Sam Ezersky author page

I always brace myself when I see Sam's byline, given his penchant for skewing waaaaay hard, even on the Saturday scale. What a joy to not only be able to finish today's, but to not get utterly frustrated anywhere!

Fantastic anchor entry in ARE YOU HIGH?! It's hard to imagine the NYT running this ten years ago, and I love the change. I would say I GOT NOTHIN' when it comes to other entries I loved, but MEMPHIS BBQ tickles the taste buds, the FILE SERVER / SPORTS DESK serves up color commentary, PGA COURSE shoots under par, and CAMEL HUMPS is a great way to kick things off.

SPORTSDESK might not be that fun for sportsball haters, but that clue made it so appealing. I play a lot of board games, so [Purveyor of game pieces] had me thinking about my local toy shop. Great wordplay here, "pieces" hinting at pieces of games that sportscasters recap.

I did hesitate on a couple entries — fewer than usual for one of Sam's puzzles, though. SHREWISH made me wince, as it felt like an amped-up HAG with its potential to offend. QUITE BAD wasn't quite good, but neither was it quite terrible. Finally, LEADOFFS is a strange plural, much more commonly leadoff hitters.

Overall though, a ton of great material that far overcame my hesitations.

And buckle up I did!

Sam often brings me to the brink of defeat with his Saturday challenges — his spheres of knowledge sometimes have little overlap with mine. I struggled mightily with the foreign terms: COGNOSCENTE, AMO AMAS AMAT, TSURIS. Fought bravely against the partialishisms of HAS PLANS, MUST DO, DID OKAY, while the real partials of AROOM and TURNA had plans to stop me from doing okay. I did my best to adjust on the fly as the SMARTY JUNKETED YEGG nearly cracked me.

Huge relief to finally fill in that last square — although CORNILL / ILIAC felt more correct, since I'd never seen ILEAC ... and a CORNILL could be some distant relative of SEA LILY?

I'm not a fan of construction feats for their own featiness, but I appreciate that Sam laced in some beautiful entries like JUST KIDDING, RED HOT POKER, INTRO CLASS, and the amusing BACKRONYM.

I enjoy when constructors go to 16x15 grids because it allows for entries that we 15x15-ers rarely see. This superhero fanboy loved AMAZING SPIDERMAN, even with the awkward "with ‘the' "tag. Not only is Peter Parker a master of his web-shooters, but he's pretty good with infotech — I bet he'd make a great webmaster for some lucky dot-com company if the entire superhero thing doesn't work out.

I don't follow college sports much, but the BIG TEN CONFERENCE had such a fresh clue. Minnesota and Michigan but not Missouri? MMM good.

Growing up, we were a World Book Encyclopedia household, so the CIA WORLD FACTBOOK didn't come easily. I'll have to check out a copy from my kids, so the feds can secretly spy on them.

TO BE FRANK: I often struggle with Sam's puzzles. He's decades younger, orders of magnitude hipper, and I often have to do a VIBE CHECK as I'm solving. (After I looked up what VIBE CHECK meant.)

I used to think that stuff like LOWERGI was awesome, because it's so tough to see the spaces. LOW ERGI is a vital sign? Enough solvers have told me off for putting "weird-looking" entries into my grids, though. See: E.U.F. LAG, E-CO-TECH, P.S. ALMONE.

I also had trouble with the lower right, trying to figure out if SOFT ARMOR is a thing (it definitely is), before struggling through HAFT and FARRO. All fair … AND YET …

Sam's place is on a Saturday, and I'm relieved to finish this one!

We've had many plays on ET over the years, The French Connection is one of my favorites. There was another play on ET = French word for "and," and since ET is an easy digram to work with, I've solved many ET additions and subtractions. I enjoyed that Sam tried to elevate today's offering by only using -CKET endings. I don't know exactly how to classify it, since at heart it's still an ET addition, but I like the effort to add an elevating factor.

None of the themers made me laugh, but LIKE A MILLION BUCKETS appealed to this b-ball nut. What, no love to the ageless wonder, LBJ, who at 37 nearly led the league in scoring? And who singlehandedly handed my fantasy team a week's loss (our long blight on a first-place season, woo hoo!)?

Curious about what other CKET transformations are possible? Use our Replacement Finder. Put CKET in the first box, and ET in the second. Sam covered most all of the useful ones. (Things like THICK to THICKET aren't as interesting, because THICK is too similar to a dense THICKET.)

