Gary Cee author page

"Disguised synonyms" themes work best when the synonyms are . . . well, well-disguised.

That's why they pay me the big bucks, people.

SEATTLE SLEW is a perfect way to obfuscate the "a lot" meaning of SLEW. Horse owners and the weird names they give! PAPAL MASS also works, since the religious sense of "mass" is different from the "large group of things" sense.

BATTERY PACK, not so much, as that means "a lot of batteries put together." Better would have been something like VACUUM PACK.

HEAP is a tougher one, as there is no other meaning of HEAP than "a big pile." What would have been another word to work with, less directly? How about CARBO LOAD?

To have or not have a revealer, that is usually the question. Not today, though, since newer solvers would almost definitely miss the theme concept without it. Heck, some experienced ones, too! I liked IT MEANS A LOT TO ME, although simply IT MEANS A LOT feels much stronger. Less is more.

IT MEANS A LOT could have been placed into the last themer position, too, delaying the a-ha moment until the end of the solve. It's not as fun when you hit the revealer halfway through the puzzle, making the rest of the solve a bit of a let-down.

I loved the long bonuses, and if you're going to include six of them, Gary laid them out perfectly. Staggering WORRISOME, THE NATURAL, OPEN ARMS, LEGAL PAD, GULF STATES, MOTOR RACE up down up down up down, spread across the columns, is the best way to create spacing, working around those five themers.

Whether you should or not is a different question. See: ALCAN, AGITA, OTT crossing STENS for Pete's sake that's just taunting newbs! See also: GESSO crossing SKOL. As much as I appreciated those six long bonuses, limiting them to four would have made for a much more appealing puzzle.

Overall, a strong theme concept, but the puzzle could have used both theme and grid revisions.

Serviceable Monday concept — (cut a) RUG, (cut the) MUSTARD, (cut the) CORD, (cut the) DECK — easy(ish) to understand, even for newer solvers. Some nice extras, too: ETERNAL / STATURE, BLATHER, CAPE COD / HIRSUTE. That's a ton of great mid-length fill.

What could make it a cut above, though?

• More consistency. Do you see why 1.) RUG, CHECK, DEAL, or 2.) MUSTARD, CORD, DECK would have worked better? Having a set where all the themers imply "THE" — except one — is inelegant.
• More consistency, part 2. RUG, MUSTARD and CORD are much better than DECK, because the first three form colorful, colloquial phrases. CUT the DECK is the only literal phrase; again, an odd man out.
• Smoother fill that's more accessible for newer solvers. AMAH, CFC, AGIN shouldn't be let through. Even an entry like VESTRY is questionable. It is a real, dictionary-supported word, but how many newer solvers are going to look at it with the stink-eye?

What would have been better? RUG, DEAL, MUSTARD, CORD would have given two implied "A"s and two "THE"s. It's not perfectly consistent, but having a mix is better than risking a "this one is not like the others" moment.

I'd have also made one of the themers seven letters, to facilitate gridding — a central seven doesn't force big, hard-to-fill corners, the way a central nine does. Probably SHAG RUG.

I enjoy puzzles that feature the kooky creativity of the English language. But Monday puzzles need to contain much fewer irregularities than the English language does.

HIT IT! An appropriate way to kick off a week, and an apt revealer for HIT the CEILING, HIT the SAUCE, HIT the SACK, etc. Reminds me of a funny clue I once saw: what might [Hit it on the head] be? Answer: NAIL.

Consistency was perfect today, every themer following the HIT the ___ pattern. Gary could have delved into (HIT) PARADE, (HIT) MAN, (HIT) a HOMER, but he chose to stick with only HIT phrases using THE.

I also appreciated that he put each of the six words at the ends of his phrases. Many solvers won't notice, but that attention to detail helps increase a puzzle's elegance.

Tightness was only so-so. At first, I thought, how many HIT the ___ phrases could there be? Didn't take long to come up with BOOKS, BOTTLE, BRAKES, DIRT, HAY, MOON, ROAD, SKIDS, SPOT. I'm sure there are others.

Don't get me wrong. I did like that Gary picked six that are colorful. It doesn't have that feeling of elegance or inspired amazement, though, the way discovering a perfect, unalterable set would have.

Some blips in the gridwork, not a surprise given the six themers plus HIT IT revealer. OGEE should never be in an early-week puzzle. That west section, with ROTC ROLF OTOH OTOE is bound to trip up newer solvers. I have some friends who are just starting to get into crosswords, and I wouldn't give them this one.

Intersecting themers, like HACKYSACK and CLAM SAUCE, can often create valuable spacing for gridwork. Here though, an all-across layout would have produced a better result. Start with CLAM SAUCE or LOWER DECK all the way to the left in row 3. HACKYSACK or CHECKMARK to the right in row 4. DEBT CEILING or WESTERN WALL to the left in row 6. The overlap in rows 3 and 4 make it like you're working with just 4 themers, not 6.

