David J. Kahn author page

Who doesn't love discussing CAPITAL GAINS? Nothing like long-term gains taxed at such a meager rate, not to mention that they're offsetable by long-term capital losses, so if you time your equity sales …

Right, this kind of talk only gains me losses.

CAPITAL GAINS … or CAPITAL LOSSES? Wait, don't leave; I was talking about the puzzle, not the financial concepts! Is it that MOS has gained QUITO to become MOSQUITO, or that MOSQUITO has lost QUITO to become MOS? That's the eternal question for this theme type.

I loved the TIM(BERLIN)ES to TIMES find. I had a vague recollection of seeing BERLIN as a hidden word, but the fact that subtracting it leaves behind a valid five-letter word is a so cool.

I would have appreciated BA(KING STON)E even more, but David beat me and a friend to the punch — we featured this in an upcoming Sunday puzzle. QUASH you, David!

Audacious choice to stack MOS(QUITO) / (RIGA)TONI and (PARIS)HES / L(OS LO)BOS. (LBOS = leveraged buyouts. I would happily blather on for hours about LBOS, and then you'd be TO(O SLO)W to TOW me away.) David had some flexibility, able to mix and match the four entries, but the fact that there are 24 possibilities (4x3x2x1 = 24) hardly means that any one of them will produce silky-smooth results. HOB ENO STS sogs things up, but SOG ONI is a reasonable result.

I used to want to challenge solvers to the brink of frustration — people should earn their victories! — but these days, I much prefer erring the other way. Although starring the six clues would have made it (too?) obvious what was going on, it would have increased the proportion of solvers achieving a fist-pumping a-ha moment.

If you imagine a person's face looking to the right, doesn't this grid look like a mullet, with that pyramid of hair flowing down the left side? BUSINESS in the front, (rebus) party in the back!

INC, CO, LTD, LLC are a solid quartet of "SMALL" BUSINESSES. Tough to squish in C CORP or SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP into one square, anyway.

I appreciated that David did such a strong job of picking long themers incorporating these rebus squares — not just MARGIN CALL (bonus points for it being business-related-ish), but TRAIN CAR, too. That's a whole lot more interesting than the down crossing being INCAS or CINCO. Even the shortest one, BITCOIN, had some juice — and was quasi-business-related!

There's always a cost of doing business, though, and those crossing pairs of long themers take up so much real estate. David employed heavy segmentation to deal with this, which made the grid flow suffer, chunking the puzzle into three sections. It's not terrible, since there are at least two entries leading into each corner, but it's far from ideal.

I usually don't pay attention to extra black squares, but they felt aesthetically blurgh today. There's such a concentration of them in the side pyramids, reaching in toward the middle. The square at the bottom after ANTSY is helpful, maybe even instrumental, in filling the big southwest corner, but it does contribute to the unwieldly look.

Not my favorite grid design ever, but I did like how it allowed for so many long rebus entries. And for a 70-word puzzle chock-full of theme, it's remarkably well-filled. INE, OVO, PPG minor, and the only sticking point — BARI — was fairly crossed. The constructor in me admires the balance David struck.

Jim Horne and I are both musicians, yet we had drastically different reactions to the puzzle. For Jim, it was immediately apparent that the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth are G G G E(flat), so there must be a rebus at work.

It's obvious who's the better musician!

Hopefully you didn't fall into the crazy trap that ensnared me today, with my "correct" finish. I figured it had to be G G G E, and sure enough I got Mr. Happy Pencil telling me I was right. Something didn't feel right, though. How could DEED mean [Released air from, as a balloon]?

I struggled but eventually decided that since this was a Thursday puzzle, Will Shortz chose some archaic definition of DEED. Or maybe Sam Ezersky (Associate Editor) worked in hip slang for DEED that I'm too uncool to know about. The bar for that is low, after all.

Wow, was my face red when I talked to Jim Horne, not even realizing that I'd made a mistake. Or is that a "mistake"? Single-square rebuses are so rare that it never occurred to me to consider that possibility. It felt so wrong that I could get the puzzle "right" but simply stumbled into rightness.

It felt ...

(wait for it)

... off-key.

(groan)

Only three of Beethoven's symphonies have names — EROICA (Third), PASTORAL (Sixth), CHORAL (Ninth), so that works as a theme. SPANISH TUTORIAL as a phrase felt arbitrary, though. And SYMPHONIC instead of SYMPHONY? I get that crossword symmetry must be observed, but why not LUDWIG VAN / BEETHOVEN, and reference "symphony" in the clue?

All in all, it's a fine idea that came out pitchy. It made me think of French horns. Beautiful, shiny, intricate piece of equipment that evokes an old trombonists' symphony joke:

Q: How do you make a trombone sound like a French horn?

A: Shove your hand up the bell and play a lot of wrong notes.

Maybe you had to be there.

Complete fail at "Name that Theme" today. Should I be embarrassed, since I couldn't figure out the theme while solving, even though I was raised in CALIFORNIA? Or is shameful more accurate, given that it took me a full minute after hitting CALIFORNIA to understand the theme — and that I lived in SAN Jose for two decades?

Let's go with shame.

