Thumbnails

★ My friend Frewin and I recently won our 16-team fantasy basketball season. That's a threepeat of either finishing first in the regular season or winning the playoffs ... without watching more than five minutes of NBA games for the past three years.

That may seem strange, but what I love about fantasy basketball is much more the fantasy than the basketball. Formulating a strategy to win at least five out of nine categories every week (points, assists, rebounds, etc.), figuring out player salaries, roster construction, number crunching, Monte Carlo analysis — it's a data miner's dream.

If any future Seattle Sonics execs are reading, I happen to know a quant jock who would work for free …

That analytical technician in me appreciated Peter's offering. BRACKETOLOGY is such an entertaining term, perfectly describing the statisticians attempting to optimize their March Madness brackets. An entire branch of math is devoted to predicting what upsets might happen. Well, "math" is a strong word for it, but some have shown elements of success.

And the grid technician in me admired the set of constraints — FINAL placed at 4-Down, ELITE at 8-Down, and SWEET at 16-Across. That is sweet indeed, as it's so difficult to get specific entries at specific locations. Not only that, though! Intersecting BRACKETOLOGY with FINAL and ELITE is elite technical wizardry.

The non-basketball watcher and wordplay-seeking solver in me was plus/minus on the overall theme, but this technical feat — a Nikola Jokic-like triple-double with defensive stats, zero turnovers, and a 50/70/95 percentage shooting line — made this STEM-head sit up and want to figure out how Peter did it.

– puzzle by Peter Gordon

★ You had me at OH HELL.

Sometimes you can tell right away when a themeless is going to vibrate at your resonant frequency. Crossing HELL with HORCRUX feels like one of the Unforgiveable Curses, but in a Gryffindor way. I bet COOLIO would be cool with being thrown into the mix. Round it out with a TURING test, and I'll declare that I'm not a robot!

That made more sense in my head.

Huge middles in themelesses are the jumbo-size candy bars in my Halloween bag. It's so tough to work with a stairstacked set of five answers, and DUNK TANKS / XRAY TECHS are so ENDEARING. Tom GOT INTO IT! BLOCKCHAINS and CHINESE TEAS are not at all WHAT A DOWNER-worthy.

Smart layout, too. Note that once you figure out your middle (easier said than done, of course), you have a ton of flexibility in filling each of the four corners, mostly independently. This was so useful the first time I played with this type of themeless grid.

Take the lower left corner, for example. The 49-Across pattern is flexible enough to accommodate HANG ON A SEC, HOLD ON A SEC, HAN DYNASTY, VIDEO NASTY, so you can try each one in turn. Given that there are only two long slots and a handful of mid-lengthers, it's so important to make all of them count — brilliant multi-worders like MAN CAVES, ALOHA OE, and even a Z in IONIZER is an excellent result.

What with interesting clues like ACROBAT linked to the Greek for "walking on tiptoe," and ALOHA OE meaning "farewell to thee," GO WHOLE HOG is right. I don't know what kind of unicorn blood Tom is drinking, but I want some.

– puzzle by Tom Pepper

★ It's difficult to stand out as a themeless grid technician. So many people are making them, and so few 72- or 70-word grids are distinguishable from others. For any random themeless, you could give me twenty guesses, and I might not get the first letter of the person's first name.

Ryan is different. You ask me to name the five best low-word-count themeless grid builders, he's easily in there. Maybe top three.

Maybe top one.

Another beautiful football-shaped center adds to his distinguished portfolio. Not just five long Acrosses in this gigantic middle — seven (!) of them.

And that's not all. Sectioning off the middle would make it much more tractable. Many top-notch constructors have resorted to this. Ryan not only kept everything wide open, but he wove six (!) long Downs through — including sparklers like JET SETTERS and SOLO ARTIST! All of that with amazing smoothness. Not even a hint of an ERROR MESSAGE.

Incredible cluing, too, both in quality and quantity. [Go to the next line] made me think of how many times I've switched checkout lines, only to realize the ERROR MESSAGE flashing in my head. If only line management were as easy as PRESSing ENTER on my keyboard.

[One all over the board] cleverly sums everything up today. Anyone would be lucky to find themselves with Ryan as a TEACHER.

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

★ Such a fresh vibe! CONTENT CREATOR speaks to my YouTube obsession, including a fantasy basketball analyst who happens to be a SNEAKERHEAD. I'm not into shoes, but watching Josh's excitement about his latest purchases is fascinating.

Although I stick to black coffee, the idea of a MATCHA LATTE is tempting. Aside from my dislike of matcha's bitterness. And the entire lactose intolerance thing.

NO MAKE UP MAKE UP is not something my daughter believes in. More like NO ... MAKE UP! MAKE UP!!!