Not only would that have produced a smoother result, but it would have made the all-across themers easier to pick out for solvers.

A solid and consistent theme, with a couple of nice bonuses in SEGWAYS, I KNEW IT, TARTARE. Not smooth enough of an early-week product, though.

I misspell SOBRIQUET all the time (for some reason, "sobrioquet" looks better). And now it turns out that I‘ve been mispronouncing it too. I was up in arms at first, because Bing's dictionary gives an audio, rhyming with "etiquette." But I think that's just Bing.

Zing! (Apologies to MSFT Bing! workers everywhere, who work so hard to make such an inferior product. Double zing!)

Google's dictionary pronounces it with an ending K sound — matching the written pronunciation in both dictionaries. Ahem. BING!!!

That's all a long way of saying that my early-week "Name that Theme" game took an unexpected turn. I guessed the theme in two themers. Then I hit my ridiculous SOBRIQUET tangent.

ARE YOU OKAY, Mary Kay? How about you, SIR KAY, from the Arthurian legends? How does it feel to be passed over by some guy named MURRAY THE K? If it helps, SPECIAL K and VITAMIN K are lodging similar protests.

I'd have been okay with just four themers, since 1.) the K rhymes get old pretty quick, and 2.) five themers strained the gridwork.

Now, I did like a lot of Gary's mid-length stuff. NEURONS / TAPIOCA, BEQUEST, NO SIREE, ATHEISM, all solid bonuses! RACE ME is a price to pay for that BEQUEST, but I like how it was clued, in a "race me" way that newbs could figure out.

Check out the south region though, where MURRAY THE K and ARE YOU OKAY overlap. Tough to find a four-letter entry that works in between them, and O SAY isn't great fill to begin with. Then, that forces RYANS, another dab of crossword glue. Top it off with ENE / SSW and I'd look to try a different grid layout.

Rhyming themes / different ways of spelling out a certain sound have been done so many times that it would have been great to do something fresher here. How about riffing on SPECIAL K — and having that K as the only K in the entire grid? Not sure how to clue that, but a twist like that could have raised the theme to a new level.

I'm a big fan of "what connects these disparate things?" themes. It's a lot of fun to get to the end of an early-week puzzle and still have no idea what's going on. PASSABLE gave me a good a-ha click — PASS the HAT, PASS the TORCH, PASS the TIME, PASS the BUCK.

I also like Gary's consistency. You could use other passable things, like PASS MUSTER or PASS A NOTE, but sticking strictly to a PASS THE ___ pattern adds some tightness.

It's unusual to have mid-length slots (6-7 letters) add much to the quality of a solve, but there were a lot of strong ones today: PRONTO, PISCES, AGHAST, HOBBIT, EVOLVE, STOOGE. Outstanding stuff.

Speaking of AGHAST, though, let's address the issue that overrode the solving experience for me.

Will and I had a dialogue over BEANER; an offensive term slung at people from Mexico. I wondered if it might be a West Coast / East Coast thing, so I alerted Will about this. He thought about it but decided that since there is a valid dictionary definition, people would have to just ignore the secondary meaning.

I generally think Will does a great job in editing the NYT puzzle — hard to argue with results, with solvership exploding into the hundreds of thousands under his helm. This is one of the less than 5% of things that I strongly disagree with, though. Yes, BEANER is in the dictionary as a baseball term. But a pitch at someone's head is usually called a "bean ball," not a BEANER.

And I Googled BEANER to see what came up first — a page full of definitions as the racist term.

I respect Will's viewpoint that people will see what they want to see in any entry. For example, I personally take offense to CHINK in puzzles, and a couple of readers have bluntly told me "I'm being too sensitive" (and worse). My response is that it's easy to say that if you haven't been told to "go home, you dirty f*cking chink" (and much worse). But I do understand this one, since a CHINK in one's armor is a very common saying. So I shrug it off.

BEANER on the other hand, feels so, so, so very wrong, considering that the alternate definition isn't much in real usage these days.

Puzzles ought to be enjoyable, a smile-inducing diversion from the daily struggles of life. Even if BEANER punches just a small number of solvers, that makes it worth changing — especially since the fix is super easy. ABEL to AHEM and ANI to ALI is just one of the many ways to revise.

An ugly blot on an otherwise pleasant puzzle.

ADDED NOTE: A spokesperson from the NYT issued this statement: "Tuesday's Crossword puzzle included an entry that was offensive and hurtful. It is simply not acceptable in The New York Times Crossword and we apologize for including it."

PLAY BALL! Or something. I was all set to give this the thumbs-up as an easy-peasy baseball puzzle — themers ending in things an ump would say — and then I hit the revealer. CLOSE CALL = … close, as in close the door?

Wha?

I scratched my head and finally decided that I was overthinking this. What, me overthink something? Never!

Maybe it's tricksily meant to sound like "clothes"?

No ...

