David Phillips author page

Some brilliant cluing today, so much clever wordplay in effect. Wordplay for short entries is great, i.e. an [Apple field] isn't a field of apple trees, but Apple (computer) in TECH. And wordplay is even more delightful when applied to feature entries, making those long answers stand out even more.

PEACE SIGN was a perfect example. "Double-digit figure" is a fine phrase, expressing when a number crosses from 9 to 10. Here, "digit" actually refers to the finger" definition. Great stuff.

Another example is SANS SERIF. [Unembellished type] at first struck me as describing an engineer like me who doesn't bother matching his socks and enjoys shaving his head because no hair means a huge savings in time and shampoo costs. But "type" refers to a type font — such an innocent clue, yet so deviously brilliant.

A lot of themeless constructors aim to debut their favorite new musician's full name, or an esoteric entry that they love but solvers might need every cross to figure out. More and more, I'm favoring these types of PEACE SIGN / SANS SERIF entries that lend themselves to taking a great wordplay clue that so many more people can enjoy.

HAWKMAN is a good example of the esoteric(ish) type of entry. I'm a big comics fan, so HAWKMAN was fun for me to see (he really does fly around hitting people with a giant mace!). But he is admittedly not a major character in the DC Comics universe. Not sure how well this one will hit solvers who aren't comics fanatics. (Hopefully not with a mace.)

A good number of feature entries, although PER ANNUM, PET SOUNDS (a Beach Boys album), EAR DOCTOR (ENT, yeah?), LEFT ALONE didn't sing as well as others for me. I'm sure Beach Boys fans will call PET SOUNDS fun, fun, fun, though.

As David mentioned, a few dings. PANTO was another that felt not as minor-feeling to me.

All in all though, I had a lot of fun with all the great cluing. It just takes a few stellar ones to make a puzzle sing, and all of today's wordplay made for an entertaining solve.

Four by tens! Check out that big chunk of white space in the upper right. A stack of four long answers is so tough to do well.

I think David's results are pretty good; the bottom left singing for me more than the upper right. There's a SAES (self-addressed envelopes) and a MADERA (I grew up in the Bay Area but hadn't heard of it). But some great answers stacked atop each other, not a one just taking up space. SENATE RACE and TRASH TALKS are beauties.

The opposite corners run into problems I'm more used to seeing in quad-stacks. INKA isn't great, and LITA FORD was a toughie for this pop culture idiot. The biggest problem for me, though, was what David pointed out: EARNS A NAME felt off, like it was only in there to hold things together. "Make a name for oneself," yeah? I can see what it's trying for, but it doesn't feel like a crossworthy phrase to me.

For me, if it's a decision between using it to make a quad-stack, or just dropping down to a triple-stack, I'd take the latter.

Some other nice features in the other two corners, BEN STEIN and YEAH, SURE the highlights for me. I hitched in the lower right, though. AEROLOGY … that's a thing? (The dictionary says yes.) SOLARIS is a classic sci-fi novel? (This sci-fi fanatic says no.) Along with AGRI, that corner didn't leave me very satisfied.

I know that this is a Saturday puzzle, hardest of the week, but I thought some of the clues tried too hard to be tricky. STEREOS attempted to misdirect with a different usage of CDs, but I don't think many people would call STEREOS "investments." And [What seeds often have] tried to throw you on the scent of fruit seeds, instead of tournament seeds. But that clue felt inaccurate — some top seeds do get byes, but "often" isn't a great descriptor.

I like the effort to do something different, to attempt a notoriously difficult themeless style. Some strong results, like in the lower left, but with a couple of normal-for-quad-stacks blips.

Consistent theme, all two worders where the second word starts with A, and is parsed into two separate words. TICKET A GENT made me chuckle, as did RISK A VERSE. Humorous images, especially if the GENT was ticketed because of risking a verse. SNIFF A ROUND was an interesting parsing find, too. (I tend to do that, much to the chagrin of my friends.)

STUDY A BROAD … oof. I'd much prefer to see crosswords uplift and entertain, providing much-needed distraction from the stress of life. First of all, calling someone a broad seems offensive to me. Then studying said broad ... as in ogling her? I uncovered this themer quickly, and I couldn't shake the icky feeling for the entire solve.

I would have liked just four themers, not just because of the abhorrence of STUDY A BROAD. Five gives a nice sensation of getting a lot for your money, but four would have been enough and would have allowed for nice smooth fill. Most of the grid was fine and even spicy, with some GALPALS, a PAPER CUT (ouch!), I MEAN IT.