Fantastic clue for TACO BAR, riffing on a Shell filling station — beautiful "hidden capital" trick to disguise the lower-case "s" of a taco shell. The clue is not entirely accurate, given that on our last taco night, the kids filled their taco shells with nothing, then refused the eat the shell. Talk about intolerance.

We've seen BRAS in crosswords hundreds of times, and many times the entry has gotten a clever clue. I've never been so pleasantly mystified, [Wireless support providers] pointing me directly at CenturyLink holding me hostage. The last time we had an outage, CenturyLink was more like [Wireless support witholders].

My primary goal as a crossword solver is to complete every box correctly. I won't always be familiar with every entry, but this is the kind of freshness that makes being forced to learn something new worth it. An entry like NO MAKE UP MAKE UP is so self-explanatory!

– puzzle by Margaret Seikel and Sophia Maymudes

★ What the L?!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

What a neat mixing of crossword genres! The Ls made of black squares pop out as grid art, five answers turn corners, and the grid art letters are inserted into those five answers. Some of the most creative concepts result from hybridizing genres, and this is a wonderful example.

In case you haven't picked out the five themers yet:

• NAI(L)EDIT
• FOODCO(L)ORING
• GRAMMARPO(L)ICE
• POTDEA(L)ERS
• NUC(L)EAR

Note how every one of the final chunks is a valid crossword answer. Neat way to further obfuscate the trick.

Gridding around turning puzzles is hard. Gridding around five sets of nesting, turning themers is not for the faint of heart. Kevin didn't quite get to NAILED IT, what with a few rocky TWOD (2-D) and AVIEW regions, but it's well done given the extreme constraints.

This is a rare case where I enjoyed the theme enough that I would have loved it expanded into a Sunday 21x21. That might have allowed symmetry along a diagonal axis, too — if the legs of each L were equal length. I loved Liz's bold Guggenheim swirl, but today's almost-but-not-quite symmetry left me with in an uncanny valley.

Even with that hitch though, I loved how Kevin successfully swirled together so many different established concepts to make something different. Whatever the kids say that means the opposite of TAKE THE L, that's what I say for Kevin today.

– puzzle by Kevin Patterson

★ Now, this is the type of bait-and-switch I like! Alex baited me in with [Engagement ring], which had to be … BOUT? What's that aBOUT? And [Firm fruit] was getting at something like PEAR or PLUM. Not a plum guess from Jeff! Such a brilliant a-ha when I figured out the ol' switcheroo, [Ring engagement] cluing a boxing BOUT, and a [Fruit firm] the DOLE company.

And Alex was hardly sparing as he DOLEd these out. To make sure you grasp all the brilliance, here's the list with the clues REVERSEd:

• Fruit firm = DOLE
• Musician Young = NEIL
• Olympus mount = TRIPOD (Olympus, the camera company)
• Good look = SCAN
• Home call = BATTER UP
• Short cuts = BOBS (this one's not as strong, since [Cuts short] could plausibly clue BOBS too)
• Buffalo water = Lake ERIE, love that change of capitalization!)
• Ring engagement = BOUT
• Top crew = ATEAM
• Bank job = HEIST
• Not does = BUCKS, as in deer that aren't does! Brilliant shift in the meaning of "does."
• Thinking group = MENSA
• Storybook giant = OGRE
• Part IV = TUBE. Did you catch the IV = 4 to IV = intravenous switch? My favorite of the bunch.
• Asian pan = WOK
• Hard rock = ORE

The wordplay brilliance in the GOBI / FLAN clues almost equaled that of the themers. I missed the "dessert" vs. "desert" difference at first. Amazing spin on a "clue echo."

So many Thursdays riff off of established ideas, way too many constructors defaulting to rebuses, turning themers, blank spaces, etc. Not today. Alex's turnabout was more than fair play, and it would have won him the POW! on almost every week this year so far.

– puzzle by Alex Rosen

★ So much of a themeless solving experience is personal. I used to have ELKHOUNDS in my life and remember them with great fondness. I'm an ORGAN DONOR who used to TA statistics in my MBA program, trying to get execs to the point where a BELL CURVE would ring a bell. Before that, this mechanical engineer would tell clients who demanded the impossible that all we had to do was make the parts out of UNOBTANIUM.

NOTEWORTHY entries all around, Barbara hitting my sweet spots everywhere I looked.

And what a clean grid — just a bit of INTL LYTE. Such a well-made 70-word themeless!

A few clues could have used a Friday tune-up. Cyclists know that BIKE RIDES can be measured in centuries — 100 mile units — but that's deep, specialized lingo. Whether or not you know what "normal distribution" means, there's no a-ha, simply a dictionary definition to get to BELL CURVE.