I finally asked Jim what the revealer meant, and he proceeded to scratch his head. Curious!

As far as I can tell, these words are all "close-ing" calls, i.e., a deterministic utterance from an ump? As in, he/she closes the door on further discussion?

I better quit analyzing before my head explodes.

There's something interesting about early-week puzzles with a ton of interlock — check out how SPACED OUT intersects with STATE FAIR. Gives the puzzle the feel of THERE'S THEME EVERYWHERE! Kind of neat.

Not kind of neat: ASTA CEST ROS ASCAP SEAU KELSO. And TFAL crossing OLLA? O-la-la! This is not at all friendly to newer solvers.

All in all, I liked the "things said by an ump" idea, but the revealer was a serious beanball. I think something much simpler like UMP would have created a better a-ha moment, and would also have allowed for a much more elegant and solver-friendly grid.

ADDED NOTE: I broke down and asked Will, who clarified that the revealer is meant to point to "close," as in the "call" closes out the theme phrase. For example, in AIR STRIKE, "strike" is final word of the phrase, thus the "close-r" of said phrase. D'oh! I probably should have figured that out. Maybe.

DRINKS ARE ON ME? What a nice offer, Gary! Make mine a quadruple — that is, four drinks literally atop the bigram ME. I had a nice a-ha after putting in SIDECAR as a [Motorcycle attachment], and then realizing that a SIDECAR is also a mixed drink.

The others didn't work as well for me, as the drink definitions of MIMOSA, GIMLET, and MARTINI are much more recognizable than their … whatever else they are. The MIMOSA is a tropical tree? A GIMLET is embarrassingly unrecognizable to this mechanical engineer as a [Hand tool for boring holes]?

And maybe I should know Danny DeVito's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" role, as a character named MARTINI? It is a classic movie, I suppose. Huh.

Point is, it's much nicer when the drink is disguised in another easily recognizable form. Perhaps a SCREWDRIVER or BLOODY MARY would have been better. Tougher to build around, for sure, but more fun. Especially for a Monday puzzle that's supposed to be easy!

Speaking of tough to build around, DRINKS ARE ON ME is 13 letters, such a dread-inducing length. Plunking it down in the center of the puzzle already takes away so much precious flexibility. I can see why Gary chose to stick to shorter drinks. Much easier to wedge in MIMOSA than to jam in a long SCREWDRIVER.

That sounded a lot dirtier than it really was.

Although you can shift the ME letters left and right a lot, having those extra letters is still an additional set of constraints. Gary did pretty darn well to hold the crossword glue to just some APAR, EPS, STE. FLACKS did sound odd to me in the plural, but it does get dictionary support as [Press agents]. Huh.

A bit repetitive to fill in those MEs — once you hit the revealer, it's all too easy to fill in whatever MEs you haven't gotten to yet. But I liked the playful theme notion and really liked how Gary disguised his SIDECAR.

Such meaty theme entries today … and they form a meal! Starting with a WORD SALAD (a more polite term for "word vomit"), continuing with a NOTHING BURGER (Kevin O'Leary from "Shark Tank" uses this all the time), some COUCH POTATOES, finishing with a HUMBLE PIE. I've seen COUCH POTATOES and HUMBLE PIE used before in similar crosswords, but the first two feel nice and fresh. Well done.

Strong execution, too. I'd expect at least a pair of good bonus entries from Gary, given just four themers, and he didn't disappoint. ARPEGGIO for us classical music-lovers, I SUPPOSE, HOT MIC, PEGASUS — all of them excellent lifts as I solved.

There's a bit of arbitrary TWOAM, URI Geller (is he really crossworthy?), a singular ALP, but nothing else that dragged me down. I want smoothness in my Monday puzzles — to make them accessible to newer solvers — and Gary did well in this regard.

I usually think inconsistency is inelegant — POTATOES is the only plural food item — but in this case, I like the inconsistency. Who eats just one potato, after all? (This really should be the case for PIE. I mean, it's PIE, people!)

Only minor nit was the "Utah blocks" on the sides of the puzzle — the sets of five black squares that look like the state of Utah. Gary was already going to have a long down on each side of the puzzle, so why not do it in a way to avoid Utah blocks? Here, you could take out the three blocks after OPENS, and put one in at the E of IRATE — the long down would then be at the bottom right instead of the top right.

Solid Monday puzzle. It would have been spot-on if the meal had been a more typical menu — maybe SOUP, SALAD, BURGER, PIE? — but now I kind of want to try that BURGER followed by POTATOES gut bomb.

Four things that have peels today, tied together with … APPEALING? I'm terrible with puns, both making them and understanding them. I guess I can see how APPEALING might tie together an APPLE, POTATO, BANANA, ONION — if you squint really hard and maybe have a few drinks. Is HAS APPEAL a stand-alone phrase? Or is that too straightforward for a pun?