But those big corners in the NW / SE. A single ACUTER feels odd. Then PENSEE … I remember agonizing over possibly using this in one of my puzzles, but decided against it, since Pascal's publication was "Pensées," in the plural.

There are some nice entries in those two corners, like MEDUSA, and IPHONE / GROUSE / HORNET / SWEDES (I love the "Sweden Second" spots). It's just hard for me to get past an oddity like ACUTER or PENSEE needed to hold it together. If it's some small dab of crossword glue like LIL or STE or ENS or UEYS, totally worth it, but …

ADAMA was hard for me — even after watching every single episode of "Battlestar Galactica." Crossing the unknown SCAG made it a total guess. Not sure I care for drug slang in my crossword, either.

I did love the clue for TRIANGLE. I can just imagine some jokester saying "It's right (there) in the Pythagorean Theorem!" That gave this math dork a big smile. Might even try that line myself ...

Tough to get down to 64 words in a themeless without requiring some compromises. I enjoyed this puzzle, although there weren't as many multi-word, snazzy answers as I like. MELISSA MCCARTHY is fun (hilarious in "Bridesmaids") and CHICAGO SUN-TIMES always makes me think of one of my idols, Roger Ebert. ALOHA OE (so weird to see that -AOE ending!) was nice too.

One-word entries can also sing, but I personally find them harder to gush over. PYREX, VACUUMS, ANTHRAX, SHIMMY, NOONERS pique my interest, but not so much for more workmanlike entries like SCIENCE, DICTATE, PERCENT, ASCEND, ITERATE, etc. that I hear every day. Personal taste, but those one-worders tend to feel more like neutral filler.

Great clues can elevate these more boring one-worders, though. I loved the SCIENCE clue, for example: "The great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition" is something I wish all people would remember in this day and age — it's so hard to argue with someone who discounts SCIENCE.

And ITERATE is better with its clue: [Say, say, say?]. It's not perfect, since "say, say, say" isn't as strong a phrase as I would like (how about employing the song "Sing Sing Sing" for the clue!), but it gets to the concept of ITERATE obliquely and playfully.

Smooth results in terms of short fill. I'm impressed that I had to work to pick out any gluey entries. ASEA is sometimes derided, but I think it's perfectly fine, if a bit old-timey. ALPES might be the only culprit, as the semi-esoteric foreign word. That's great work for a 64-word themer.

Ultra-low word count puzzles often rely on odd words formed by RE- prefixes or -ER suffixes, often have a ton of neutral filler that doesn't excite me much, and/or rely on a ton of crossword glue to hold everything together. It's a mark of success that I didn't actually realize that this was an ultra-low word count effort until I looked at it more carefully. Nice craftsmanship, if not super exciting.

I usually get nervous when I see a puzzle this wide open, wondering how many bizarre entries I'll have to figure out, including but not limited to esoterica, words made up by adding RE- or -ER, and standard short crossword glue. What a huge relief to sail through this puzzle with not much of the aforementioned at all!

My favorite was the upper right, what with MEGATRON (leader of the evil Decepticons in "Transformers," and also the awesome nickname for former Detroit Lions WR Calvin Johnson) featured, plus STEPSONS and ICE CAP pretty good too.

And really just one gluey entry up there! SPINET is a perfectly legit musical instrument (a small piano, basically), but like David mentioned, TIRO is a toughie. I'm on the fence whether or not Cicero's longtime servant is crossworthy, but the other, much more common definition of TIRO [Newbie: Var.] makes for a clearly gluey answer.

The bottom right is a good example of the struggle to achieve both snazziness and cleanliness in these type of big corners. I really like how careful David was in avoiding any sort of glue — it's so hard to do in space like this. And STREET SMART was really nice. But nothing else was very notable — STRESSED, PRESERVE, PLANES, etc. are more neutral space-fillers to me than assets.

I did like that COHERER turned out to be all right. At first I wondered if it was one of those odd -ER words, but it does appear to be a real, albeit outdated, piece of radio technology. AMEN AMEN … I'm not a churchgoer, but do people really repeat the word in this fashion? Something more like AAA-MEN! feels more spot-on to me.

But overall, there were more good entries than I expected out of an ultra-low-word-count puzzle like this — the ones David mentioned, plus STARDATE and even FLAT RATE BOX — and very few of the ANTA (American National Theater and Academy) gluey bits. Pleasantly surprised.