Not depending on such specialized knowledge made [Finishing-line cry?] hit the target, making me yell BINGO! as if I'd finished that line on my bingo card.

Given how many entries evoked memories of great times in my life, IF I WERE YOU, I wouldn't give a second thought to why Barbara picked up her third POW!

– puzzle by Barbara Lin

★ Brilliant fanfare for the common solver today, newbs treated to trumpeting wordplay. I've seen plenty of "disguised instruments" themes before, but nothing as clever as this. I can only imagine the horrible sounds generated by trying to blow into a TAPE RECORDER!

Amazing to find three objects that work so perfectly for this theme. I scoured my memories, flipping through 20 years of orchestras and band experience to find a single other wind instrument that would work. There are some non-wind instruments, like BELL or SNARE, but percussion instruments aren't blown.

Such great use of mirror symmetry, too — it's perfect for these situations when you can't pair your themers in length, but they're either all odd or even-lettered. Lengths of 12, 8, 14, 10? No problem!

Well, not exactly. Mirror symmetry does present different problems than regular symmetry. The trickiest part is often figuring out which rows your themers should inhabit. Note that TAPE RECORDER, SHOEHORN, and DON'T BLOW IT all force black square placements on their sides. Those black squares all have to play nicely together.

You need DON'T BLOW IT as the revealer in row 12, so that restricts your flexibility even further. Stacking TAPE RECORDER and SHOEHORN might seem showy, but with these lengths, stacking two themers is almost a requirement.

Additionally, mirror symmetry sometimes forces long Down bonuses instead of making them optional. Trying to break LOCAL DIVE at the second L causes a cascade of black square problems. Fantastic to end up with a grid that's both smooth and sparkly — LOCAL DIVE is so colorful.

Adrian far from blew it today, giving us a symphony of harmonious delights.

– puzzle by Adrian Johnson

★ IT'S MY TREAT is right, because this is an amazing debut puzzle.

It all starts with a clever theme that goes one step beyond the "what connects these seemingly disparate entries" genre. PICK UP has enough meanings that it's not hard to come up with phrases that get at different ones. Elevating that to PICK-UP LINEs — with each themer being an in-the-language, spoken phrase — gives this concept pedal-to-the-medal pickup.

That would have been enough to get some POW! buzz, but consider the technical level of difficulty. 11s are easy to work with — you simply place them in rows 3 and 13. A triplet of awkward-length themers in the center is approaching triple double-levels of intensity. Given that they all force black square placements, you almost have to squish them together in rows 6, 8, and 10. And Lindsay stuck the landing, using strategic black square placement to separate enough between themers to fill well.

The upper left and lower right corners are so dangerous because you have to work through three themers. I imagine much iteration was involved to arrive at the clean results, even throwing in THE GOAT and HEY NOW to heighten the artistic score.

Some constructors would be so exhausted after that routine, that the other corners would be an afterthought. I say domo arigato to Lindsay — MR ROBOTO makes me a LOYAL FAN of hers.

I'm frond of the FROND joke, too. Great way to inject freshness into the clues.

Gold medal debut.

– puzzle by Lindsay McBride

★ This kind of themeless typically locks all the long answers together, creating severe inflexibility. David did something brilliant: the black squares between MASCARA / OFFSETS and SEVILLE / NAPSTER make all the difference in the world, allowing much more flexibility in filling the sides of the puzzle.

Themelesses featuring a slew of long entries live and die with those long entries. All six of David's are dynamite, and the fact that they're all ripe for clever cluing elevates them even further. I can't decide whether I enjoyed WHATCHAMACALLIT more or the head-scratching [Word when you can't find the word]. (Mine usually is "consarnit.")

I fell in love with [Dated TV star?] for THE BACHELORETTE. Consarnit, I imagine there were some SLEEPLESS NIGHTS coming up with such a devious clue! Probably some on THE BACHELORETTE, too, but for different reasons …

I was also impressed by the cluing for the short entries, helping them pop. [Places with multiple outlets] so innocently drew me to electrical outlets, so I put in WALLS instead of MALLS. I'd already been stymied by WHATCHAMACALLIT words, and [Words to remember, for short] continued to confound. That's VOCAB lists to remember!

Any themeless of this audacious style will require a bit of Elmer's to hold the long stuff together. AGS is awkward, LAH a partial, and NEC isn't as huge here as in Japan. All minor, thankfully. The only one that held me up was KORS, last used in the NYT way back in 1972, as [Hebrew measures]. Thankfully Michael KORS came along!

Sizzling long entries and snappy cluing in an innovative design? I would never have guessed that this was someone's second puzzle.