Aside from my pun tone-deafness, I liked the puzzle. Some strong theme phrases in ADAMS APPLE, HOT POTATO, TOP BANANA. And although GLASS ONION wasn't familiar, it's an interesting phrase evoking strong imagery. Gary also gives us some nice long bonuses in BARE BONES and PAINTINGS.

What struck me was how much mid-length fill Gary incorporated. Nothing is a standout, but I really enjoyed it in aggregate. We don't see 6- or 7-letter words in crosswords nearly as much as we see 3- to 5-letter ones, so it was fun to get a ton of CLASSIC, IMPINGE, TANGOED, STAMINA, OCTAGON — definitely enhanced my solve as a whole.

Nice to keep the gluey bits to a minimum too. I'm not wild about APACE, but there's really not much more than that, and I bet many people will think it's a fine word that they might actually use. I appreciate the care and thought Gary obviously put into this grid.

Overall, it might have been nice to get a wider diversity of "things that have peels." But I had a tough time thinking of much else besides SUNBURN, and thinking about that most certainly is not APPEALING. Or maybe it is? Sigh, puns.

ROAD MOVIES today, i.e. movies with an synonym for "road" in their title. Gary found three perfect examples, WALL STREET, SUNSET BOULEVARD, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE — movies famous enough that even this pop culture idiot recognized them. I also like that the revealer came as a surprise — I was expecting it to be a loose collection of four "movies with a synonym for street," which felt kind of random. Nice to have something tying everything together.

I wasn't familiar with the ROAD MOVIES term, but it seems to be legit, sort of like "buddy movies" or a "cop movies." Perhaps ROAD MOVIES will have a stronger impact on others, especially those who have watched the many "Road to ___" Crosby/Hope films.

I enjoyed the extras in FREE ON BAIL and ALL NIGHTER — both colorful answers. Working in long downs can be tough though, what with long(-ish) themers. What with FREE ON BAIL and two grid-spanning themers framing the west section, that area becomes very restricted. I don't mind a little ESE, BSA, URU crossword glue in one puzzle, but I tend to notice more when it's concentrated in one area. And the addition of LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) puts it over the top for me. Some may think BSA (Boy Scouts of America) is perfectly fine, but having two tough(-ish) acronyms in an early-week puzzle isn't something I like to see, much less in close proximity.

It's a tough call. These days I expect at least a little bonus fill in most any puzzle. But adding in long downs can often cause problems, requiring crossword glue to hold the grid together. This is what makes the early-week puzzle one of the more difficult constructions.

But overall, a really nice idea that will likely work perfectly for people more familiar with the ROAD MOVIES term.

Gary gives us the SPIN CYCLE to accompany Byron's recent RINSE CYCLE puzzle. A strong choice of themers, UP IN SMOKE and HMS PINAFORE my favorites. The latter makes me smile, thinking about Bart Simpson tricking Sideshow Bob into singing the entirety of HMS PINAFORE in order to stall for time.

Given how easy it is to find phrases with INSP and NSPI somewhere within them, I might have liked a bit more diversity rather than two Hollywood men. A bit of searching turned up such fun ones as SHIN SPLINTS, HUMAN SPIDER, GOLDEN SPIKE, or my favorite, THE GOLDEN SPIRAL.

I really appreciated some of the longer stuff like LAY A TRAP, PET SCAN, ARSENAL, OVER HERE. MASH NOTE felt a bit fusty, but even that was kind of fun.

And in general, I think Gary did a very nice job with his short fill … with one glaring exception. Now, I debated whether or not this is way too picky, but I'm a steadfast believer in making early-week puzzles accessible to all kinds of solvers. I'm a huge jazz fan, but OLETA Adams only vaguely tickled my brain. Crossing that with "It's ___ Thing" got me hung up. "It's A MOVE Thing" sounded like it could be a pop/dance song just as much as "It's A LOVE Thing."

On one hand, it's only one square. On the other, I think a puzzle should ultimately set up the solver to beat it for a feeling of euphoric satisfaction. Just one square can leave such a bad taste.

That said, the rest of the puzzle is really well executed. Impressive to have so much theme material, plus a few longer pieces of fill, and only require A TIE to hold things together.

As Gary humbly mentioned, I liked the elegance of Byron's execution better — neat to see the cycling all in a column like it was in a washing machine — but Gary's puzzle still entertained me.

I've seen the "literal X by Y" trick in a few different incarnations, and if you include the "X over Y," "X in Y," etc. it might be getting overdone. But I did enjoy seeing something kooky on a Thursday; always appreciated. AS IF (by) MAGIC was a really nice one, and TRIAL (by) JURY too. It couldn't have been easy to find four strong instances which could be grouped into symmetrical pairs.

Those symmetrical placements undoubtedly created some constraints in the grid. Sure, you can shift FIRE up and down with respect to BAPTISM, but every move you make must be mirrored by LEAD (with respect to THE NOSE). Once you fix that tricky AO bigram in the lower right, it doesn't give you many options. Gary does well to arrange things so he can run the colorful FORMULA ONE through it.