Will Shortz often shies away from name-heavy themes, since they can come across as more of a trivia contest than a word puzzle. Knowing only 1.5 of the featured people (partial credit for identifying DIEGO RIVERA, but only after giving DIEGO MARADONA some serious thought), I had a hard time with the solve.

I had some fun brainstorming other people that might have been more familiar. For JOSE, I'd have gone with JOSE CUERVO. As a longtime Oakland A's fan, I like JOSE CANSECO, but I'm not sure how much he's faded out of the limelight.

FRANCISCO and DIEGO are tougher. I'd probably go with FRANCISCO GOYA. FRANCISCO PIZARRO is likely more recognizable, but there is the little matter of all his mass murder.

I wonder if the most appropriate word is "humiliated," since I couldn't figure out that SAN RAFAEL was a city in CALIFORNIA — one that's about two hours from where I grew up. Everyone pronounces it "San Ra-fel," which is different than "Ra-phai-el Nadal." That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

In a puzzle featuring names in the theme, it's best to go easy on the names in the fill. Avoiding some of ALCOA / LYONS / SARDI — that last one crossing the kooky FARO and OSE, no bueno! — would have been better. I enjoyed the BENGALI BATCAVE FAR LEFT bonuses, but I'd have liked a round of revision to smooth out ASALE AERO OSE SALA as well.

All in all, though, a strong theme concept leading to a fun a-ha moment (that this CALIFORNIAn should have known from the get-go, fine!).

I THREW THE BOOK AT this puzzle initially. I called a JOINT MEETING, with all due HEAVY HANDEDNESS, about the major exclusions.

WOODSTOCK is an event whose 50^th anniversary is worth celebrating, but I'd have loved something more interesting. Letters spread through phrases isn't all that fun in the first place, and not being able to find a phrase with H E N D R I X spread through it would have slammed that door shut for me.

It's not a Woodstock commemoration without Jimi.

Odd decision to include THE CATSKILLS. It gives away the game too early and takes up valuable real estate, where another performer might be added.

I did enjoy the overall gridwork. It's not easy to build around six themers, and David got away with just some TRA INITS ELHI. Stacking themers, like BAKED ZITI over THE CATSKILLS, was a smart decision.

A shame. Such potential to make a commemorative puzzle as innovative as WOODSTOCK itself. The grand palette of a Sunday grid — featuring Jimi, of course — would have felt more appropriate for the monumental event.

RIP IM PEI, passed away May 16, 2019. A life worth lauding. He designed so many buildings that it's hard to know which would be most appropriate to include within a tribute puzzle. I'd bet that his glass pyramid in front of the Louvre is the first one that comes to most people's minds, so it's appropriate to put that in a featured location.

STARCHITECT is a fun portmanteau. I wondered if it's in common usage? The real question is, what similar portmanteau can we constructors create to self-describe? I hereby declare myself a BEACONSTRUCTOR. Get it, BEACON + CONSTRUCTOR = BEACONSTRUCTOR? A shining guide in the sea of crossed words?

What, you say that it sounds like B-constructor? As in a second-rate hack?

WELL, WHO ASKED YOU?!

I'm not sure why a lot of constructors are so enamored with themer interlock. I did enjoy LOUVRE PYRAMID crossing IM PEI, that's neat. But ROCK AND ROLL (with HALL OF FAME elsewhere) and STARCHITECT crossing, too? Inelegant to have that partial in a featured position, plus it creates gridwork problems. It's akin to IM PEI's firm designing the Hancock Tower, only to find that the reality of physics made that implementation a disaster. ISOLE, AFOR, ASL, IRAE, SKUA, now those are some plywood cover-ups.

I applaud the decision to celebrate one of the best minds in the world of architecture, a person whose work has influenced millions of lives all around the world. I'd have loved something more architectural, though, like a masterpiece dedicated to the Guggenheim … or one to PEI himself!

David couldn't have straight-up copied Liz's brilliant concept, but it'd have been fun to brainstorm other visual implementations of other PEI buildings.

A cut above most tribute puzzles. I appreciated many aspects of this one:

• The CIRCLE OF LIFE visual worked well, especially as David reinforced it using a cyclone of black squares in the center.
• The windmill layout — themers going both horizontally and vertically — further imprinted my subconscious with a feeling of circularity.
• Themer interlock. I usually dislike interlock, like how THE LION KING crosses HAKUNA MATATA, since this often come with fill compromises in that crossing region. Today, it did allow for a very high theme density, and a meaty-feeling solve, so kudos for that.
• Decent fill. Although there was a good amount of crossword glue needed to hold the puzzle together, it wasn't bad given such high theme density. I wouldn't have been bold enough to stack NO WORRIES on THE CIRCLE OF LIFE — we see you, OTIC ESSES — but it works well enough.

The modest visual was a nice way to make the puzzle a little something more than your typical ho-hum tribute puzzle. The bold, go-big-or-go-back-to-PRIDE ROCK attitude mostly paid off.

My embarrassing first reaction: OH NO, FREDDIE MERCURY DIED!

Sad, but true.

(Both my stupid reaction and the fact that Mercury died. In 1991.)

I think this puzzle is a tribute for the Freddie Mercury movie, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY?

What, you say that it came out over a month ago?

Okay, I'm confused. Why not publish it on the release date?