– puzzle by David Karp

★ There's a reason Will Shortz listed Joanne Sullivan's LAND FORMS puzzle as one of his favorites in an old collection. Each shape looks exactly like you might imagine, and there's so much variety. Will might consider today's puzzle if he assembled a sequel to that 2011 book. The astronomer in me stared into the night sky of today's grid for hours.

I especially loved ASTEROID in its spotted pattern. Took me a minute to figure out why that was appropriate, but once I remembered their porosity, it made all the sense in the universe.

ASTEROID was doubly impressive, given how hard it can be to fill around fixed circles in diagonal patterns. Working with eight of them in a checkerboard is like trying to dodge a doomsday meteor strike. Smart to isolate this into a corner, where you can shift the entire thing to the left or downward without having it affect the rest of the grid. Such a smooth result, with an OREO THIN treat to boot.

COMET on the opposite side is also tough to grid around, but EPEES, ERAT, NEMEA isn't worthy of an ARG! shout. It's all worth the price of BIG DUMMY, for this big dummy, at least.

I would have loved a spiral GALAXY instead of a circular one. That's too much to ask out of six letters, but maybe two arms out of SPIRAL and GALAXY? Alternatively, an ellipse could have been more evocative.

Puzzles that strike me with their visual awe come around roughly as frequently as Halley's COMET. Stellar debut!

– puzzle by Laura Breiman and Tom Bachant

★ There are so many "entries that need some chunk removed to make sense of their clues" themes these days. To attract any attention, you have to do something different. Claire and Rachel did just that, neatly pairing up themers within rows and using LATE SHIFT. Row 3 has such a strong example: LATERALLY and TEMPS have to be interpreted as LATERALLY and TEMP(LATE)S. See how the LATE shifted from left to right?

There are many possibilities for this theme — you can use our Replacement Finder to see others — but Claire and Rachel picked great examples:

CIRCU(LATE)S <- EMULATES

COLLATED -> CLEAN S(LATE)

TRANS(LATE) <- VENTILATE

It was difficult to see some of these shifts, since LATE moved from any part of the first word to any part within the second. As much as I love trickiness on Thursdays, having some like this would be ideal:

TRANS(LATE) <- LATERALLY

Note how much easier it is to see that LATE shift, when it's simply jumping over one block, and not a random number of letters.

Gridding around five full rows is much harder than gridding around five long themers. That may be counterintuitive, but being forced into a couple of black square placements right off the bat takes away so much flexibility. Great use of diagonal slashes in the middle of the grid to separate the themers as much as possible. A bit of GOL is inevitable, but having the World Cup so recently behind us helps save that entry.

Ticky-tacky complaints aside, I loved this solving experience. I felt so smug thinking that I had it figured out at LATERALLY to RALLY, only to be slapped upside the head by TEMPS not making sense. Such a wonderful way to interpret LATE SHIFT for Thursday trickery.

– puzzle by Claire Rimkus and Rachel Fabi

★ Plays on "novel" have been done so many times in crosswords — both in titles and grid entries — that I was predisposed to ennui. HOME PAGES referring to "Little House on the Prairie" melted some ice, especially since reading The Long Winter to my kids was chillingly captivating. However, it still felt like the rest of the puzzle would be more of the same.

Good thing so many themers were so NOVEL! The sheer breath and range of terms to describe books captivated the writer in me. I probably could have come up with WRITING, VOLUME, STORY, BOOK, but there's such creativity in employing SENTENCES, PRINT, and TITLE. John is Roget in action, and then some.

I was surprised by how many puns I couldn't immediately get. Already knowing the gist of the concept, I worried that the puzzle would fall flatly into place. But "Crime and Punishment" as PRISON SENTENCES? "The Help" as a WORKING TITLE? Yes!

And the coup de grace: "If Beale Street Could Talk" works doubly as an ADDRESS BOOK — once because it refers to the Beale Street address, and once more when you think of a speech as an orator's address. That is some amazing double-talk.

If I hadn't read Will Shortz's note, I would have guessed that this 140-word grid was made by a veteran constructor. There's an average number of short, gloopy entries, but things like ASSN ESE PSAS are minor. Although this is John's debut, it's no surprise that he's worked several years at his craft.

Sometimes I put down a book within the first few pages, convinced that it's not for me. I'm so glad that I forced myself to press on today, because John imbued his work with as much subtext as The Hunt for Red October.

– puzzle by John Martz

★ Visually stunning layout, sort of like a cross between a windmill and a hedge maze. All of the black square diagonals produce a mesmerizing sense of movement and grid flow.

Ryan is perhaps the most skilled themeless constructor, when it comes to gigantic, jaw-dropping open spaces. Some of his grid middles are nothing short of miraculous — I tried filling this grid pattern and got something that wasn't even half as clean or colorful as his beautiful WINTER SCENE. Today's center isn't as impossible-feeling, but it's still so daunting that I doubt I'd even try my hand at it.