Gary uses a 76-word grid, which creates some big open corners. That lower right is tricky enough when you run FORMULA ONE through LEAD and THE NOSE. But when you run VACANCY through there, it constrains the region so much more. And then shooting DIALECT through it all … I appreciate the juiciness of big open corners, and the nice seven-letter answers, but the EFT TAEL and DSCS ESE price felt too high for me.

At 40 letters of theme, it felt a bit thin. Three very long themers are about the minimum I ask for, and that's around 43-45 letters. Sure, the "by"s are implied in the themers so it's really 48 letters of theme, but still, it would have been nice to have one more instance. How cool would it have been to get a "X by Y by Z" themer, smack dab in the middle of the grid? Not sure that's at all possible, given the symmetry requirements, but a guy can dream.

Not the most ground-breaking of Thursday tricks, but almost any twistiness on a Thursday is FINE ME.

Gymnastics equipment, nicely disguised within snappy phrases. I wasn't exactly sure what the VERBAL part of VERBAL GYMNASTICS had to do with a written puzzle — it would be kind of fun to watch people solve, screaming out the answers as they wrote them in — but sometimes I just need to poke myself and let things slide. Plus, VERBAL GYMNASTICS is such a cool phrase that it was worth the slight bit of confusion.

Sometimes I wonder if a revealer helps or hurts a puzzle. In this case, I think it was a good thing, especially given how snazzy VERBAL GYMNASTICS is. Plus, I don't know if the (pommel) horse or the (uneven) bars would be identifiable without some explicit exposition.

Smoothly filled. Gary does a nice job of careful entry selection; just a smattering of A FAN and CON'T minor glue to keep it all together.

With a 16x15 grid, I think it's important to go the extra mile to keep solvers' attention. I sure enjoyed getting the entries like YOO HOO! and NOW WHAT? along with TORTELLINI and LARYNGITIS. For a normal 15x15 puzzle, that would have been fine for me.

But I would have loved to see the boundary pushed a bit, either by 1.) taking out the black square between MUG and ERECTS (difficult to do cleanly) or 2.) shifting the two black squares by STYNE/NAPA either to the left or the right in order to allow ASSUAGE to grow to a 9-letter answer (easier). Not absolutely necessary of course, but as a solver I appreciate those added touches. Given how clean the puzzle turned out, I think getting a bit more sparkle would be worth the price of a little more glue.

FYI, I wondered how difficult it would be to hold an iron cross on the rings. I rock climb a few times a week and am feeling comfortable about my chances on a salmon ladder, so it couldn't be that hard, could it? I was going to post my feeble attempt on my gym's Olympic rings, but it turns out that my videocamera doesn't operate fast enough to capture nanoseconds.

ADDED NOTE: Gary mentioned that his orginal intent was to have the themers clued in a wacky way, i.e. [Olympic event for shallots?] for ONION RINGS. Thus the VERBAL GYMNASTICS revealer would have been more apt.

Cross-referenced clues often distract me, and I had a bit of trouble figuring out all the connections. It took me a while to figure out a good way to help visualize the word chains, but some color coding helped me appreciate the symmetry Gary incorporated.

The "cooler" colors show the NW to SE progression, blue-gray-blue and green-gray-green, nicely symmetrical. The "warmer" colors show the NE to SW flow, brown-gray-brown and red-gray-red, also pleasantly symmetrical.

It might look simply like a four-themer puzzle, but those shorties in row 1 and 15 ratchet up the level of difficulty. The six-letter entries in particular are always harder than I expect. HIGHER in that lower right corner, already sitting in a big chunk of white space, has interactions with both NEED IS LOVE and UNDER MY SKIN. Many constraints, all over the grid.

I didn't know I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER, but it amusing to watch Mike Douglas do some very awkward introductions.

Nice straightforward early-week puzzle today, phrases containing three instances of ON. Great revealer, repurposing ON AND ON AND ON (yadda yadda yadda) to tie the theme together. FYI, a search string to use for something like this is *ON?*ON?*ON*, where the question marks represent "any single letter" and the asterisks are "any set of letters with length greater than or equal to 0." If you didn't mind two consecutive ONs, *ON*ON*ON* would be even simpler.

Gary utilizes a great arrangement for long fill today. Check out how TRANSLUCENT, PINE NUTS, TEXT BOOK, and WRITING DESK are both spaced out and alternating, top bottom top bottom. Just as with themers, proper spacing for long fill is key. For any puzzle with less than five themers, I do expect at least two pieces of nice long fill, but four is much better (six is fantastic if you can pull it off cleanly!). This type of layout works so well.

With a simple-ish theme like today's, it's important to pick out strong themers. I love TONY TONI TONE — I don't know their music but what a fun and memorable name — and MONSOON SEASON reminds me of Malaysia, getting caught in a sudden torrential downpour. LONDON ONTARIO doesn't feel as strong to me (plus it's the only one with two consecutive ONs), but perhaps Gary was aiming for more of a "famous city in an unexpected place" clue. For example, PARIS has all sort of fun cluing potential, given that there's a PARIS, Texas. It would have been really fun to have something akin to this here.

