. No obvious wordplay there, so our antennae go up. Something must be wrong, but let's go on. JUDAS PRIEST and GAS PIPES have straightforward clues too. Wow, this is going to be sneaky. "Swinger's club" is cute, but BASEBALL BAT comes to mind easily. Yikes, what are we missing?

The revealer, pointing to the ends of the other theme answers is SODA MIXER. Looking back, well, we have anagrams of SPRITE, PEPSI, COKE, and TAB. After the build-up (self-imposed, but not unreasonable) we have simple soft drink anagrams.

The only one left is UGM or GMU or, well, it must be MUG. Is there a MUG soda too? Perhaps it's a regional thing. A quick search pulls up MUG root beer which, while not a brand I've encountered, is legitimate.

After whining earlier this week that complaining about the day of week that the puzzle runs on is dangerous, this doesn't feel like a Thursday theme. In the rest of the grid, there are some odd facts to uncover, but little wordplay. So, I don't know; it's a well-constructed puzzle. I was fooled because I wasn't fooled. That's a meta crossword for you.

Feel free to publicly embarrass me if I'm missing something here.

– puzzle by Joon Pahk

I enjoyed this crossword too.

The best clues are poetic gems, and this puzzle has plenty. Two clues cleverly separate normally-combined compound words. "King maker" (you expect to see kingmaker) and "Honey bunch", (not honeybunch.) Those innocuous extra spaces point to SERTA and WORKER BEES. Brilliant.

"Protector of the heart" is a romantic clue for RIBCAGE; the image here was hand drawn by da Vinci. AND WE'RE OFF might be my favorite 1-Across ever. "Crux of 'The Crucible'" is fun.

"One who's got game ... but shouldn't" for POACHER is outstanding. That clue alone makes this puzzle memorable.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

I love reading the comments from new constructors. Old pros might become a little jaded, but I'm sure they all remember their own debuts. It's a special thrill to get your first crossword published.

Despite what some insist, IRONICAL isn't wrong; it's just old-fashioned. Modern writers prefer IRONIC, but crosswords aren't limited to what's currently in vogue.

Saturday is Peak-Difficulty Day and, under Will Shortz, that tends to mean hard clues rather than hard words. There are plenty of ways to clue HEARTS AND MINDS, but to make it Saturday hard, we get a reference to a four-decade-old documentary. That sounds unfair, but even if you haven't seen that film recently, and you haven't, it's the kind of phrase that, given enough letters, makes enough sense to guess. This is how Saturday works. KNEECAP is a simple enough word, but you have to go back to your med school days to remember "sesamoid bone." Or more likely, you ran across that somewhere, and it's still stuck in some corner of your brain.

"Woman's name that rhymes with a part of the world" is a tough clue because the various common parts of the world that rhyme with ERICA have different syllable counts, making the rhyme less obvious. Still, it's fair.

I often enjoy phrase answers like LABOR INTENSIVE and SLICED AND DICED. "Now you're talking!" is a perfect clue for THAT'S THE SPIRIT.

Did "Regurgitate, as a baby would" make you throw up in your mouth a little? I'm less squeamish than some solvers; it's hard to offend me, and particularly hard in a game. We do get email, though, from indignant solvers who disapprove of certain clues or answers, and I'm sure NYT receives far more than we do.

I like "What isn't legal for copying" for LTR, and I love "R.E.M. show?" for DREAM.

– puzzle by Lewis Dean Hyatt

RATSO is a surprisingly common crossword answer; this is its 53rd appearance in the Times. Surprising both because Midnight Cowboy came out nearly 50 years ago, and because there's no way to clue the word without reference to that film.

"City from which the U.S. moved its embassy in 2018" is a modern clue, and one seemingly designed to either raise hackles or cause you to lovingly stroke your red MAGA cap. Is it ok to stoke political outrage in a crossword? Sure, why not? I love NOBAMA too, not because it echoes my sentiments, but because it's a lively clue tailor-made to evoke a reaction.

Baseball lingo clues carry a regionalism danger. Your local broadcaster may refer to a "singleton," but it's tough to know if that's universal language or just how your play caller talks. Still, easy enough to figure out given a few letters.

The RATE clue is a little geeky, which I like. NASAL CAVITY is a snotty answer. I didn't know EPIZOA. "Little protestation" is a terrific clue for PEEP. The 2007 film "LARS and the Real Girl" is delightful. Lars's companion Bianca, not exactly a real girl, is a sex doll. No, really, it's more charming than it sounds.

That wraps up another Jeff and Jim Cross Words week. If we get enough feedback, we might do this once a month or so.

– puzzle by Tom McCoy

Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously coined the phrase "suspension of disbelief." You can't enjoy fiction without it. You can't enjoy any art without it. Art and Nature are two different things; non-overlapping magisteria. A painting of a pipe is not a pipe.

To me, a triple stack of PANCAKEs on a PLATE with a PAT of butter on top and syrup dripping down the sides all within a 15x15 block of black-and-white squares full of fun words is close to miraculous.

Crossword commentary decrying the lack of accuracy in grid images confounds me. Of course, this breakfast isn't exactly what you find at IHOP. Jeff complained last September that the chemical bonds represented in this puzzle didn't show the correct angles, and that last year's Space Needle didn't have quite the right dimensions. Of course not. Use your imagination. It's fun!

At a software company I used to work for, I got to know some of the artists who created icons. It's a crazy, specialized skill to make something so small represent something recognizable, but they had a couple of advantages over constructors — even at the smallest size of 32x32 pixels, that's four and a half times the number of squares available in today's puzzle, and they got to take advantage of subtle color tricks to fool the eye into seeing detail and dimensionality that wasn't really there. Crossword art is necessarily more primitive.

Finally, and this might seem unfair, I seem to recall a Christmas puzzle last year by Mary Lou Guizzo and her collaborator. Who was that again? Oh, right, it was Jeff. Call me crazy, but I've never encountered a reindeer that looked exactly like this.

Jeff and I love to argue crosswords. Now and then, one of us even manages to change the other's mind. It's fun either way.

– puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Tony Orbach