And look at the results! I've listened to DESPACITO a hundred times since I found out about it, and I'll probably go another hundred. BET AWARDS next to FEMINISTS, with self-descriptive PANTS ROLE and a WISECRACK going through them. CHRIS PAUL, the "Point God," helped me and my friend win our fantasy basketball league last year, so he's even more of a god to me than ever. There's so much SPICINESS in every bite.

I didn't know MEMESTOCK, and it made me feel almost as out of it as DANK MEMES did. At least this time it was more self-explanatory.

I worried that so many five-letter entries in the thinner passageways would lead to some ho-hum solving, but some Xs in TAXES TAXIS SIXES helped. Heck, even KLAUS GRITS GAIUS CRASS — there's a story in there, and I want to read it.

A couple of long slots were taken up by neutral entries like REST STOPS, PENETRATE, DELISTED. Great clue for DELISTED, though. I was so sure that [Removed from an exchange] had to do with an email or text exchange — neat exchange away from a stock exchange.

I'm slowly defrosting to the idea of Sunday themelesses. Part of me still feels that they're a cop-out; that the cash-flush NYT Games is going to sit back rather than spur constructors to come up with better 21x21 themes. If Sunday themelesses are a permanent part of the rotation, tapping specialized constructors who can deliver this kind of amazing grid is the way to do it.

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

★ 1-Across sets the tone for a solving experience, and Sid aced it today. The question mark on [Eye exam you need to pass?] caused me to stop and think, and I got such a blissful a-ha moment when I pieced together IRIS SCAN. Even Gandalf would have let the Balrog pass for that.

The northwest corner shined even further with [Where making a hasty exit is encouraged]. The clue made this ESCAPE ROOM enthusiast reminisce to the last one Jill and I did, where we not only exited with plenty of time but showed the operator a hidden clue that he wasn't aware of. (He didn't appreciate it.)

In Seattle, LATTE ART is on par with traditional art, and [Mug shot subject?] is something even Ansel Adams would give a shot.

Needless to say, I FELL IN LOVE with such playful humor. No hang-ups at all for clues like [Evidence of one's hang-ups?].

I'm curious to see how many Gen Alphas are going to be like, WTF is a DIAL TONE?

I appreciated that some of the wordplay was devious — what I expect on a Saturday. [Passage in a cemetery] evokes so many catacomb images. EPITAPH gets the last word!

Technically excellent gridwork, too. Although the four huge pyramids of black squares make gridding much easier, any 64-worder is tough. I like that Sid traded off some less-interesting entries like FELDSPAR and REST AREA for squeaky cleanliness.

Neat to get a touch like [Bhikku's teacher], too. I had no idea what Bhikku meant, but LAMA is certainly a familiar word. Great way to inject some of Sid's personality and background without affecting my ability to solve the puzzle.

The one ding was that everything fell much more easily that I expect out of a Saturday challenge. I flew through, compared to yesterday's brain-buster. Switching the two would have made both better, as so much of life is about expectations.

– puzzle by Sid Sivakumar

★ Such JOLLITY today! I love playful themelesses, and Kate ventures into Weintraubian territory, with smile-worthy NO TAKEBACKS, COULD IT BE?, SWITCHEROO, OVER THE TOP. Of course it would GET THE NOD for my POW!

The sheer pleasure didn't end with the entries. My daughter took a historic stand on the way to preschool a few years back, refusing to budge while it snowed on her and my wife. Both of them got bent out of shape — just like the PIPE CLEANERS that somehow spawn endlessly from my daughter's craft boxes.

And [Sound investment] is so innocent. Unlike when my daughter washed the mp3 player I bought for her, after I told her many times about water and electronics not mixing.

Tough love is a sound investment, but it doesn't fix STEREOs.

Coming close to diagonally splitting the grid in half is not ideal. With only two entries connecting the left and right sides — HOLE PUNCH and COULD IT BE — there's a huge danger of wrecking the feng shui of the solving flow. It's no fun to be trapped in one half, unable to break into the other.

However, this layout granted Kate a huge construction advantage: being able to optimize the grid one half at a time. For example, if you land on a great fill for the left side, you can work the right side with HOLE ____ and COULD ___ allowing for alternate starting options: HOLE IN ONE, HOLE CARDS, COULD HAVE, etc.

It's not a perfect 72-worder, especially since it features only 12 long (8+ letter) entries, but the ones Kate incorporated were an A-TEAM of whimsical phrases.

– puzzle by Kate Hawkins

★ HAD A BLAST is right! This is my favorite type of themeless crossword, focusing on pure fun, loaded with colorful, accessible long entries, and bulging with highly-toned wordplay clues that pop.