★ Sometimes you're right on a constructor's wavelength, and I think I mind melded with David today. From start to finish, such an enjoyable solve, featuring a high count of stellar entries along with just a modicum of crossword glue. Beautiful work.

I thought it would be a breeze when I filled in FLASH MOB without a crossing (a more clever clue would have been great for a Saturday puzzle). But I struggled to finish that corner, with a big smile on my face after uncovering LL COOL J. That terminal J is so odd looking! And then to race ahead with JEDI MIND TRICKS = awesome for this Star Wars lover.

As an aside, many — MANY — people ask me to reduce the rapper references in my crosswords. I don't actually care for much rap these days, but it's hard to argue that LL COOL J isn't a megastar that most every NYT solver really ought to know. He's excelled in both music and acting, so I don't buy the "why do I have to know all these rap stars" grumbling. Sorry, buddy, expand your horizons.

David does something interesting with his grid layout, compressing JEDI MIND TRICKS and UNIVERSAL DONOR (I just gave blood donation #124, so I loved this entry) together. It's tough to feature 14-letter answers in a themeless, as they fix so much into place, cutting down your flexibility. I love David's push to not just use these difficult lengths, but also to run a bunch entries through the middle of them — including the long and strong entries BUM A RIDE and USA TODAY.

(What a shame USA TODAY wasn't clued to #gridgate. Lost opportunity; so awesome that a plagiarist got what was coming to him.)

I wasn't as big a fan of the lower right as the rest of the puzzle — YEARS AGO and DIAPER PIN feel a bit … well, YEARS AGO. But STREAKING is a nice single-word answer, and to get some GRINGO / OLYMPIA makes up for some of the lost potential. (I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so GIMLI was a gimme for me. Your results may vary.)

Overall though, such good use of most every portion of his grid, UPSILON, NEODADA, I LOST IT converting those 7-letter slots into nice assets — not to mention BLITZEN and THE HULK!

Not a SINLESS puzzle what with a bit of ESE, ETAT, OEIL (it is an admirable attempt to save those latter two by linking them together in [Coup d'___]), but what a snazzy and clean solving experience, right up my alley. I really liked that I gelled so well today with someone from two generations behind me.

Two young guns teaming up! Fun to see David and David work on something together. Also fun to see some nice stacking work — really long triple-stacks with clean crossings are very hard to do, but D&D pull theirs off pretty well.

I liked the top stack a lot. I wasn't familiar with IMAGINE DRAGONS, but that's not surprising given my pop culture deficiencies. I still enjoyed piecing it together though — what a cool name, and accessible too. The multi-talented VANESSA WILLIAMS gets a nice clue, about her fashion line "V." Gives her a fresh feel, as that fashion line was introduced this year.

D&D take such meticulous care with their crossings up top. MISE isn't great, since it can really only be clued in one way, and ANS is minor. 13 of 15 crossings being perfectly fine is good work.

And turning the corner into another triple-stack of SNARE DRUM/SMART CAR/STEVENS! That's tough to do. They make their task easier by adding three black squares in the upper right, which reduces it from a head-bangingly difficult construction to just a rough one. Those black squares do take away from the grid's total visual appeal for me, but not by that much. So I like this trade-off, allowing D&D to work in the snazzy SNARE DRUM and SMART CAR.

The bottom stack is also nice, plus every one of the 15 crossings is clean. MAKE MINE A DOUBLE is really colorful, too. However, DATING AGENCIES … I had to force myself to type in that last word, because it just didn't sound right to my ear. A lot of crossword-friendly letters in AGENCIES allows for super-clean crossings, but that entry fell flat for me. Always the trade-offs.

Themelesses featuring triple-stacks often rely very heavily on those stacks, giving not much else to the solver. So I really appreciated D&D working in those additional triple-stacks with great entries like ATTACK AD. With a bit of ODWALLA and SICHUAN spicing things up, plus the near-zero number of gluey entries, the overall result was an entertaining solve.

Extra-wide grid to accommodate THE BIG BANG THEORY. Great trivia that Stephen Hawking and Buzz Aldrin guest-starred! (Will Shortz guest-starred on "How I Met Your Mother," but no nod from TBBT yet.) I don't watch TBBT show very often, but I love that a cast full of hard-core nerds is so popular.