I'm also confused as to why BO HEMI AN and RH APSO DY were broken up. I know most of the lyrics by heart, but am I missing some hidden "breakup" that the song implies?

Speaking of confusion, why place the four 7-letter themers in FREDDIE / CONCERT / BENEFIT / MERCURY order? Why not FREDDIE / MERCURY / BENEFIT / CONCERT?

Perhaps there's some gridding-related reason, that this particular order helped smooth things out. But already with APORT LEROI ENRY ETYMA YSER just to start (not even mentioning NAZI yet), I'd much rather have accepted that pain and at least have gotten a proper set of connected themers, one half right after the other.

I'd understand the decisions more if today were a big anniversary of LIVE AID ... but it's the 28^th anniversary? Huh.

I love FREDDIE MERCURY, QUEEN, and BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY — one of my favorite songs of all-time. I did enjoy being reminded of the greatness there. And I thought it was an interesting finding how BOHEMIAN / RHAPSODY could be broken up as David described. But I think the puzzle would have been more enjoyable if it had been made simpler, with a smoother grid.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, interpreted as "words that can follow FRENCH, arranged in rings." I was utterly baffled for an embarrassingly long time by FRENCH TRYPAS. Even more embarrassing was the fact that I shrugged it off as something I was too uncultured to know.

These types of themes are notoriously difficult to construct around. Every time you lock a circled letter in place, it creates so much grid inflexibility, stressing the surrounding region.

David did something very smart, placing black square(s) in the middle of each revolved word, which makes the filling job ten times easier. He also allowed himself to start the theme words at any random position, which helped out even more. Given the level of difficulty, I expected a lot of glue in the fill, but I was pleased to see it kept to a passable amount, with the AREEL / FARO / ESTERS / DRT / OSSO the only region that bugged my constructor's sensibilities.

It felt odd though, to have CUFF, DOOR, POODLE, and KISS start in the same(ish) position, but not HORN and STRYPA — er, PASTRY. I'd have preferred more randomness overall, so the outliers didn't feel like such ... well, outliers.

I wonder if using French FRIES and TOAST (or BREAD) would have been better, even if they didn't produce quite circle-ish shapes. Would likely have made the construction job that much easier, too.

David PROVING THEM WRONG today, showing that plenty of teams have Is. Although I've seen plenty of crosswords based around THERES NO I IN TEAM — perfect for a revealer at 15 letters! — I liked the a-ha moment I got from this implementation. David hid the teams well, DETROIT / TIGERS becoming apparent only after I had already started thinking about TIGERS as [Aggressive types].

The grid felt just a touched choked off, and it was no wonder, as David went up to 142 words. I didn't mind though, as there was still adequate solving flow, no subsection was *too* choked off.

I do like the 140 word maximum, which forces constructors to work in good long fill like WINE TASTERS, HOME STANDS, VIOLA DAVIS, WEIMARANER, NO CONTEST. But for tougher themes to execute on, I think it's good to allow constructors to bend the rules.

Why is this tough to execute on, you ask? Because working around crossing theme answers can be super tricky, especially when they need to be around the periphery of the puzzle. Take DETROIT / TIGERS for example. That north section of the puzzle is forced to be biggish due to the themer interlock. Biggish section + two crossing answers fixed into place usually means it's no bueno. David did well, just a NEV while working in ROADIE, ERRATA.

I did notice that David did rely too heavily on a specific type of crossword glue. Notice the common thread between ENATE FER HOD AJA SAMOS ROC MOS ANON? Not only are they oddball words, but they all perfectly alternate vowel / consonant. Probably something only we constructors notice, but it screams CONSTRUCTOR'S CRUTCH! to me. Would have been better to use more diverse glue, to make it all less noticeable.

Usually I dislike when a crossword doesn't display theme symmetry. But that was impossible today, and I liked the tightness(ish) of the theme set — too bad the Pirates had to be left out, that would have been perfect! — enough to look the other way.

Solid Thursday, using numbers as rebus squares. Who knew that NEW ORLEANS and SAN ANTONIO were founded in the same year … and in the same month! Curious discovery, and the fact that both cities are the same length makes for a constructor's dream.

Fine rebus entries, 8 BALL the best since it's often written using the numeral. I love me my MAGIC 8 BALL — it is decidedly so! 7 UP is solid, too.

NOT 1 BIT felt wonky, as no 1 writes it that way.

For me, 1LS finished in a solid last place. It does seem to be written most commonly with the numeral, 1L = first-year law student. But it feels like a niche piece of information. Scott Turow's book, One L, might have helped popularize the term, but darn you, Chicago Manual of Style and your insistence on writing out numbers ten or less!

I liked that David bulked up the theme a bit, the ALAMODOME one of SAN ANTONIO's landmarks, and many JAZZ CLUBS found in NEW ORLEANS. It was odd that these bonuses intersected the OTHER city, but what are you gonna do?

I'll tell you what you're gonna do! Give up the entry interlock. Yes, as a constructor, it's neat for that to happen. But this solver thought it would have been a lot nicer for JAZZ CLUBS to be next to NEW ORLEANS. Shifting JAZZ BANDS up, so it started at row 1, would have achieved that.