Most every themeless these days is chock full of excellent long phrases — they all have to be, considering the sky-high bar raised by pandemic-bored constructors — but so few turn the wordplay knob to eleven. Today, I ticked off at least eleven clues that delighted.

I usually notice the ones that elevate an already great entry even higher — repurposing "funny bones" to describe LOADED DICE is criminally awesome — but I appreciate wordplay clues for short, ho-hum entries even more. Some speed-solvers will gloss over SCUM, barely reading the clue. That would be a shame since I got fooled so badly by [Film about fish tanks?]. So much for my brilliant guess of NEMO!

There isn't any one amazing grid entry that people will be tweeting about (assuming that Elon Musk hasn't destroyed Twitter by this morning), but I'll take fourteen above-average long entries any day. When NESPRESSO occupies your least interesting 8+ letter slot, I gotta say I GOT NOTHIN' in terms of critique.

I also appreciated that Simon didn't concentrate all his long slots in the four corners. Many 72-word themelesses squish three long entries into each of the four corners, making filling easier since you can work on them independently. I love that Simon branched out, with six long words reaching into the middle. I got a sense of pizazz at every step along the way, not just in the four corners.

Hardly any questionable short entries at all, too. Maybe ADZ is a bit LAZY since adze is listed first in many dictionaries, and IROCS aren't for everyone.

Incredibly minor nits to pick, though, in a magnificent example of how to pull off a standout 72-word themeless.

– puzzle by Simon Marotte

★ There's no secret that I've been giving NYT Sunday puzzles the STINKEYE over the past five years, not so gently trying to encourage the editorial team to step up their game in finding better ways to attract fresher, more creative ideas. At first glance, today's theme — seemingly yet another "first words are synonyms" — hardly justified the large Sunday canvas, and I was ready to launch into the usual diatribe. To my surprise, I dug, fancied, went for, and even loved the concept!

At a basic level, it's impressive that Joe managed to incorporate almost all the possible "like" synonyms that are disguisable. The only other one I could think of was TAKE TO (the slopes or the cleaners).

Digging deeper, the meaning changes are so profound. GET OFF ON as in "start" vs. as in "like" is stark. Same goes for DIG, especially when you're talking about DIGging your OWN GRAVE. That is one hilariously curious obsession.

And the theme clues! "Dextropodophiles" broke the record for how long I've ever stared at a word. Then "Autotumulophiles" broke it again. Both are words I can parse and make sense of by etymology, and what a hilarious moment for each when I connected them to RIGHT FOOT and OWN GRAVE.

Sunday puzzles take so long to do that it's critical for constructors to offer something refreshing, engaging, and ideally providing multiple levels of solving pleasure. Appropriate that Joe featured so much LOVE, PRIZE, FANCY, GET OFF ON, DIG, GO FOR LIKE, as these all fit my admiration for his puzzle.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney

★ The hilarity in [What might prompt a run for congress?] is worth a POW! all by itself. There wouldn't be such a huge divide if there was more LIBIDO in Congress!

I miss the days when Sam used to live close by. Always so warm and funny, Sam has such a neat variety of interests. Inspired by his baking birthday cakes for his nieces and nephews, I bake my kids' birthday cakes. For some, I've declared I NAILED IT, and some are worthy of Nailed It! Frankenfood is right.

I enjoyed the dual revealers, both FRANKENFOOD and BUMPER CROPS hinting at the interplay between pairs of foods. Each one uses a different element of wordplay, too. BUMPER CROPS was my favorite, since in an alternate universe, I spend all my time hustling in pool halls. I enjoyed seeing the foods bump into each other and carom off.

FRANKENFOOD was less direct since it needed the word "crossings" in the clue to show relevance, but forming those six crosses was still cool.

One ding that may make you say I'm a ding-a-ling: it's easy to find these sorts of crossing food possibilities since there are so many foods to choose from. Additionally, BEET and CORN are easy to incorporate, not nearly as impressive as SQUASH. I'd MOVE MOUNTAINS to feature some longer ones like PLANTAIN.

It's usually best to avoid big ol' honking corners — few enjoy working hard only to uncover SMUGGER DYAD EDESSA, and SNERT is no comics ETOILE these days. I'd have been fine losing GIFT HORSE, breaking it at the H, thus making the SW and NE much more tractable.

Sunday 21x21 puzzles are so time-consuming that you have to work to keep solvers engaged. That doesn't have to be through an amazing theme, since great bonus fill or a-ha-inducing clues can also achieve that goal. Today's puzzle is a great example of sheer quantity of cluing wordplay making for so much fun — NFL TEAM as a "hiking group" is worthy of a touchdown dance.

Great puzzle for casual Sunday solvers.