Some nice entries in TALL ONES, NO HARM DONE, AIR CARRIER, and my favorite, SHELL GAME. Plus, I like how they're spread all across the grid, rather than concentrated like usual in the four corners.

Running so many long answers through each other does make filling difficult, though. Check out how HOUND DOG, EDO PERIOD, and LIVERMORE intersect that NE stack … as well as THE BIG BANG THEORY! That constrains the section so rigidly. I don't mind a bit of NEB at all, but CUT ABOVE without "a" feels pretty partialish and inelegant. CCC clued as the Roman 300 (L = 50, times 6) also feels pretty weak. Tough to make a region with so many intersecting long answers without a flaw or two.

I like GONERS as an answer — totally in my regular usage. DOER is even fine, as in "I'm a doer!" SCARERS … not so much.

I was baffled by [Whitehouse in D.C., e.g.]. It had to be some clever clue, right? Nope, but what a cool piece of info — there's a senator named Sheldon Whitehouse. I imagine it gave him quite a leg up during elections. (Makes you wonder why no candidate has legally changed their first name to "President.")

Also baffling was RIVES. I so badly wanted that to be RENDS, which I never really used before I started doing crosswords. Not sure if I had seen RIVE before, so I looked it up: "to rend." Thanks, dictionary!

It's so tough to work with so many intersecting long answers. Some slots like GLEE CLUB and RAY KROC are so well utilized, but others like BELITTLED and ELONGATE feel like just neutral results to me. Still, an enjoyable solve with a fantastic backbone entry.

Nice, clean construction with some standout entries. IT IS DECIDEDLY SO felt so difficult to piece together, what with that odd -LYSO ending — a great feeling of accomplishment when I finally figured it out.

I was impressed with David's work in puzzle layout. Giant swaths of wide-open white squares often means that the puzzle gets segmented into pieces, but David did very well in keeping his two corners and the middle diagonal well-connected with high solving flow. Even if you didn't know GENERAL ZOD and had the same trouble as me in grokking IT IS DECIDEDLY SO, there's still a ton of ways to bridge that gap at the top — doing it with the fantastic entries SUNTANNING, ONE PLEASE, DR PEPPER, and BEARCATS is so well done.

I'm a comics dork — my nephew considers me to be a quasi-superhero because of my ability to answer any superhero trivia (pro tip: I make some of it up) — but GENERAL ZOD is pretty deep even for me. I don't mind it as an answer, as he played a crucial role in"Superman II", but he didn't give me quite the surge of emotions as LEX LUTHOR or KRYPTONITE might.

ZOD crossing CELADON … I think CELADON is something that NYT solvers would want to know (important technique in ceramics), but that intersection feels like it sets up some solvers to fail. No doubt that the diagonal swath is intensely hard to fill with color and cleanliness, but this felt like a weak spot to me. I did really like BANANA BOAT, CALTECH, CAKE PAN, and overall it's a very nice swath of mid-to-longish entries, but oof.

Some clues lost me, so I'll explain:

• How is a [Networking aid] a server? When it's a computer server. I was stuck on the "making contacts" sense of networking.
• John TYLER was the shortest-serving vice-president? That's wrong, as it's William Henry Harrison who died just a month into office! Ah. Wait. TYLER was his VP. Never mind!
• What kind of CAKE PAN contains batteries? None, but many are batter-y. (Groan.)
• IM UP is a [Shout when there's no cause for (an) alarm], i.e. the alarm clock is unnecessary.

I liked Dave's take on SIDE BARS — we've seen a lot of "side" or "around" type puzzles, but I like the feat of stacking "bars" in sets of two., i.e. SNACK (bar) next to POWER (bar), TOOL (bar) next to MARS (bar).

Joe Krozel mentioned to me that stacking two answers is much easier than people might think, and David does have extra flexibility in being able to switch themers around, i.e. TOOL, MARS, DIVE, OPEN, CLAM, TIKI, SAND, TACO could all be interchanged. Still, Dave executes with impressive smoothness around all those pairs. I especially like TRIMOTOR and FIRE OPALS extending out from the NE pair. I wasn't as taken with VENIAL in the west, kind of an odd word, but all the crossings are fair.

As one of the younger constructors on the block, I've liked Dave's voice, giving us fresh-sounding entries like ALT-TAB (if you don't use this shortcut to switch between applications, I highly recommend it) and AW NUTS. Not as much today as with his other puzzles, but given the challenges in this construction, I like that Dave went for (and achieved) a smooth and clean fill.