I appreciate Gary's short fill today too. Generally not much stuck out me, which is short fill's job. ELEMI I've seen before, and I would prefer not to see it much again, especially in early-week puzzles. Why does it appear, you might ask? Well, one drawback to incorporating a lot of long fill is that it makes short fill harder to get clean. The holy grail of any construction is to get both great fill plus absolutely zero glue. It's easier said than done, though, usually requiring dozens of iterations, trying word after word after word in the TRANSLUCENT slot.

I wonder what it says about me that I plunked in SEVENTHS for [Another round at the buffet, say].

I have to admit, I was a bit worried, knowing about Gary's musical bent. Today he gives us five songs that start with DON'T, all clued as a plea, encouragement, etc. And I knew four of the five songs! I consider that a tremendous victory, given my kindergarten-level knowledge of pop music. More to the point, thank you Gary, for choosing songs that if I know them, most people probably will too. Big sigh of relief!

It still was difficult for me, in that while I know most of the songs, I couldn't tell you who sang them unless I had a million monkeys playing a million guitars. Even then I wouldn't be able to put Journey together with DONT STOP BELIEVIN. (But on the plus side, I would have a monkey army to do my bidding.) Anyhoo, perhaps cluing with a famous lyric would have been more memorable? I really enjoyed one of Gary's older puzzles for this reason. I dare you not to have fun when completing: "We gonna rock down to..."

The theme did feel a bit repetitive for me, given that after two themers I could automatically fill in the first word of the rest. Generally Will doesn't allow repeated words within a single crossword, so there usually needs to be a strong reason to do so. I like the change of pace. Perhaps only four themers would have felt less repetitive?

(That last sentence sounded less idiotic in my head.)

Man oh man was I stymied by RINGALEVIO. Even after reading the wikipedia entry, I still wouldn't know how to play. Perhaps this is something like Canadians not knowing DUCK DUCK GOOSE? Might it be a regional NYC thing I really should master? I'll get my monkey army working on that.

Assuming people do actually play RINGALEVIO, I liked Gary's execution. It's a rough job to fill a 11/12/15/12/11 grid. It actually helps to have a grid-spanning middle themer, as this gives you more flexibility in placing your black squares, so bravo to Gary for choosing this central entry. I would have expected many more gluey bits, but there's nothing that jumped out at me as I solved. Impressive given the degree of difficulty; a testament to Gary's skill.

Where I expected to see some roughness was between DONT BE CRUEL and DONT WORRY BABY, as there are so many down answers which must cross both themers. And I did have all sorts of trouble with PLUTON. I sort of enjoyed learning the word, but I would have really enjoyed it if it hadn't crossed TRAM, or TRAM had an easier clue. (I personally get TRAM / DRAM / DRAY all mixed up when it comes to mine vehicles.) In the opposite spot, I had a similar difficulty with DUMONT, but here I was really glad to have easy crossings. If it were a Monday, I might balk at the ETATS crossing, but NYT-readers probably ought to know Les Etats-Unis.

Now someone go write a song called DONT IGNORE ME OR FACE THE WRATH OF MY MONKEY ARMY. Hmm, that splits nicely into 14/14/14...

Intelligent puzzle to start the week — what more could you ask? Gary brings us five synonyms for "intelligent," hidden within phrases. SMART phone, QUICK buck, SHARP turn, BRIGHT side, FAST one. I liked that there was no revealer necessary, and that the theme didn't make itself clear to me until the very end. Or maybe that shows how SHARP I am. Ahem.

With the "pinwheel" arrangement of themers, it's often hard to work in good long fill to spice up a grid. Indeed, there are only two eight-letter slots, which can often spell trouble for grid snazz, as eight letters and more is often where the best fill comes from. Gary does well to utilize those slots with the nice ALPHABET and BRETHREN. Not the juiciest of fill, but not dull either.

Where Gary really shines is his SMART use of shorter fill. Often constructors will let their seven and six letter slots go with unfulfilled potential, but not Gary. Check out RAW BAR, HOT FOOT, ALL NEW, BAR HOP. That adds a lot to the solving experience.

The latter did make me pause, as it dupes BAR, which is one reason I decided against giving this the POW. Typically a dupe like this is not allowed within a single puzzle, so it was a bit of a head-scratcher.

One other reason was that while most of the synonyms were hidden until the very end, the SMART in SMARTPHONE was not. It would have been perfect if it had been something to the effect of THAT SMARTS! (but of course, this example wouldn't fit because 1.) SMARTS is plural and 2.) it's at the end of the phrase). Unfortunately, I can't think of another way to get the "pain" definition of SMART worked in. Even taking SMART out of the puzzle, replacing SMARTPHONE with FAST ASLEEP or something, might have been preferable.