Awesome way to kick off a puzzle, [Make a bust, say] making me drop in ARREST. D'oh! Make a sculptor's bust. Nice to have a few of these spread throughout, like a POEM having both stressed feet words and rhythmic meter, and a NOMAD covering a lot of literal ground.

A few tough parts, like XYLEM crossing IBEX and DSL, along with oddly singular DRIB and KUDO, and FRONT OF THE PACK wanting so badly to be LEADER OF THE PACK. Impressive that Sam was able to flesh out enough base phrases, though.

Sam, the recent(-ish) college grad, is way cooler than me (granted, that's a low bar), so sometimes his themelesses leave me in the dust. Today's solve was pleasantly on my wavelength(-ish), the final entry MMDDYYYY delighting me. It's such a bizarrely vowelless string of consonants, yet I see it all the time in web forms. I bet my Canadian crossword friends are saying "Quoi?" and wondering why it's not DDMMYYYY.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

SONGWRITER, another solid debut entry. It's not a sizzler in its own right — editors usually prioritize two-word entries because they can have so much colour — but that clue elevates it. I imagine SONGWRITERs jot down more than a few notes.

Along those lines, BLUBBER is a neutral(ish) entry. Give it a great misdirect, though, and it sings. "Cold weather layer" had this Seattleite thinking about his parka, not an insulating internal layer.

A couple of blips, KERB more bumpy than other Britishisms we typically see, like more minor OU instead of the God-given correct way to spell using good ol' American O. Ain't no way it's COLOR, that's just durn wrong—it has to be COLOUR, dammit!

(My editor is Canadian, so he better not "correct" the above paragraphs.)

I wondered if DOYOGA related to DOGA, i.e. DOG YOGA? Seriously, this is a thing.

As much as I enjoyed listening to the Ariana Grande song, A WOMAN still looks like a verboten six-letter partial.

REAL TALK = "To be honest with you …"? Just when I'd figured out what millennials meant by "tbh," there's more codespeak for me to decrypt.

Although I hit a few potholes along the way, there was more than enough to keep this POTTERMORE member (Hufflepuff all the way!) happy. Speeding through one of Sam's Saturday puzzles is hardly THE NORM for me, and to do without wondering if every square was right or not — MAHOMES ain't got nothin' on me!

(Okay, maybe he does.)

Sam is a recent college grad and thus roughly three orders of magnitude hipper than me. I often have trouble with his themelesses, mystified at some show or artist that plays to his tastes/generation much more than mine, or words that I only vaguely recognize, or Learned-League-level geography. Such a pleasant surprise to feel on Sam's wavelength for a great majority of today's puzzle!

Great start at 1-Across, POP QUIZ featuring the rare Q and Z, and such a great wordplay clue for it. "Questions of surprise" isn't as in-the-language as I'd like, and the telltale question mark puts you on alert, but it's still a fun misdirection toward things like "but why?" or "oh really?"

Well done in juicing out of the long slots. EMOTICON is a bit dated but still fun, MAILCHIMP is a funny brand name, TV ANTENNA as "rabbit ears" was a nice throwback for us older generations.

And the PIECAKEN always makes me laugh. Where else but in America would you see at least one pie stuffed into a cake? Calling the PIECAKEN a "hybrid," though, doesn't do American gluttony justice. It's not simply kind of a pie, kind of a cake. It's a full freakin' pie jammed into a ginormous cake. U-S-A! U-S-A!

I'm always apprehensive about solving themelesses heavy on 7s because it's so hard to squeeze every last drop out of those mid-length slots. It's even more challenging when you have two stacks of 7s intersecting each other in all four corners. I imagine that few people will be tweeting #CARTAGE or #TAURINE.

However, Sam did a nice job working in OIL GLUT under EMIRATI, PG FILMS, PORK RIB, ALL STAR, UV LIGHT. That's a lot of solid to fantastic entries.

I did come to a screeching halt in the lower right, though. CARTAGE ... okay. Next to … ÉCORCHÉ? I asked some French-speaking American friends if they knew this, and I got a bunch of blank stares. (My native French friends said, "oui, bien sur!") It's a tough call. Part of me likes that Sam unabashedly features envelope-pushing words. However, along with PET FEES, which sounded odd to this former pet owner's ear, it was a tough way to finish out.

Super thankful for all the fair crosses! Also grateful that there was more for me in this one than in previous Sam themelesses.