Thursdays can be made trickier by 1.) a twisty, innovative idea, 2.) deviously clever clues, or 3.) just plain stumper-hard clues (listed in my preferred order). I've seen enough of these "side" puzzles that it didn't feel very innovative, but some clues sure were clever:

• Pitcher's delivery had to be WIND-UP or something ... except if a pitcher is defined as "one who pitches a SPIEL."
• What the heck could C - V - B - N - M possibly mean? Turns out it's letter sequence above the SPACE (bar).
• Round figure led me toward ESTIMATE or GUESSTIME or FUDGE FACTOR (we engineers like our fudge factors). But it just meant a round shape, i.e. a SPHERE.

The theme was a bit repetitive once I cottoned to it, but a bunch of clues like these really kept my attention.

HATERS GONNA HATE! A shame that this awesome phrase was used just over a month ago. This repetition — the central entry in both themelesses — reduced the impact of Dave's puzzle for me. I know that Will is cautious about not repeating feature themeless entries too quickly, but this one was unfortunate.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed this puzzle. Dave uses a daunting arrangement of quad-stacked 9s, and he executes well. That NW corner is a beaut. POWER GRAB is colorful, as is SKIN TIGHT. I'm a big RAISINETS fan, too. All that goodness, plus the clue echo [Set off] for TRIP and IGNITED (two tenses!) and HATERS GONNA HATE running through it = great work. Not a fan of NESSES as it seems too close to [Eliot and others], but it does work.

I did like the SE corner, although not as much as the NW. HAIRLINE gets a fun clue in [Plugs can move it forward], but NET LOSSES is a bit too easy to use on an edge, given how many friendly letters like S there are. Plus, this capitalist wants net profits, not NET LOSSES!

I also like what Dave did with his more typical 9x3 stacks. ADEN YEMEN was hard to figure out, and I liked the challenge. It reminded me of kooky things I've seen like AKRONOH and MESAAZ. What bizarre strings of letters, right? But people see AKRON, OH and MESA, AZ all the time on envelopes. I love that kind of stuff which masks usual commas and other punctuation.

Super-smooth incorporation of TJ MAXX's two Xs. As if NINE HOLES, NBA FINALS, LEFT TURN, JS BACH wasn't enough, adding two Xs to the corner is some serious allspice.

Great clues in [Some foreign reserves] for YEN (I plunked in OIL), and [Some ribbons and shells] for PASTA, both cluing plural answers that don't use a terminal S or I.

Very minor gluey stuff like ANAS … but I liked the clue echo of [Santa ___] for both ANAS and CLARA. Overall, a smooth and colorful puzzle.

Will has been spacing out these "words that can follow X" themes; a good thing. Even with a catchy revealer like IT'S IN THE BAG, they run the risk of feeling tired if seen more than a few times a year. I did like David's choices of themers — BOOK EM DANNO and SAND CASTLE are pretty nice. I didn't know ICE ROAD TRUCKERS, but what a cool name!

Does Sarah Palin call herself a TEA PARTIER? More importantly, when Putin looks over from Russia, what does he call her? (Don't answer that.)

Ah, the adjacent long downs. It's so tempting to leave two long slots open and try to stick the landing. I really like ACAI BERRY and DECOUPAGE. Those are the types of entries I'd shoot for. The price of ORA and ARG … yeah, I'd pay that. But when you throw in the random OOX, that feels like too much. It's a slight step up from [Three random letters], but just a slight one.

And as much of a Star Trek fan I am, Kirk just doesn't sound right without the T in JAMES T KIRK. Total nerd snobbery, I know. Also, the price to pay of OJO + SAO + SESS + NRC + LIS feels quite heavy to me.

Part of the issue is that David chose to go down to 72 words, a very tough task when you're working with five themers. That means his upper right and lower left corners are pretty big ... right where those parallel downs sit. Makes the task even more challenging.

I do like what David did with the upper left. Having two themers separated by a six-letter space (BOOK EM DANNO and TEA PARTIER separated by ONSITE) is something I avoid, because it's usually hard to find a six letter word that gives clean crossings. Some people might complain about SPOSA, but I kind of like that.

The symmetrical spot, the lower right, demonstrates the difficulty of this layout. I like ICKIER a lot, but ERGOT, SKED and RET aren't great.