Finally, one aspect I always admire about Gary's work is the care he takes in his short fill. As a meticulous (read: anal) constructor (sorry again to all my co-constructors!), I spend too much time obsessing over every single entry, trying never to allow a "this is good enough" feel into even a teeny corner. And I love scanning through a puzzle, not being able to find more than a AGA or an OPER (neither of which are bad, anyway!). With short fill, the best you can hope for is that no one notices it. It's obvious to me how much care Gary puts into his short fill. Very smooth end product.

★ Gary hit my sweet spot today, throwing his fastball waist-high and straight down the middle, serving me up one to smash over the left field fence. (Well, over the shortstop's head anyway. Maybe ten years ago...) I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I don't have to be to really enjoy this puzzle.

I appreciate a good a-ha moment. The best kind is when I don't have any idea what's going on while solving, and everything snaps to at the end. It's very difficult to do this on a Monday or a Tuesday puzzle, because anything too tricky is going to escape the more novice solvers. And often when I get to the end of an early-week puzzle, it turns out to be a slight variation on a well-trafficked theme type. Today's was perfect for me, four pitches HIGH, INSIDE, LOW, and OUTSIDE which when taken together give a BASE ON BALLS (the technical term for a walk). Very nice — snappy phrases all hiding their theme material until the very end.

I also like some meat in a puzzle's fill, and Gary doesn't disappoint. He uses a traditional placement of two long downs, and both of them are really nice: DOGGIE BAG which is a great entry in itself, and MARSEILLE, classing up the joint with its reference to the classic work of literature, "The Count of Monte Cristo." Throw in some other nice shorter stuff like TIDBIT, ORCHARD, and VERDI, and that satisfies my desire in this arena. Sure, I like to have more than that if possible (ideally at least two sets of long downs), but not if it comes at the price of quality fill.

And Gary does a nice job in that arena of shorter fill. I didn't notice anything glaring as I solved, giving a clean, flowing feel to the puzzle. When I went back, I did pick up ORLON, which is so much less commonly used in everyday language than NYLON or RAYON (Google all of them to see hits), but that was really it. Some people will complain about PRECIS, but it's a common enough term in academia and certain professions. Maybe others will complain about LUMEN, but it's an extremely common term in engineering and photography (I would go on and on about the difference between luminous flux and radiant flux, but you've already fallen asleep). I think both are well worth learning if they were unfamiliar to any solvers.

Well done, Gary! I didn't want to give yet another Tuesday puzzle the POW! (this will make four Tuesdays in a row) but I thought this one hit all the right notes for what a Tuesday should be.

Lots of snazzy entries today, headlined by AN ACQUIRED TASTE and HERES HOW TO ORDER. So many great entries all over the grid, my favorite one was one Will didn't highlight: LIQUORED UP. Those types of colloquial in-the-language phrases get me schnookered every time.

I love the wordplay type of clues which has become the hallmark of a great NYT themeless. VCHIP clued as "Blocker working with a receiver" is pure gold. I went through END, FULLBACK, even QB before realizing I had too much football on the mind (go Seahawks!). Perfect misdirection to go with an already nice answer. Same goes for ITS DONE, with the in-the-language "finish line" being repurposed.

Gary told me that his original clue for ITS DONE was "Hit man's confirmation". I like that a lot too; nice and colorful.

So sad that FOUR COLOR wasn't clued to the four-color map theorem (google it if you're interested). It's pretty esoteric but reading about this some 25 years ago helped trigger my interest in math and puzzles. I'd love to see a crossword about it, but perhaps that's best for a different venue like the Chronicle of Higher Education. If only the four-color theorem, Fermat's last theorem, and Euler's identity (linking e, i, pi, 1 and 0) were part of everyone's standard education. (dreamy sigh)

Tyler Hinman, constructor extraordinaire and former ACPT champ, wrote last week that "'an awesome themeless with a few crappy entries' is simply a contradiction. The fill is all there is in a themeless, so it really has to shine for me to consider it 'awesome.'" Astute commentary. I think it's reasonable that themeless puzzles should undergo extra fill scrutiny compared to a themed puzzle, because so much of a themeless is all about the fill. I wasn't a fan of ENSE, A SAD, OLIO, ANGE, CIEN, but those types of entries almost always are required to make a themeless work. So very, very hard to create an awesome themeless; to make all the snazzy pieces lock together without any gluey short fill.

Nice work today; a very good themeless from Gary.

Easy-breezy theme today from Gary; songs with a woman's name reinterpreted as a question or request. It reminded me of another of Gary's puzzles earlier this year incorporating song titles*. Fun to get leave a puzzle humming to a catchy song.