Well-constructed grid, just some SRTAS, DAZS (how else are you going to clue this but [Haagen-___], AWNS. The part that impressed me was the BULB region, as working with four rebus entries all squished together is no joke. So clean and smooth right there, not easy at all.

Interesting finding, the simultaneous founding of the two cities. For me, it was more a "huh" moment than an "a-ha!" one. Still, a theme worth working to uncover.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I do enjoy the lingo. Some of David's takes on common baseball phrases amused me. And I liked his effort to tie them together into a story. What better way to end the puzzle than a GRAND SLAM HOME RUN?

I did wonder about TWO MEN OUT and DOWN BY THREE. The former — don't most announcers say "two away" or "two out"? It's been a while since I've been to a game, but TWO MEN OUT sounds suspiciously like an answer bulked up for crossword symmetry.

The latter — I get that it's a necessary part of the setup for the dramatic conclusion. It just felt arbitrary(ish). Yes, it's a common deficit, common enough that it's probably a fine themer. But I would be happy to see BOTTOM OF THE NINTH in any other crossword as fill; not so much for DOWN BY THREE.

Why not ALL TIED UP, leading to a WALK OFF HOME RUN? Both of those are fine phrases I'd use as fill in other crosswords. Much preferable for me. I know the lengths don't match — BOTTOM OF THE NINTH is 16 and WALK OFF HOME RUN is 14 — but perhaps a mirror symmetry arrangement could have worked.

Interesting grid design, slipping in two long horizontal pieces of fill. Love, love, love SAN ANDREAS and its clue. Something so fun about the puzzle saying IT'S CALIFORNIA'S FAULT! Not so hot on the symmetrical entry, AUDIO TAPES, as CASSETTE TAPES feels much more strongly in the language. But overall, I like that David didn't need to pay much of a price to bring these long bad boys into the grid. Good stuff.

I enjoyed the effort to do something a little different with a baseball theme. A couple of iffy themers, but since the grid was well executed, I found the experience mostly entertaining. Who doesn't like a good story capped by a dramatic finish?

What's that H doing in the middle of my Friday themeless puzzle? Forming the words BEET(H)OVEN and EARP(H)ONES, that's what! Cool finds, those. EARPHONES aren't totally related to BEETHOVEN — PIANO, MUSICIAN, CLASSICAL MUSIC, SONATAS, etc. are much closer — but the pairing mostly works.

What didn't work for me was running it as a Friday themeless puzzle. It ended up in limbo, caught between three crossworlds:

THEMELESS. I love me a great mini-theme, as long as the rest of the themeless puzzle doesn't get compromised. This mini-theme is pretty good (notwithstanding EARPHONES being not that related to BEETHOVEN). The visual of the H working in the answers is cool.

But I need more snazz out of a themeless than ALL IN ONE PRINTER, DELICATE BALANCE, and … well, that's NOT A LOT. Along with odd BORESOME and PIERO, and some LEM RRR TAMA crossword glue, it didn't meet my (admittedly high) expectations for a themeless.

THEMED. Not nearly enough themage to be a workable mid-week puzzle. It could have gone more in this direction — Beethoven wrote a lot, so there's all sorts of FUR ELISE, MOONLIGHT SONATA, themage possibilities. Even the fact that SCHROEDER of Peanuts was a big fan!

METAPUZZLE. The NYT is missing the boat here. This could have been a fun contest, where solvers submit the name of a famous composer and something that's used to listen to him. Yes! But to do it with a notepad, and have no contest? No prizes? No challenge? No bueno! And if it had been a metapuzzle, David could have gone up to a more reasonable word count of say, 74 or 76, and made the fill more snazzy and smooth.

It's a neat finding, that BEET + large H + OVEN = BEETHOVEN. I wish it had gone solidly into one of the three above camps, though, as trying to straddle these crossword types didn't quite work for me. I can see how others would appreciate the crossover efforts, though. Valiant attempt.

Huh! SALVATOR MUNDI, selling for $450.3 million last month, a new record. You know what makes me the most curious? The $0.3 million. Other bidders had no problem gathering $450 M, but that last $0.3 M was the deal breaker? There's gotta be a great story behind that!

Nice that the puzzle came out in a timely fashion. I did a double-take on the clue — is it possible that the painting sold less than a month ago? Pretty cool to memorialize such a record-breaking event so quickly (considering that puzzle queue times between acceptance and printing usually are three months to well over a year!).

Fortuitous, that interlock of LEONARDO DA VINCI and SALVATOR MUNDI. Every once in a while, the crossword gods shine down on you.

Such big interlock does constrain the puzzle mightily though, forcing further interlock if you want to incorporate other long themers. David did great with OLD MASTER crossing through SALVATOR MUNDI — perfectly apt for LEONARDO.

But RESTORING ("restoration" sounds better, yeah?) felt like an afterthought; something that would more fit the grid interlock than fit "interesting to a solver." Maybe if the clue had told a nutsy story behind the RESTORING of the painting …

Because of that, the puzzle theme felt thin, more akin to a front-page blurb than a meaty story. Would have been great to get another interesting piece of trivia about the painting itself.

Oh right, there was CHRISTIE, which felt like it ought to be CHRISTIES, and CHARLES I, one of the many people who owned the painting at one time. These were too peripheral to the painting to make me remember that they were themers. Again, casualties of the central interlock.