At first, when Sam sent me his notes on the puzzle, I thought he was lauding "I Am Legend," which was tough for this Will Smith fan to sit through (I made it roughly 12.5 minutes). Even an hour later, I figured Sam was meme-ing some Snapchat or TikTok thing. It wasn't until several hours later that it clicked: STRONG MAN / NORSE MYTH / I AM LEGEND. What an awesome mini-theme! It'd be a shame if people missed it, and I fear that like me, many solvers won't pick it up.

I'm (almost literally) knee-deep in LEGO SETs these days, yet the clue made me laugh anyway. "A ton of bricks," indeed. If anyone has advice on how to avoid cross-pollination of LEGO SETs leading to two kids arguing and then hitting each other with a ton of bricks, I'm all ears.

Jim Horne and I discussed ITALIAN MEAL, sadly not over a nice Italian meal (maybe soon?!). Does this entry open up the floodgates for POLISH LUNCH? JAPANESE HAPPY HOUR? Hopefully it allows for my favorite meal of the day, HOBBIT ELEVENSES.

Also in the category of "giving Jeff fits about what score to assign an entry": ONE EGG, NAGGERS, SUABLE, MADCAPS. So much about word lists is subjective, so I try to leave everything that's even remotely-possibly-okay-if-you-squint at the nominal level of 50. Constructors beware, though, a huge amount of your own judgment is mandatory.

The cluing felt so tough today; definitely Saturday-level:

• I read [Some bars returned to again and again?] again and again, and I still didn't think it connected to THEMES (musical motifs) that well.
• SIR as a prefix to LOIN ... I was SIR prized.
• I get the idea behind [Peer of Ibsen], but if you don't know that Ibsen wrote "Peer Gynt," it's tough to grasp the cleverness.

I wish I had said I SEE NOW immediately after finishing the middle of the puzzle, because MAN MYTH LEGEND is a standout mini-theme. I'd have loved an overt revealer like BADASS, calling out the middle triplet. Now that would have been bad-ass.

April Fools! Sam fooled me once, then he fooled me again. Shame on me! Then he fooled me yet again. Who's the shame on for the third time?

But then I smugly defeated him!

Until Jim Horne pointed out that I didn't actually figure out the last theme answer. Not properly, that is.

More accurately, not at all.

Talk about fool.

Understanding that VERY RELIGIOUS was DEV took forever, but that was a nice a-ha, riffing on the old crossword standard of [… with "out."] DEV + out = devout. It's been done many times before, yet I always fall for it.

I thought I had the concept at that point but ESSENTIALLY didn't make sense with ELF + Inits. I thought maybe the letters E L F could somehow be in ESSENTIALLY? Finally, I realized that it meant Inits. + ELF = IN ITSELF. Fun discovery.

Finally, I was no fool! Yet I was. MMI, in slang = BAD MOUTHING? For a while, I figured this must not be theme-related. You know what the kids say these days when they want to insult you badly, they throw you some MMI!

Isn't that like the stink eye? The stink-I times two thousand?

Ah, it's MMI in(side) slang = sla(MMI)ng. Zoicks, that's tough to see!

My last chance at redemption: … and others. Huh. Oh, I got it! BLENDED FAMILY indicates to take STE PBR and TAHOE, and blend (anagram) those letters! Damn, I am so smart!

Oh. It's STE + PBR + others = stepbrothers. TAHOE didn't have anything to do with it?

Well, it should have!

Hatchi matchi, this was a toughie. I liked some of the cluing touches, like Bjorn Borg known as Ice-BORG. Great nickname! And I'm terrible with modern music references, but SONGZ is a great last name for a singer.

Finally, VEAL as "parm for the course" is punnily outstanding. Almost worth all my confusion and hair-pulling right there.

Show of hands. Who's ever heard of a GUITALELE? The cities of EASTON or BUSHEY? The SARANAC river? STYRENE?

What, you've never heard of STYRENE? My first job was as a mechanical engineer in product design, so I specified a lot of parts to be manufactured from ABS — acrylonitrile butadiene STYRENE. You probably have at least fifty items in your house and car made from ABS, since it's a cost-efficient, durable plastic that has thousands of uses. Easy to process for injection molding—

Huh? You want me to LET IT GO ALREADY, you pompous buffoon?

Something to think about when expounding on what a great entry EX-LIB is, you snooty librarians.