It was difficult for me to figure out what was going on at first, not having heard of HELLO MARY LOU. Perhaps that's a matter of tastes (I'm a jazz and classical wanna-be snob) or a generational thing? In any case, I would have loved to see SWEET CAROLINE or COME ON EILEEN first, as they both feel catchier, more karaoke-popular to me. It brings up an interesting point about order of themers. Sometimes you don't have a choice due to an ordered theme, but for a collection like this, I find it's nice to hit the solver with your best themer first, then close with your second-best (or vice-versa). Just like public speaking, I think it's good to start strong and end strong.

Some nice long fill today, particularly DYSTOPIAN, which describes a lot of young adult literature from a few years back. The Hunger Games spawned quite a litany of works in that genre. Cool how Gary opened up his grid too, incorporating long fill in the four corners (DIPPING OIL, PLANT CELLS, EXTRA LARGE, CALL TO MIND). KEY FACTOR feels a little forced, but I sure like DOG EAT DOG.

RED MEAT is also a nice piece of fill, but its symmetrical partner, ELLIMAN was a toughie to uncover. I vaguely grasped Greasy NEALE (awesome name by the way!), but it didn't come easy, plus the "Family Ties" mom (ELYSE) always makes me struggle. Perhaps breaking up that pair of 7s (with a black square right in the middle of each) would have helped, but that would mean Gary would have to get rid of another pair of black squares somewhere else, since this is already at the max word limit of 140.

Always tough trade-offs when it comes to quantity of good long fill vs. quality of short fill. I finished with an error at AKON/NIT, and felt like there were a few areas where the short-fill quality suffered (the IBE/LAE/NBATV section comes to mind). But overall, Gary managed to pack a lot of good stuff in that I enjoyed. It's tough to make a flawless Sunday puzzle, and I appreciate the 20 minutes of entertainment today.

*I'm gonna rock down to Electric Avenue if anyone needs me.

Fun offering to start the week. Standard type of theme, where the first word of each phrase is synonymous. To Gary's credit, I didn't notice the puzzle was a pangram until I analyzed it in our database. That's a testament to the smoothness of his work, because often times if the fill feels forced or iffy, it's because a constructor has stretched to incorporate the last letter he/she is missing. I don't support making pangrams for their own sake, but I fully endorse anything that enhances the solving experience. Often times, adding Scrabbly letters (JQXZ and perhaps KV) can do just that.

FUMET might generate a little controversy. I generally like learning something new from a crossword, and all the crosses to FUMET are certainly fair. But in my opinion, it felt out of place for a Monday. I realize I have a different philosophy than Will (and probably many others), mine being that I want Monday xws to be both interesting to current solvers but also something a novice could get hooked on. It doesn't take much to turn someone off to a new hobby, and hitting DICTA, AGLET and FUMET in one day feels like it might turn a novice away from future solves. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, methinks.

Regarding the theme, it's a fine Monday idea. Straightforward, easy to cotton to, perfect for a beginner. I don't know if it's possible, but as I was solving I was hoping to see a Shawkshank Redemption story emerge, something like a HOLE then a BREAKOUT then an ESCAPE and finally FREEDOM. Probably too much to ask, and incorporating this might have made it too opaque. But a guy can dream.

Finally, nice long fill today. POGO STICK, BAND AID, and TOUCH UPON are strong entries, plus Gary delves into the six-letter fill to give us I DUNNO, CHOKER, and YAWNER. It's often difficult to incorporate strong six-letter fill, so kudos to Gary for being deliberate about adding these types of entries to enhance the solving experience. Overall, a solid offering.

★ We have some very good puzzles coming up this week but I give the POW! to Gary for his strong early-week work. There's at least one other puzzle which I thought deserved a POW!, but to make a Monday puzzle stand out deserves recognition.

Monday puzzles are often derided by expert solvers as boring or tedious, so having a theme which is different (or does something to entertain) is important in order to satisfy a large range of solvers. In today's puzzle, I had to look back at the theme answers when I was done to figure out how they all tied together, and the fact that Gary hid the theme words in plain view (see highlighted words, which describe a touchdown play) brought a smile to my face.

Additionally, Monday puzzles are perhaps the most difficult to make, because the constructor cannot rely on using ORTs or spreading OLEO in order to complete a tough section. A perfect Monday puzzle should be super smooth, enough for the novice solver to not get too discouraged (by thinking they must learn a foreign language including ORTS and OLEO) and also have a reasonable chance of finishing. Will and I may disagree on the last point, but I maintain that creating early-week puzzles which new solvers can achieve the "I finished the NYT crossword!" high is important for the future of crosswords.

So let's look at Gary's fill. Not only does he keep the crosswordese to a minimum (AMAH being the misdemeanor), but he gives us a ton of 7-letter fill including RAKES IN, DIETERS, and HELLUVA. I'm with Will on ROULADE, it's something interesting to learn (and tasty!). AGORA I'm less positive on, but since it's an important feature of Greek history and we still see its influence in the word AGORAPHOBIA, it's legit.

Gary obviously put a lot of time and care into this puzzle. A great start to the week.