I would have preferred unlinking LEONARDO DA VINCI and SALVATOR MUNDI so that more interesting themers could be used.

Pretty good grid execution, what with some nice bonuses in X RATED / O HENRY (Xs and Os!), and just a bit of DTS, APR, the odd IN A NET. Not easy to do with so much interlock. And I enjoyed learning about that painting — embarrassed not to have heard of it before!

GUNFIGHT AT / THE OK CORRAL visually punned on, with four "okay" synonyms squaring off in the center(ish) of the puzzle. I always forget that JAKE can be used as in "everything's Jake" (okay) — probably should remember that since my son's name is Jake!

Was anyone else jarred by the slight off-centering of the "gunfight"? Of course, it's impossible to center a pattern of four-letter words like this in a 15x15 grid. Perhaps it would have been better to look for three-letter or five-letter synonyms (I couldn't find enough, rats!)? Or make the grid 16x16 or 14x14?

I have such OCD when it comes to crossword symmetry. So annoying!

Some nice bonuses in TOEHOLD, REUNIFY, MINNOWS, WILLOWY, MONIKER, BAOBAB. Nothing spectacular, but enough to help hold solvers' attention if they're not Jake with the punny theme.

Not as Jakey (is that a thing? it should be) were SNARLER and SALUTER. I could maybe let one slip by, but I think it's important to not draw attention to any one type of gluiness or oddballity in a single grid.

It is a tough set of themers to constructor around, no doubt. The four long themers are a piece of cake, especially when laid out in the "windmill" pattern. But when you add in the central gunfight square, each side is forced to work with one of the long themers. That's another story completely.

Especially tough when you have to work around a J — not a surprise that the east section came out the roughest, with SALUTER LUI ETE KOD. I think KO'D is probably fine, but it just looks so cringe-worthy inside a crossword grid.

Given how colorful the lore around THE OK CORRAL is, I would have loved something more than a bunch of okay themers squaring off with each other. Seems anticlimactic; like a duel using wet noodles. I did appreciate the impressive finds though, four solid "okay" synonyms that can be defined in misdirecting ways.

Word ladders have been mined for crossword themes so much, that it takes a lot for one to stand out. I like David's added layer, not just going from BLUNT to SHARP, but stopping in the middle with an appropriate BLADE. Fun to also get RAZOR and KNIFE, two objects that often need that BLUNT to SHARP change.

Sometimes I wonder if word ladders would be more fun for me in crosswords if the rungs weren't clued. The clues feel mostly superfluous anyway, as you know that you can look at the previous and next rungs to figure out that answer. The reason why I like word ladders outside of crosswords is that it's fun to see if you can figure out the entire thing, futzing around with one letter at a time.

Pretty good execution for how much constraint the word ladder forces onto the grid. Sure, the themers are all short, but when you have 11 short words that you need to fix into place, it can make for a hairy construction.

Take the middle, for example. BLARE over BLADE over SLADE is bound to cause some hair-pulling. But David uses his black squares wisely, sort of separating that area from the rest of the puzzle, helping him finesse it.

Also smart to place RAZOR and KNIFE at the perimeter of the grid, and then to NOT put any theme answers directly around them. RAZOR's proximity to SLADE and BLART did put some strain on the west section of the grid, resulting in AN ERA / IN BAD, but thankfully there wasn't much crossword glue elsewhere.

Not a surprise that the symmetrical east also showed a little strain, with RELET / EWELL / EPEES. I do think that EWELL is fair game, as "To Kill A Mockingbird" is in many English Lit curricula. And EPEES is fine by me, but it does tend to draw some eye-rolling from more experienced solvers, who see it ad infinitum.

The added touches are much appreciated, given how overused word ladders have become in crosswords. Even a few great clues, like [Book slips] innocently misdirecting toward pieces of paper instead of ERRATA, helped to keep up my interest.

★ I'm loving this celebrity series — having a puzzle oriented around that person's profession is so much fun.

Today we get Isaac Mizrahi, with theme phrases reinterpreted in kooky, design-related ways. There's something so fun about SHOOTS FROM THE HIP as a paparazzo sneaking a pic from his/her pocket. TAKE UP A COLLECTION worked great as well, the phrase defined as shortening (taking up, in tailoring lingo) a designer's clothing collection. ON PINS AND NEEDLES I could actually see as a punny title for a seamstress's tell-all.

Not all of them hit for me — WORK THE NIGHT SHIFT felt iffy, "shift" not quite design-specific enough for my taste — but so many of them gave me a smile. It's a rare Sunday puzzle of this type that accomplishes that, so huge kudos.

A couple of nice bonuses, too, ALIEN RACE, TEN SIDED evoking images of a (warning, D&D dork alert!) 10-sided die, IMHOTEP a colorful character from ancient Egypt, SIM CARD, and even PARAGON. HONESTLY!, a good amount of bonus material for those solvers not so interested in fashion design.

There were a few blips here and there, but nothing that made me cringe. I don't like an OLEO of A HILL, VAR, ENDE (so tough to keep him and ONDE straight), ENERO, AERO, ORDERER (notice all those constructor-friendly Os, Es, and Rs?), etc. But overall, David and Isaac kept the level right around my threshold … slightly over, but not so far as to bog down my solve.