Just kidding! Every author knows the ins and outs of the purchasing process; the real decision makers are in the libraries. I loved EXLIB. Loved it more than life itself. Okay, maybe it felt weird and foreign, but I bow down to the kings and queens of the known world who CALL THE purchasing SHOTS.

(While muttering about EXLIB.)

A couple of great feature entries, MUSEUM EXHIBIT an A+, especially because of its innocent [Remains to be seen, say] clue. Wow, that is a brilliant repurposing of a common phrase!

Also fantastic: the triplet of NATIONAL ANTHEM / AT EASE SOLDIER / CORNISH PASTY. MERRIAM WEBSTER connecting the top and bottom makes it even more impressive.

OBAMA SUPPORTER, not so much. Perhaps this would have felt strong back in 2016, but these days it has an almost arbitrary quality to it. See what an editor would say about CLINTON DONOR or ROMNEY VOTER or [Dick Cheney] as BUSHMASTER. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

For any readers still with me, don't worry. This puzzle spanked me as hard as it did you. Appropriate that REAR ENDS was in the grid.

IOWA CAUCUS is such a standout entry! I love that a small state underestimated by too many wields such influence every four years. That clue, too — something both Bill and Hillary won once? Now that's the way to entertain with trivia!

Perfect 1-Across for this puzzle. I give a thumbs-up to WEIRD, HUH?, since I've said it many a time, but I bet some will describe the phrase as "weird," which to my kids means "you smell terrible, dad."

Similarly: THE SINAI (Sinai Peninsula, more commonly), ASTROBOY (it's two words put together, thankfully, but even this cartoon maniac didn't know it), TURING TEST (more passable since "the Imitation Game" came out, but still niche).

I wasn't so hot on a couple areas of the grid. I'm a physics dork and even interned at NASA but never heard the term LINAC (short for linear accelerator?). That doesn't bode well for the general solving population, not even the regular Saturday folks. Cross it with the composer ENESCO — in twenty years of orchestra, I never played one of his compositions — and that's a death cross. I applaud the attempt to make it fairer, but UNESCO is a toughie too.

Judith RESNIK crossing the partial-sounding IN A KIT wasn't as unfair. At least you should be able to piece together IN A KIT — that is, if you can get past the notion that this is a (verboten) six-letter partial.

Thankfully, Sam worked in several solid phrases/clues to keep my interest. Will Shortz is careful not to do much shameless self-promotion in crosswords, but NEWSDESK was a highlight. Hiding Times — as in the New York Times — at the beginning of [Times table?] is brilliant.

What, no YOU'RE … PUSHING IT for a woman in labor?

Okay, that might be pushing it.

I appreciated how on point it was for a free throw shooter to be MISSING THE POINT. I used to scoff at Shaq's well-known free throw problems (career 53% shooter), such a huge hole in his game. Then I tried it myself, shooting 100 from the line. Let's just say that YOU'RE KIDDING ME was apt.

I didn't find many other themers to be as apt, though. A cosmetician is MAKING ME BLUSH? Like, he/she is formulating cosmetics? A produce vendor is OUT OF YOUR GOURD? What kind of seller brings a single gourd to his/her farmer's market stand? Why would an aspiring entrepreneur be only as good as the company they keep, when many entrepreneurs are all about successfully selling their companies for a huge profit?

I did like how Sam tightened his theme by narrowing the scope to professions. It would have been great to have a few more spot-on ones, perhaps ONE TO TALK clued to Siri? OUT OF THIS WORLD as an astronaut? Soldiers MAKING A MESS?

Some delightful fill, HOT DATE GODSEND TRUE DAT HANGRY ANARCHY forming quite the storyline. Reminds me of some of the groanwrothy dates I went on back in the day.

I had trouble with much of the grid through, slowed by SHANYU, GIOTTO, DR BOB, along with OJOS (which I still confuse with OSOS), and the creaky PORTA STET KAS BYA CREEL etc. As a whole, it made for a choppy solve that might give solvers too many opportunities to put down the puzzle and go do something else. Going up to 140 words (Sam used 136, quite a construction challenge) would have helped add in more color as well as smooth things out.

Overall, though, still an entertaining idea, a fun way to present a wide range of YOU'RE ___ phrases.

(Answer to Sam's puzzler: ONE TO TALK.)

THEODICY looks so much like "the idiocy." I think Sam is making subtle commentary about religion, but I'm too much of an idiot to figure out what.