I appreciate David's effort to push the boundaries given the straightforward theme. A bit rocky around the edges, though.

KIM JONG UN tied right to "The Interview," love it! I also love KIM JONG UN's accomplishments, like learning to drive at age three. Did you know he also beat Dan Feyer in this year's World Crossword Puzzle Tournament by three hundred minutes, taking his fortieth straight crown?

Loved seeing OLIVE TREE featured as [Athena's gift to Athens]. So cool how she out-thought Poseidon, who gave the people on that island a river of … sea water.

And a great clue in TOUPEES, [Top-secret disguises?] repurposing the term "top-secret." In most cases, it's really not much of a secret. (Sorry, fellas.)

David wades into tough territory today in his NE and SW corners. Any 4x7 or bigger space is usually difficult to fill both cleanly and with color. I like David's execution in his lower left, GQ MAGAZINE along with MISS USA and G STRING. There's an amazing amount of testosterone there, but I appreciated how David kept the glue to just NISEI. And that's actually a fine term, a Japanese family friend using it to describe herself.

The opposite corner is more typical of the trade-offs seen with these 4x7s. Standard & Poor's upgrades / downgrades issues all the time. RERATES does technically describe it, but it's not really used. And CHEMO … what happened to the "no cancer references"? In some ways it's great to see the topic broached, but what a downer for someone in the hospital doing the crossword.

I loved CHO referenced to Harry Potter, as I've read the books five or six times. I can see how that would make some solvers grumble though, if they knew CHO Chang as much as I knew DARK ANGEL. Either-you-know-it-or-you-don't entries are tough, playing strongly to uberfans but potentially irritating to others.

If you're going to need gluey bits of the same type, probably best to not draw attention to them with clue echoes (SES / A TOI, NTS linked to SUITES).

The 68 word construction is tough. David goes to one end of the spectrum today, giving us some very fresh feeling entries like GIGAHERTZ and DATA PLANS and ADD TO CART, while requiring a relatively high count of liability entries to hold them together.

A great majority of constructors never dip a toe into the quagmire that is the 64-word themeless, so it's that much more impressive that a newer constructor would try it. A really nice result, an open puzzle featuring a lot of long entries.

Great to get a bit of David's personal vibe into the puzzle, the clues for EMMET and LIVIN LA VIDA LOCA clued to "The LEGO Movie" and "Shrek 2." I much appreciated getting a feel of recency via cluing instead of esoteric (to me) answers. So many of the latest pop stars or rap songs go over my head, requiring every single crossing to get. At the ACPT, Sam Ezersky and I talked about how David's earlier GRAND THEFT AUTO: III / MTV MOVIE AWARDS puzzle resonated so strongly with him while I had to struggle with those entries — we had a laugh when realizing that he and David were from the exact same demographic ... very different from mine.

By nature, wide-open areas are often going to require some glue to hold them together. David does amazingly well in most of his grid, spreading out the bits of OCALA, MLLES, ILO such that they're not terribly noticeable. Most impressive is the middle stack of MUHAMMAD ALI / ROLLOVER IRA / WLLIAM TELL with very clean crossings.

The only place I hitched a bit was the SW corner. As much as I liked ALGER HISS / WIRE FENCE and SCIPIO, it's the only corner of the grid where there's a concentration of elements David mentioned: SOO, EER, RFDS. I think I like ZEIT, but I can see how it would feel like prefix-ish or too deep into the German language for some.

Finally, loved many of the clues. [Peer group?] for EYES is brilliant. [Pen that's no longer used] refers to a penitentiary = ALCATRAZ. And [Wheel of Fortune] as part of the TAROT deck is a great misdirect.

Cool layout today, built around longish themers containing TERM smack dab in their middles. MONSTER MOVIE has exactly four letters before TERM and four after, LATER MAN has two in front and two in back, etc. Nice touch.

A good amount of colorful fill in those big, open corners. A AS IN APPLE, CLOSE LOOK, BAILING OUT, METRO AREA are all snazzy entries, enhancing my solving experience. They're awfully tough to build around, necessitating the ILA, KAN, DEPT, etc. sort of gluey bits. Reasonable trade-off, though.

Note how David has placed his six (!) themers in an every-other-row layout, in rows 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13. There is so much interaction between the themers that many, many constraints are created. The center is especially crunched, with LAIRD (sort of) interacting with FOUR themers. It works fairly cleanly, although it would have been nice to at least have the option to choose something different than LAIRD. I actually think that entry is pretty interesting, but I imagine it will draw grumbles from "Tuesday solvers."