I'd be curious if moving ON PINS AND NEEDLES down one row would have helped to smooth out some sections. It's so tough when just a single row separates two long themers, as with WORK THE NIGHT SHIFT and ON PINS AND NEEDLES (see results: OLEO, EOE, A HILL).

Overall, a great sense of fun and joy in this puzzle. David and Isaac wore it well.

BEST MUSICALs played upon today, David using two-word phrases where the first word is the title of a musical. He managed to squeeze in six musicals for an impressively high theme density — so fortuitous, that interlocking of HAMILTON, COMPANY, and RENT.

Turns out that there are quite a few one-word BEST MUSICALS, including CATS, TITANIC, CONTACT, HAIRSPRAY, MEMPHIS, etc. Not being much of a playgoer, COMPANY and ONCE didn't do much for me — nor did NINE for that matter — but hey, I recognized ANNIE, HAMILTON, and RENT! No doubt they're all fair game since they won the top Tony Award, but … well, hopefully most solvers will connect better with all six musicals than I did.

Given the ultra-high theme density, not a surprise to get some dabs of crossword glue. I don't mind it so much if it's spread out, but getting NALDI / ATA (along with partial-ish feeling ATE ON and RID OF) at the top, and TEM / TRA / SMEW / SSR / OLAN concentrated in the bottom wasn't ideal.

Still, I enjoyed some of the bonus fill David worked in, notably HAY FEVER, HOOPLA, (oh no!) MR BILL, even GRITTY and REVERE. Not an easy task to incorporate these types of strong bonuses, but I appreciated them greatly, since I didn't connect strongly with the theme.

I wasn't familiar with LAP ROBES — thank goodness all the crosses were fair! — so that didn't do much for me. Still, it got me to thinking what the heck "open-air travelers" were and why they needed LAP ROBES. So it held my interest, if not in an immediate way.

Given that the Gray Lady has recently been moving toward more humor in drug references — particularly marijuana — it would have been fun to get a CONTACT HIGH from this puzzle!

I have to admit, I'm not much of a baseball fan — but I do love me some baseball lore. How could you not enjoy something called the "Curse of the Billy Goat"? Such sadness that this beautiful phrase is too long for a weekday crossword, at 19 letters. Damn you, crossword gods!

David interlocks several long answers about the Cubs in his tribute puzzle. I really like WORLD SERIES RING and IVY COVERED WALLS — I'd happily use them in a themeless or as bonus fill in another puzzle. NATIONAL LEAGUER … it's fine, but more neutral to me. It also has a faint sniff of NLER and ALER, which we see in crosswords fairly often. (They are legitimately used in media, but they seem so inelegant to me.)

I'm sure Cubs fans will appreciate ERNIE BANKS and Harry CARAY. I didn't know much about either, but CARAY was apparently a real personality! I'm going to get glasses like his. (Don't tell my wife.)

Sometimes it's neat to get so many interlocking answers in an early-week, for the sheer novelty. The problem with such interlock, though, is that it creates inflexibility and thus filling difficulty around every crossing. David does better than I would have thought around most regions, the northwest particularly good. Okay, STUBBLES and PITAS are both slightly wonky as plurals, but everything else around that NATIONAL LEAGUER / ERNIE BANKS intersection is smooth.

It surprised me that the one area I really had trouble with is the middle — not around an intersection of themers! Ah … or is it? As fun as Harry CARAY might be to some, GAOL / a long RRN (random Roman numeral) in CCLIV / ELAL are pretty rough for one little section. (I think EL AL is generally okay, but it is one of those entries I only know through crosswords.) That center is an area ripe for solvers crying foul.

Along with a ton of baseball-oriented stuff like MOP UP (closing out a rout) and STL (as the Cubs' rivals), it was more crossword glue than this baseball non-fan wanted. But I can see how Cubs fans might love how packed it was.

A rebus in a themeless! I remember the first one I saw, back when I started doing late-week puzzles. Wow, was that an unpleasantly hard surprise, making me think I ought to just give up on ever becoming a late-week solver. Glad I stuck with it, and today the single COMMA rebus came with no problem. Well, not NO problem, but at least it seemed in the realm of possibility.

Just like yesterday's puzzle, this one uses a big interconnected skeleton of long answers, and this one is even less flexible. Six grid-spanning entries locking into each other is no joke. As a mechanical engineer, I use a mechanical analogy — each time you weld answers together, the areas around those welds get imbued with more and more strain, making it harder and harder to line things up properly / skin the final product flawlessly.

I loved parts of the skeleton — SUPER BOWL CHAMPS is awesome, and NEW YORK, NEW YORK crossing SECOND (COMMA)NDMENT is fun — but since these long answers are the features of the themeless, I really wanted all of them to be beautiful. Even this recreational coder isn't all that into REPORT GENERATOR, and HOME PHONE NUMBER feels like a throwback to the old days of land lines.

Thankfully, David managed to work more bonuses than I expected, TEAR GAS / SEX SCENE (what a sex scene that would be, yikes!), and NO REASON / OPEN FIRE.

ESTATE and TESTATE … that sat so poorly with me at first. What a surprise to learn that the words don't share etymology! So it's not technically a dupe, but it still feels somehow inelegant.