Three fantastic marquee answers, NIGHTY NIGHT, STAIRMASTER, and WORLD ATLAS firing on all cylinders. Not only are these fantastic phrases in their own right, but each is screaming to take a clever clue. The first has all sorts of potential around "retirement," the second was clued just as sneakily a few weeks ago, and WORLD ATLAS has plenty of plays on "country" available. Yes, yes, and yes!

AT THE HEART … not so much. The knock on it is that it wants so desperately to be completed by "of," so you have to include that in the clue. Makes it edge toward partial-land.

Sam debuted a few entries today, but that's not always a good thing. NIGHTY NIGHT, absolutely. TYREKE Evans? I've had on my fantasy team many times, so I know his name. I don't think it's fair to expect non-NBA data crunchers to know him, though.

Along with AT THE HEART, there's RUNS A LAP. I thought about it for a while, deciding not to ding it. It's not as strong to my ear as RUNS LAPS or TAKES A LAP; however, it'll do in a pinch.

CYBERLAW is a thing, but I doubt I'd ever drop the word in conversation, especially not with my neighbors who work at Twitter and Slack. I already had this happen:

"SLAC! Neat, you work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center?"

"Uh …" (eye roll emoji tweeted)

I enjoyed many clues, some of which could use some explanation:

• "U and I" have SYMMETRY in common? Yes, mirror SYMMETRY, my favorite type!
• CANNERY is a "bean plant" … d'oh! Not a bean plant plant, but a bean canning plant.
• [Flat part of a flat] had me thinking about musical flats. Then residential apartments. Finally, the SHOE (a flat is a type of shoe) dropped. Hopefully, the cleverness here didn't fall flat with you.

A lot to love in this solve. Some beautiful feature entries, excellent supporting cast, and nothing that stuck out too much. A couple of wrinkles ironed out (THYMES plural, I see you) and it would have gotten some POW! consideration.

Matt Gaffney's wonderful meta-puzzle series had an outstanding "foreign numbers doubling as English words" concept a few years back. After banging my head for 10+ hours, I admitted defeat, but I don't mind being stumped when a puzzle is that clever.

When it comes to Sunday puzzles, Will Shortz has to cater to an enormous audience, ranging from the most noob of newbs to the tip-top speed solvers. I don't envy him. I bet there are a lot of solvers out there who have never before thought about foreign numbers in this way. To them, this could be the perfect introduction to the idea.

I'm not a top solver, but I do have thousands of puzzles solved under my belt, so today's execution felt like it was hitting me over the head with a hammer — keyword within phrase PLUS keyword repeated elsewhere PLUS language in which the keyword is a number? That drained out most of the fun. I'd prefer something more playful, or at least less explainy.

Removing the language entry, i.e., no SPANISH and just QUINCE JELLY + QUINCE [FIFTEEN, in Spanish], would have made it less hammery. Would newer solvers understand what's going on, though? Maybe not.

What would be more playful approach? Maybe having the numbers spell out something in alphanumeric (A = 1, B = 2, etc.)? Making kooky number phrases like ELF ON THE SHELF = [Eleven magical creatures in a Berliner's room?] Not sure, but it's fun to think about.

Anyone else's eyes open wide when encountering BA__S = things passed between the legs? That's legs of a relay race. Ahem.

Not sure which is more appalling: where my mind first went, or my lack of understanding of basic anatomy.

LITE BRITE brought me right back to my childhood, sticking those little plastic pegs up my nose to see if it would light up like Rudolph's.

(It didn't. I still think it should have.)

Divisive one, too. Jim had no idea what this was (or why I'd stick pegs up my nose), and I bet a lot of people out there will share his perspective. If you've never played with it (LITE BRITE, not my nose, that is), it won't elicit much emotion.

These days, I find entries like TECH SAVVY much more interesting, as they have a broader audience.

Amazing number of clever clues today. I was blown away by the sheer quantity of brilliant misdirects. My top three:

• B+ but not A- had to be grade related. Or music notes? Nope, think about an ION.
• IKEA is a place with many assembly lines on those ANNOYING INSTRUCTION MANUALS THAT SEEM LIKE THEY SHOULD BE SO EASY BUT AAAAAARGH!
• A GECKO sticks around a rain forest, all right.