Generally I advocate for as much space as possible in between themers, but in the special case of high theme density, I often try to squeeze pairs of themers together. Here, I might have tried shoving LATER MAN and MASTERMIND together in rows 3 and 4. Not sure if it would have given friendly letter pairs in the overlap, but it would have let David lay out the skeleton as if he were working with four (very long) themers rather than six.

Rich Norris (editor of the LA Times crossword) has mentioned to me that it takes a lot to overcome his bias against single-word themers. I can see where that comes in today, with UNDETERMINED being not nearly as exciting as MONSTER MOVIE in my eyes. MASTERMIND does have a lot of appeal, but it might have been nice to see more of the DUMB TERMINAL / HIPSTER MUSIC kind of entries.

Finally, great clue for ONE. Curious to figure out if RELATIONS is the longest common word that can be formed by one-point Scrabble tiles.

Some beautiful clues today:

• [Upper cut?] is perfect for PRIME RIB, playing on "upper" as "higher quality."
• TENURE is a form of [Fire safety?], in that getting TENURE gives you keeps you from getting fired.
• PET NAMES are indeed [Love handles?], when you think about "handles" as another word for "nicknames."
• [Part of the Hollywood crowd?] had me stumped for the longest time. Perfect way to brighten up EXTRA, an otherwise neutral word.

It's rare that we get quite so much fun wordplay in a themeless. Much appreciated.

Construction involves so many trade-offs. The NW and SE regions run the risk of stranding the solver, since they both have just one way in. But it's precisely this quality that makes construction easier.

Take the SE, where the MUTT / TRESS region doesn't have to connect to anything above. That may seem like a minor issue, but it's not. If even one square opened above it (i.e. the black square between TOME and MEDAL were changed to a white square), the difficulty level goes up by a factor of maybe two. It's a tough call — as a constructor you want both 1.) the solver not to get stranded and 2.) the fill to be sparkly and clean. Those two goals are often diametrically opposed.

Given the difficulty level of having more wide-open sections with two ways in, it's easy to see why the SW region had some of the rockiest bits. It's a beautiful triple-stack (if only the PRICELINE Negotiator had been invoked) but having to connect to the rest of the puzzle in two directions forces ABOU up above and MEDI / SML below.

The difficulty level makes me really admire David's construction in the NE. Having to fill the triple stack of LIZ TAYLOR / ATARI CORP / SYCAMORES such that it connected around with both the EYE COLOR and the DOTARD regions is admirable. Excellent construction work.

Unusual layout today, built around pairs of feature entries intersecting. What a beautiful set in PHARAOHS / WII SPORTS / SCHOOLS OUT / DR SCHOLLS. Something old, something new, something hard rock, something you can put in a moc. I like the diversity of answers from a wide range of subjects; something for everyone.

Jim and I have recently had some thought-provoking discussions about "what is good fill" as we prepare to make word lists available. SANA is an interesting example, as Rich Norris mentioned to me a few years ago that he couldn't justify having it in crosswords anymore, as SANA'A is the generally accepted spelling. But it's perfectly fine for Will, as he's used it several times in recent memory. So much of "good fill" and "bad fill" is subjective.

I had trouble with both the PANTERA / FARIS crossing, as well as the BEDELIA / SEGOS crossing (SAGO and SEGO are so hard to keep straight). I liked learning all the three names I hadn't known, but learning each one separately would have been preferable for me.

Overall, I liked David's vibe, saying YEAH MAN! to the beautiful DRUM SOLO with its hard-hitting [Hard-hitting musical performance?] clue.

Nice debut themeless today. David's a young 'un, and I like the vibe he brings to the puzzle with GRAND THEFT AUTO, MTV MOVIE AWARDS, and ADULT SWIM, doing a good job of making the puzzle feel contemporary without feeling like it's trying too hard.

And I love the quest for continuous improvement. It was fascinating for me to study David's original grid, which I felt had more compromises and fewer assets. That RESPIGHI / NEI crossing alone might have been enough for me personally to reboot the corner, not to mention to have A RAG in the same corner. I'm sure it makes a lot more work for Will to consider these upgrades, but I found the effort well worth it.