And AS RED (weird partial), old-school ALEE and HET, partial RIDA, ENES Kanter, ENE, AFR, etc. = too much crossword glue for my taste. Very common problem for a grid using this sort of interconnected skeleton.

But overall, a good workout, and the rebus square a little different.

David uses the NATO PHONETIC alphabet today, working in every one of the eight words spelling out PHONETIC. Not easy to incorporate eight answers into a single grid — nine actually, counting PHONETIC!

What a cool, fortuitous coincidence, that all nine words could be placed to exhibit crossword symmetry. And what nice intersections of TANGO and NOVEMBER, and OSCAR and PHONETIC — in symmetrical locations! I've highlighted the nine words below. Touch of elegance.

Impressive how clean David executed on his grid, considering how many words he needed to work around. Okay, CDEF is pretty egregious — although it does technically start the C major scale, no musician would play just those four notes. (Try singing them to a musician to see him/her writhe, waiting for that G resolution. It's amusing.) But other than that, there's only a minor EDO, EST, APPT, etc. Not bad at all, considering those big chunks of white space he worked with in the upper right and lower left corners.

Nice ELBA clue. Idris ELBA is an impressive actor, stunning in his role on "The Wire" and pretty darn captivating in "Pacific Rim." Great for us constructors to have a new way to clue the isle of Napoleon's exile.

And a great TS ELIOT clue. Jim and I often talk about writing, as I'm an aspiring novelist and he's taking classes to explore the craft. I've found that it's roughly ten times as hard to sell a book than it is to sell a crossword — and selling a crossword is not easy. It could be seen as dispiriting that so many writers are "failed writers," but just as with anything, people with real grit come out on top. (That's what I've been telling myself after six years of writing and not having sold a book yet, anyway.)

Interesting concept today, but I would have liked a more powerful punch at the end. PHONETIC revealing P H O N E T I C jumbled up seemed like there was some potential left on the table — the NATO phonetic alphabet seems ripe for more crossword creativity.

David uses WATER in one direction to form kooky theme phrases, and HHO (a representation of H₂0) in normal crossing entries. As a whole, the themers weren't quite kooky enough for my taste, but I did enjoy the image of Republicans saying "He's as GOOD AS GOLDWATER!"

It was also fun to uncover some of the long HHO entries. Loved that most of them spanned across two words, making it even trickier to suss out that odd HHO string. GROWTH HORMONE and JEWISH HOLIDAY were particularly nice.

Some of the long fill was new to me, like SAND CAT and SLICE SERVE. But they're definitely legit, and they were fun to learn about. They didn't give me the same rush as uncovering the snazzy HIGH OCTANE or THE HUSTLER, but they still work just fine. And I bet there will be tennis fans who love seeing SLICE SERVE. I seem to remember Michael Chang had a pretty wicked changeup, which I think was technically a SLICE SERVE.

Working with six pairs of crossing theme entries is not an easy task, so David does pretty well, spreading out just minor gluey bits like OSOS, NEALS, GARS (isn't the plural of gar still gar?), A RIOT, NSEC, throughout the grid. The only really troublesome bit to me was IERE, which is gluey enough by itself, but crossing it with OLEANNA puts it on the edge of unfair. Glad that the clue provided another chance for the solver to get that square right. Normally I don't care for cross-referencing, but I think telling us that IERE is an anagram of EIRE is a smart decision to better insure a fair victory for solvers.

It would have been nice to have some more time between this one and the puzzle Jim points out below, as that one came immediately to my mind. This one is slightly different, but I would have liked a few more years separating them.

HEADS UP! David uses words that can precede HEAD, running upward within grid entries. Very nice find in STOP ORDER (pothead, redhead), where two heads are better than one. TWO BAGGER didn't feel as nice, as BOWHEAD … is what? Seems to be a type of whale? For all the ___ HEAD entries in existence, this doesn't feel like a strong one.

I usually am not too impressed by interlocking theme answers, but I like what David did today, running DEDICATES, RAW DEAL, and MURDER ONE through HEADS UP. To get four intersecting theme answers right in the middle of the puzzle is pretty neat, and the price of I SHOT seems worth it.

It's unfortunate that I SHOT intersects TO BAT though. Inelegant to have two long partials in one region, highlighting each other's existence.

The high theme density is pretty cool. To have 11 "words that can precede head" = an extremely tight packing. On the other hand, most of those hidden words are placed into short themers, i.e. PINhead in NIPS, which makes them less exciting. I might have preferred if there were fewer theme answers which packed in two heads, or where longer words were hidden across a phrase, like HIGH TIDES. (Edith Head, the famous costume designer.)

Speaking of high tides, SANDBANK is a curious word. It is in the dictionary, but I've never heard or seen it used before. MIDDIE was new to me as well, but that seems more inferable, a diminutive of "midshipman."

A neat find in STOP ORDER containing two well-known "heads." If you're not familiar with a STOP ORDER, it's very common in stock trading, although I usually hear it as a "stop-loss order." Stop loss orders got a lot of attention back in 2010 during the "flash crash," when prices of some stocks took a nose dive but rebounded nearly instantly. It was a bad time to have STOP loss ORDERs in force on your positions …

I always enjoy exchanging thoughts about puzzles with Jim Horne, as he and I have different concepts about what makes for a good puzzle. For him, if a theme is great, the fill can be a little junky. For me, it's tough for me to overlook too many gluey bits no matter how good the payoff is. Over the years, Jim has taught me to appreciate really fun themes, and I thought a lot about this today.