Note how these three clues all elevate short entries that otherwise are simply filler. Also, note how careful Sam was in selecting short entries that aren't common in crosswords. It's much harder to come up with something creative for seen-all-the-time stuff like ERA and AREA.

There was a bit too much material that didn't quite hit my ear right — ATRACE / SLIGHT BIT, SLOW MO with that odd W, SENHOR, BY RIGHT, AC TO DC. (Even as a mechanical engineer, that last one felt a bit off-the-wall — get it, as in from a wall outlet? Okay, I won't quit my day job.)

I might have liked OPSOMANIA better if I didn't already have a sense of so many entries being pitchy.

Overall though, Sam entertained me with enough great feature entries like THEOCRACY WET NOODLE CROP CIRCLE. And the clue for CROP CIRCLE! Fully agreed with Sam, that's genius.

ADDED NOTE: I glossed over the clue for THEOCRACY at first. I'm glad I went back and studied it. No "state of disbelief" for a government-centered around God! So, so, so many brilliant clues.

Sam's voice shining through today, so much colloquial OH REALLY, AREN'T WE ALL, WHAT'S NEXT packed into that NW corner alone. The opposite corner featured some freshness in UBERGEEK (hand raised!) and GOOD DOGGY, beautiful stuff.

Sometimes Sam's puzzles are too young-feeling for me, making me feel over the hill (insert old man shaking fist emoji), but there wasn't anything that felt out of my grasp today. Indeed, even the BROHUG is something I awkwardly give to guys I'm sort of friends with, and I don't know if we should be handshaking or hugging. Good ol' hard slaps on the back, saving the day!

FREEMIUM was another one that might feel too modern, fresh for some. I play "Clash Royale" obsessively, so FREEMIUM came easily to me. You can get pretty good at the game with a free account (which I've proudly achieved; only taken me two years), or buy your way into greatness with premium in-game purchases.

There's so much open space in the two marquee corners that I would have thought the remaining two corners would be relatively easy to fill with color and cleanliness. I did like COACH K / STOOGE (I admit to making fun of Dukies; it's just too easy) in the SW, but the NE corner felt iffy.

A MOI isn't great to start; then I wondered how many normal folks would be elated by HYDROXYL, taking up a valuable long slot. (I'm a fan, as chemistry was one of my favorite subjects in school, so to drop it in with just a -OH reference felt great.) Then, Y SHAPE? I disagree with Sam here — not sure it works well as a stand-alone phrase. Toss in OPEL, and the entire corner felt shaky.

As much as I liked HIT JOB, I bet replacing it with something a little less sparkly would have given the corner a better net result.

A lot to love overall though: good use of long slots, plus mid-length entries like EMERALD TYMPANI AMPERE adding some color, sound, and sparks.

I can just see Sam tweeting about his puzzle today — MWA HA HA HA! indeed.

(What's with the extra HA on MWA HA HA HA? Have I been doing it wrong all these years; my arch-enemies still waiting for me to finish my diabolical laugh? Darn it.)

Some fun new entries, AARP CARD and NISSAN ROGUE my favorites. I wasn't a fan of the straightforward AARP CARD clue, but it's still such a source of entertainment when friends post their mixed feelings about receiving their AARP CARD in the mail. It's an alert that you're old, but hey, the deals!

Longtime readers might be surprised that I dug NISSAN ROGUE so much. Isn't it one of those things that if you don't know it, it's not going to do much for you? Yes, but I imagine marketers sitting around a table, brainstorming car names. "What's gonna sound cool and awesome and edgy?" they ask. "Ooh, let's call it the ROGUE!"

Ah, marketing.

ORPHAN BLACK was one that fell into that "it's fine but didn't do anything for me" category. Thankfully it is two recognizable words, as is NISSAN ROGUE, but I've never seen the show, so it's tough to get excited about. And when you have to clue an entry in a long, dictionary-like way ...

(Doug Peterson and Sam Donaldson are going to kill me because we had breakfast a few years ago and they gushed about ORPHAN BLACK, but I still haven't gotten around to trying it out. Next on my list, I swear!)

I'm sure some will say that TMZ LIVE is an awesome and edgy show, but I could barely recall what TMZ was. Again, a bit too niche for my taste. I realize that I might be (probably am) in the minority here, considering the number of Google hits TMZ LIVE gets.

ZIKA VIRUS isn't something I want to be reminded of in my daily diversion, but I can see how it's a worthwhile crossword entry.