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson

★ Regular readers might be surprised that I picked today's as the POW! Not only is this rebus-weary solver wary of the genre, but having one on a Wednesday, when no one expects it?

That's NEITHER HERE NOR THERE. I had so much fun solving this one that I declare WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER.

I found today's solve so entertaining that I spent an hour figuring out why:

• Great starter rebus. Right from the get-go, something was up. It's easy to pick out the common letters E and R, so along with the straightforward theme clues, things like ROGER FEDERER came easily.
• Snazzy phrases. I recently got hooked onto a YouTube embiggenator show, after being rapt at the creation of the world's largest FERRERO ROCHER. Maybe nauseating, but also drool-worthy.
• Solid rebus rationale. BOX ER = shove ER into a box. Yup.
• OH HELL YEAH, those bonuses!
• Themeless-level wordplay in the clues. This bball superfan loved describing a LAY-UP as an "underhanded move."

I have reservations about any sort of rebus on a Wednesday. I hear a lot of grumbling from rebus haters who say that what they like about crosswords is the simplicity of putting a single letter in a box, and I sympathize. However, rules getting broken is the price of creativity, and that's something to which any art form ought to aspire.

I'm not wild about featuring boxing, given the severity of the head injuries and even deaths. That said though, there was so much to enjoy here that it made it easy to throw in the towel of my hesitations. Knockout POW! debut.

– puzzle by Ethan Zou and Tomas Spiers

★ Leveling up from Wednesday to Thursday NYT crosswords can feel insurmountable. The only rule for Thursdays is that there are no rules. So many people are flummoxed by Schrödinger dualities, letters impossible to write in a black square, or entries that literally require outside the box thinking ... they dejectedly throw in the towel.

Today's puzzle is an excellent gateway into the wonderful Wonderland down the rabbit hole. Some Wednesday solvers have at least heard of rebuses before, and Barbara gently nudges folks into the uncharted, but conquerable territory.

[Eat, quaintly] — wisely italicized for emphasis — can't be BREA(KD). It has to be BREA(K) BREA(D), and the concept's dam breaks open. Some neat finds in (P)OWER (M)OWER and (G)O TOE (T)O TOE.

Although DO(N)'T DO (I)T is short, I admired how non-obvious it was, much harder to suss out that something like (H)OCUS (P)OCUS or K(I)NG K(O)NG.

I also appreciated that Barbara made me curious to see what other possibilities existed. Jim's approach below is great for non-coders. With twenty lines of Python coding, I captured a more complete set, including some neat ones like COMME C(I), COMME C(A), TOMA(Y)TO TOMA(H)TO, SPL(I)SH SPL(A)SH, along with several others that were already featured in Matt's concept. Taking it one step further, I found another set that were in line with Patrick Berry's amped-up execution.

Given that there are hundreds of possibilities, it would have been nice to have some extra layer to help this puzzle stand out. However, Barbara did a nice job of picking out fun examples, and the use of both letters in the Down direction as a rebus square made for a concept that might rocket Wednesday solvers through the sound barrier of crossword soundness. Welcome to the Bizarro World of limitless creativity!

– puzzle by Barbara Lin

★ WIN THE LOTTERY is so appropriate today because I got everything I enjoy out of a Friday themeless and a whole lot more. This amazing themeless debut reminded me of how I feel when I see the bylines of Robyn Weintraub, Yacob Yonas, and Nam Jin Yoon. Heady territory, indeed!

First and foremost, so many grid entries lifted and entertained in the style of a great coach giving a team a pep talk. HANG ON A SECOND, NO NOT THAT! PLAY IT COOL ... WAIT RIGHT THERE! IT CAN'T HURT to get FAST TRACKED.

And … WE'RE DONE!

Except that we're not at all done. Those chatty, colloquial entries would have been POW!-worthy on their own, but there's also WINE CAVE and some ADULATORY CONCERTOS. And I hope you're not too buzzed to forget DRUNK DIALS, with its delightful clue. The repetition in [Buzzes when buzzed?] made no sense … until it made all the wordplay-sense in the world.

NO LIE, there's yet more? I drew a circled C next to any great clues, and after my page was filled with a sea of them, I floated down the river of countless joys. Best of all were the ones that innocently lifted a common word. [Posture that might be hard to maintain]? Oh for F's sake, every yoga posture is hard to maintain! Ah, this uses the "position" meaning, as in FAÇADE. I posture that this is brilliant.

A couple of minuscule dings, like NGO isn't the most familiar of acronyms, and BARE HEADED was a bit bald, but those are me scouring with a magnifying lens, so I don't sound like a stupid fanboy.

Screw it, I have to do it. Fanboy SQUEE!