I absolutely loved David's find, three types of food that start with a slang word for DRUNK. How is it that no one has done a crossword around this before? I enjoyed it so much, I poked around Matt Ginsberg's "clued" database to verify that it hasn't been done before. Man, what a fantastic discovery!

The revealer didn't do much for me, however. DRUNKEN COOK doesn't seem to be a genuine snippet of language. I searched and searched, but only found some restaurants with that name plus a cooking show called "My Drunk Kitchen" — if only that had been a famous. How perfect a revealer would it have been?

David often errs on the side of incorporating extra bonus fill, at the cost of a little more crossword glue. I like his balance today, making trade-offs like incorporating PAUL REVERE / HONOR ROLLS at just the price of AON. Same goes for the opposite corner, with the beautiful PAGE TURNER / ILL BE THERE costing a NEB and an ERE (UTA Hagen and ERTE are generally fine by me, as they're real, notable people, and UTA is actually the Jazz's shortening on scoreboards).

Not sure I like the EFFS price for SARDINE though, especially at the very start. Oof.

Still, I enjoyed the three themers so much, plus the bonus fill (and RED INK + MR HYDE are great mid-length entries!), that I felt I could overlook some of the infelicities plus the odd revealer.

I read through the notepad a few times and still didn't understand what it meant, so I dove right into the solve. It's quite a clever idea — BANQUET GHOST describing Banquo, e.g. — so I wish there had been a clearer way of phrasing the notepad. Or working something right into the clues! Unfortunatey, I couldn't think of anything more self-explanatory.

I enjoyed reading David's note, and I agree that not having SHAKESPEARE as a revealer makes it more fun. I actually couldn't place Banquo (he's from "Macbeth"), so it took me a while to realize that all these people IN CHARACTER were Shakespeare's. I like the consistency.

Some of them I enjoyed more than others. LEAR inside ELDERLY MONARCH is nearly perfect! Casca as a SCHEMER AGAINST CAESAR is descriptive. MACBETH in MACABRE THANE was perhaps my favorite, because I appreciated the degree of difficulty — to David's point, it's easy to fit in four letters if you have a long enough entry. To get the seven letters of MACBETH within a 12-letter entry is pretty darn amazing.

COMRADE OF MERCUTIO pales in comparison to FRIEND OF MERCUTIO, though. I imagine David had to resort to this due to crossword symmetry requirements. Very unfortunate. (Perhaps one day historians will uncover Shakespeare's Russian period?) And UNHAPPY MALCONTENT does describe Hamlet, but doesn't it describe maybe half of all Shakespeare's characters?

David does a nice job with this grid. As with most any Sunday-size 140-worder, you're bound to get some AGS (Attorney Generals), IT IN (connecting it with LEAVE, so far away, almost makes it worse for me — and LEAVE IT IN isn't a particularly colorful phrase), NEOS, A PAT, etc. But he does well with his long bonus fill, spreading the goodness around the grid: ORRIN HATCH, AUTOSTRADA, VOICE ACTOR, and ONLINE CHAT are four great entries, really boosting the quality of my solve. GO ROGUE, FATCATS and IM RICH! helped as well.

The idea was really nice here, and if 1.) the notepad / cluing had been better, and 2.) all the examples were of the same quality as MACABRE THANE, it would have been an easy POW choice for me.

Word ladder to commemorate Presidents' Day, POLK to TAFT to FORD. I was hoping there would be a natural progression, i.e. President #11 to #22 to #33 or something, but it goes from #11 to #27 to ... #38? Ah well, that would have been asking for a lot.

A word ladder with 11 steps creates all sorts of constraints on a grid. You might think: all those little short words, what's the big deal? But check out how many down entries cross two rungs of the ladder — every single one of the middle(-ish) ones. That's a ton of inflexibility foisted upon one grid. I'm impressed that David got that swath configured with only a smattering of AERO and ATILT. That's nice work!

I can totally see the allure of the beautiful OVAL OFFICE / LEGISLATOR set of parallel downs. I usually don't like when a grid has some random fill which feels theme-ish, as that makes it feel watered down and unintentional, but there's so much presidential material packed in today that I enjoyed the effect . And that corner is so nice — I don't mind ECO at all, since it has many ways it can be clued (including author Umberto), and Gen XER works too.

The opposite corner perfectly demonstrates the difficulty that symmetry imposes on a constructor. That SE is already tough to fill, and when you try to shove in POCKET VETO, you're bound to need some glue to hold the section together. PQR is so, so ugly, a random run of letters. ITER is one of those old-school Maleskan bits, and crossing ALIF makes it hard to justify, especially for a Monday. Oof, that's not good at all.

Ideally, I would have liked more elegance in the grid, TAFT smack dab in the middle of the grid at the very least. And it would have been stunning to get some sort of natural order — can you imagine how cool it would have been if President #11 had been at 11-Across, President #22 at 22-Across, etc.? But still, it was fun to get so much Presidential feel.