Overall, a lot of nice stuff worked in, the mid-length material helping to spice things up: MEERKAT, RIOT ACT, SEX TAPE, IRON MAN, MIRANDA all great.

Before you go sending that angry THIS F'IN PUZZLE MAKES NO SENSE! email to me, look at the fixed-up answers below.

Go on; I'll wait.

Get it? [Casting doubt on] isn't CALLINGINTSTION, but CALLING IN(TO QUE)STION, with the TOQUE "dropped" down.

(We've taken the liberty of highlighting the hats below, just in case it's still not clear.)

The first one I hit was THE BOOK O(F EZ)RA, and I embarrassingly thought that THE BOOK OF RA was some Egyptian offshoot of the Bible.

A Bible scholar I'm not!

We've seen plenty of these drop-down themes before, but I liked the discovery of TOQUE in CALLING INTO QUESTION and BERET in CYBERETHICS. Impressive to find five-letter strings within snazzy phrases.

I debated whether this was Sunday-worthy, or if it felt like a weekday puzzle outstaying its welcome.

WHY IT'S BETTER AS A SUNDAY

• I liked what Sam did with some of the crossing answers. Hiding TOQUE in ADD TO QUEUE was fantastic. FEZ in SAFE ZONE, too. Those types of long crossers would be much harder to pull off in a 15x15 weekday.
• A weekday puzzle would need AT THE DROP OF A HAT in the grid as a revealer, and since each themer requires something dropping down, you'd only be able to fit in three hats (or risk causing serious compromises). Nice to have the diversity of five hat types.

WHY IT'S BETTER AS A WEEKDAY

• Once you figure out what's going on, the trick might feel repetitive.

Ultimately, I think it would have been better shrinkified to a 15x15 grid.

Even though the theme itself didn't hold my attention throughout the entire solve, I enjoyed enough of the bonuses, a ton of stuff in ASTROPOP LEGO BLOCK CRAB LEG IMPOUND LOT BUNDLE UP. Helped keep up my interest; well worth the minor prices of ENCE ESTE SABE etc. It's a very tough technical execution, and Sam did it well.

Loved this concept, GO WEST YOUNG MAN = take phrases ending in LAD and move that young man all the way to the west. I'm usually not a fan of themes that result in bizarre-looking grid entries (nor is Will), but this worked well for me. Even if you don't know what a POWER BALLAD is (philistine!), it's easy to figure out what LADPOWERBAL started as. Just the right amount of kookiness.

My first reaction after solving was that I wanted different synonyms for "young man," to avoid repetitiveness. You know, BOY … uh … and ... BOYO … Welp, never mind. I thought there'd be a ton of synonyms, but things like SONNY and JUNIOR don't do it as well as LAD. Especially given the old-timey feel of GO WEST YOUNG MAN, I decided that using LAD each time was perfect.

I also like how Sam threw us a curve ball at the very end, using a LAD broken apart in its base phrase, SUPER BOWL AD. Some might say this is inconsistent, but the base phrase was so great that I didn't mind.

I wasn't wild about ENE, SSS, ADIG, or DABBA — the last can't really be clued except for the Fred Flintstone cry — but the total quantity of crossword glue was passable. And to get some great bonuses in SPACE LAB, ROOM TEMP, OIL BASIN made up for it.

Part of the reason for the crossword glue was that the grid is 16x15, which often makes for a surprisingly tricky construction. Along with Sam's choice to stick under the usual 78-word maximum, there was bound to be a little strain. I think it was a fine decision, although I might have personally gone to 79 words and tried to smooth things out just a touch. Personal preference.

I enjoyed the theme so much — and the sagacity of Sam's comments about constructor Sam vs. editor Sam, something that all constructors ought to take to heart — that I was all set to give this one the POW! There's one coming up that edged it out though. Sorry, Sam!

I love it when crosswords do bizarre things. It's so much fun to get a note from the NYT's production team that something weird is coming. And hoo boy, was something weird today! I solved on paper to make sure I got the proper experience, and it took me about twice as long as usual, given the twisty themers: THREAD, LACE, STRING going back and forth. We've done an animation below to help the themers stand out.

Honestly, I don't totally get the concept. It's fun to have these three words zigging and zagging. But why? A MESSAGE THREAD goes back and forth. But wouldn't the entire answer zig and zag, then? Is it just that the three different synonyms can go back and forth, like with sewing a … hem? Or like a shoelace?