– puzzle by Rafael Musa

★ Although I was impressed by the top-notch color and cleanliness of the northwest corner — difficult to achieve when a central themer splits your grid in half — I thought I'd nailed "Name That Theme" way too quickly. GOOD, ROCKIN', STAR, PRETTY? The revealer is so obvious! No doubt that it was OFF TO A GREAT START.

Ok, maybe some doubt.

There's no doubt: Ailee is off to a great start in her constructing career. "Phrases that start with synonyms of a word" are commonplace, so you need something extra to elevate. SUPERGIRL did exactly that, perfectly explaining how every phrase is composed of (synonym of great) + (girl's name). Mind blown that this was possible!

Further enhancing the a-ha moment, all of the names were disguised. The meanings of FAITH (belief), ROBIN (the song refers to a bird), LILY (flower), and PENNY (coin) all obfuscated the concept so well.

Such a smart layout, with STAR / LILY separated in the middle. This central entry splits the grid in half (top / bottom) like a 9 would, but note how it allows for a diagonal slash of three black squares. That slash helps create separation, enhancing one's ability to fill the four biggish corners independently of each other.

Ailee did such an amazing job of spicing things up. LOGICAL / IRON ORE / AS OF YET / LETS PLAY — and that was only the opening corner? Let's play, indeed!

I did wonder what YEETED could be. I've heard the term from younger constructors, and it is in their language. I sure was relieved that all the crosses were fair — can you imagine if crossed with LIMN? That'd be a serious yeet!

(Ok, Boomer, I'll stop.)

Ailee is part of the inaugural class of the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship, and she does the program proud with her excellent (and graceful) debut.

– puzzle by Ailee Yoshida

★ This one climbs my ranks as one of the most memorable Sundays in years. I fondly remember my bafflement-flipping-to-delight moment when uncovering a column of Is that acted as the web for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Today's column of Hs so perfectly representing a LADDER might be even more amazing!

(You can find other repeated-letter themes using our Finder, including a series of Is representing a jungle vine and another one depicting a fishing line.)

Look at all the levels that make this puzzle rise to the heavens:

Visual of the ladder. Such creative use of a capital letter. Wish I'd Thought of That.

So many entries that aptly climb the ladder. I would have come up with HOUSE PAINTER. Then having to come up with a matching entry of length (7,5) for symmetry? I'd have given up. CHIMNEY SWEEP is excellent.

Perfect revealer placement. The fact that the H of CLIMBS THE LADDER is in its exact center, so it could be placed dead center of the grid? That's enough to make you take up religion. (I never doubted you once, oh great Crucivera! But maybe you could spread your bolts of inspiration around to more than just Jessie and Ross?)

Threading themers through a central down makes for incredibly difficult gridwork, since the regions around intersections get highly constrained. There's a bit of I MET / SO A right off the bat, but in total, such care in filling. NICE JOB is quite an understatement.

A typical Sunday 140-worder will have about a dozen gluey bits, so finishing with about eight minor dings shows such resilience; never saying it's good enough.

Ross and I are both rock climbers, and this puzzle is a route I'd steer every one of my friends to try.

– puzzle by Jessie Trudeau and Ross Trudeau

★ Hang on a second … is how my friends used to describe my bouldering at my old CLIMBING GYM. My V6 fails were almost as amusing as Margaret's delightful concept today, HANG IN THERE punnily applied. I loved the variety of hanging a COAT, hanging around in a MAN CAVE, and of course, hanging (or, in my case, falling) on holds at a CLIMBING GYM.

Since the word "hang" has essentially the same meaning when applied to a COAT CLOSET and an ART GALLERY, I wondered if there was a fourth definition Margaret could have played upon. JURY BOX would have gone over many solvers' heads — describing a hung jury as a "hang" would give most everyone hang-ups.

And I'm glad no gallows humor was employed. Ahem.

Wise choice in MAN CAVE for the "hanging around" meaning. In what other enclosed spaces do people usually hang around? REC CENTER seems too active. HOOKAH BAR is too specific. I can't think of a single better choice than MAN CAVE (or SHE SHED) — well done!

Standing O for the OVATION clue. I was baffled, trying to imagine what types of instruments or accoutrements are common in concert halls. The wording of [A big one might be standing in concert halls] is such themeless-level wordplay but still figure-out-able for newer solvers. PINCH ME, it's a dream to see this level of deviousness in a Monday puzzle!

Speaking of that, great bonuses in DEMO TAPE, MARATHON, and ARM REST. Using long bonuses in the "pinwheel" layout of themers can muddy up what is theme and what is not, but in today's case, it's hard to imagine how a MARATHON as a place where any sort of hanging around is happening.

Unless you count my hangdog expression in distance races (those days I've since left in the distance).

Such a playful idea that had me baffled until the very end.

– puzzle by Margaret Seikel