As much as I personally hate to lose LOLCATS and DWEEBISH from the original, I loved the addition of SKYMALL and its great clue, plus HES BACK, LONGBOW, TRAIN FARE with its nice clue, and oddly enough ... DAYS INN. That last one could have easily felt dated (not unlike an actual DAYS INN; apologies to any DAYS INN shareholders, zing!) but that clue made it really interesting to me.

And it's funny how different constructors see certain entries with such different perspective. To me, ETAIL is a perfectly fine entry, something you see in the WSJ and business page regularly. But I can understand how someone not really interested in online businesses might think ETAIL is more at the level of EMAG or ELOAN.

A tough SE corner, one I ended up guessing on. ATARAXY wasn't familiar to me — maybe it should have been — but crossing it with ADAWARE felt unsatisfying. Then to have the oddball ADAK right there … I can totally understand the desire to work in SKYMALL, as well as that juicy X, but it makes for a tough trade-off though.

Nice overall vibe all in all, David's voice feeling like it really came through.

Homonyms today, with an extra layer of theme complexity: each of the nine themers has a word including the letter Y, and that word gets replaced with a homonym not containing the letter Y. WHY NOT? indeed.

For a relatively simple theme, it's critical to choose themers that both 1.) have a snappy base phrase and 2.) entertaining results. This is always a challenge — so hard to stick 100% of your themers. I quite liked CHAISE REBELLION, for example. It took me a while to remember what SHAY'S REBELLION was, and the fact that I pulled it out of long-term storage gave me a "I won!" feeling. The amusing picture of a guy throwing a hissy-fit over the patio furniture more than satisfied the second.

NO RIME OR REASON was on the other end of my spectrum. I got confused as it seemed like it ought to be NO RHYME NOR REASON or NO RHYME NO REASON, plus the resulting themer fell flat for me. Perhaps there would be a way to improve that in my eyes, a more entertaining connection between RIME and REASON — something to do with Jack Frost, perhaps? As it was, it felt like two random things thrown together.

I like the shoot-for-the-moon approach David takes on his first Sunday NYT puzzle. Most first-timers adhere tightly to the 140-word maximum, pulling their hair out to do anything they possibly can to drop from 146 or 144 down to Will's threshold of 140. It's very, very hard to do. Going down to 138 words gives him the potential for a little more long fill, and I love seeing BOO HISS, UNITARD, TENDRILS with its brilliant clue, and RICKROLL. Mind you, I didn't know what being rickrolled meant until I encountered it in an earlier NYT puzzle, but I find it hilarious for some reason.

I do think there's some missed potential though, as ULTRAHIP and ALLEGER feel a little made up to me, and ALBANESE was one of those names I shrugged at after uncovering. With so few precious 7+ letter slots, I want to see them all filled with juicy material.

As Will mentioned, sometimes a perfect title pulls everything together, and today is a case in point.

★ It took me a long time to figure out what was going on here, but what a neat moment when it clicked. I didn't know the song PAINT IT BLACK, but that didn't take away too much from my solving experience. Once I got over that hump of figuring out the first IT themer, it all fell into place. Great concept.

I couldn't visualize how David put this together! So I reconstructed his puzzle skeleton, which helped me understand much better. It's actually a 72-word grid with crossing themers, a really tough puzzle to pull off. To get this to work, and on a debut puzzle no less... super impressive.

I might have liked the revealer to be placed in the horizontal direction, which is easy to do by "flipping" the puzzle about a line from the NW to the SE (any crossword can be flipped like this and still have all the answers read correctly). For me, it would have been so nice to have the puzzle flipped like this, so that the revealer had been in the usual location. I'm so used to having most revealers running horizontally, located somewhere around the bottom of the puzzle. I'm such a creature of habit.

When I construct, I always look for the most constrained and/or biggest chunk of space I need to fill. Notice how the north and south, with their 6x3 chunks and the themers bordering them, stick out? That's where I'd typically start filling, as they'd be among the hardest parts to fill, if not the hardest. The rest of the puzzle is quite smooth, darn impressive given the 72-word nature of it and the crossing themers, so it was a bit unfortunate that ECARTE reared its ugly head right off the bat, and in the south we get SDI (which Will has mentioned that he's on the verge of not allowing anymore), OSH, TAVI, and the crossing I got wrong, PETER TOSH / SOLANO. I expect to not get a lot of pop music references, but I'm from California and hadn't heard of SOLANO. I don't think I'll be the only solver to have issues there.

All in all, an impressive debut. Great idea and pretty darn good execution.