I think I'm overanalyzing this.

For a puzzle like this, where the themers are short in the grid, the long bonuses are such an important source of entertainment and color. Loved some of it: EMAIL ACCOUNT, GYM SOCK, and BOAR HUNT. The clue for BOAR HUNT made it even better, participants going "hog-wild" = such great wordplay. Fantastic!

(Not so fantastic for the boar.)

But I was plus/minus on others: MADE IT BETTER felt a bit forced, not really making the puzzle better. IN ONE ACT had a partialish feel, I GET IDEAS was from a 1950 song, and ATOM MAN is an alter ego for Lex Luthor?

Things that make you say "huh."

It's tough to build around 1.) twisty theme answers that force a lot of constraints, and 2.) short themers, which necessitates a lot of long bonus fill everywhere in the grid. Dealing with both of these at the same time is no fun!

Overall though, I appreciate when constructors go all crazy and break the rules. This one didn't hit for me, but no doubt it will stick in my mind. Lots of puzzles tend to go in one of my ears and out the other, so it is an accomplishment to get something to lodge in.

That SE corner is brilliant. RADIO WAVE cleverly disguised as an [Air traveler?] + I CALLED IT! = OH HELL YES!

Something fun about that BBQ WINGS / PINTO BEAN combo, with GOON SQUAD up in the NW, too. (I wasn't sure what a NEODADAIST was, but what an interesting word.)

Along with some YAKETY YAK, PLAYS GOD, LOINCLOTH, MY FAIR LADY, man that's a ton — er, TONNE? — of good stuff all throughout.

I haven't DNFed (did not finish) a Saturday puzzle in a long time, but I was sweating it today. PERF is what the kids say today about … something PERFect? Huh.

There was a FDR JR? It looks like he was indeed called FDR JR by his family, so it's a fine entry, with an awesomely bizarre string of five consonants. Not knowing him was on me.

A couple of other toughies though — NEDLOW, SEA CHART, SAND PILE, PLAINTS? NEDLOW can be chalked up to my ignorance, as it's NED LOW, apparently a high-profile pirate of the "Golden Age of Piracy."

The others though, felt a tad off. I've seen plenty of tide charts, nautical charts, depth charts, but never heard them called SEA CHARTs.

SAND PILE is … a pile of sand?

PLAINTS? Like (com)PLAINTS? Hmm, maybe there's a crossword theme in there somewhere!

And the cluing for some of the short common answers. I think this puzzle was correctly placed on a Saturday because of all of the tough entries, but it's not much fun to wrangle with ["Who ___?"] just to struggle into ISN'T. Or "Ooh-la-la" for I LIKE? I don't like!

How is WIN the 1 in 1-9? Took me a lot of thinking post-solve (and a sheepish query to Jim) to figure out that it probably is the number of wins in a win-loss record? As in 1 win, 9 losses? What a bizarre clue.

A curious mix of delightful entries and Saturday-ed clues, making for a very tough solve. Such a feeling of relief to finally fill in the last box!

Delightful theme! I imagined Keanu's surfer persona shouting RADICAL MOVEMENT! to a classical composer (and eliciting strange stares). Keanu going up to a taxonomist (not a taxidermist, as I first thought) and yelling STELLAR CLASSIFICATION! = hilarious!

I was amazed at how many of these Sam and Byron came up with. I was even more impressed by how they made them non-obvious. The band SMASHING PUMPKINS is super familiar to me, so the tough clue — [Compliment to a vegetable gardener?] — was much appreciated. Every a-ha moment is so much more satisfying when you have to work for it.

Loved the theme. Could have easily gotten the POW! based on my smiles alone. I'm often bored by Sunday puzzles, but this one held my attention the entire way through.

I didn't love the fill though, not nearly as smooth as I would have expected out of these two masters. It wasn't bad by any means — about ten globs of ITA AMO OCTA IMRE AFIG kind of stuff, which is about average for a Sunday — but Sam and Byron are not average constructors.

They fell into the low-word-count trap, which I completely understand. It's fun to take on a ridiculously tough challenge like this. A Sunday 140-word puzzle is hard enough — achieving a great 128-word grid is like painting a masterpiece. While handcuffed. And blindfolded. With just a piece of beige chalk.

I firmly believe it's almost always better to be less ambitious. Stick with fewer pieces of great fill — a couple of ADDERALL, STILETTO, CLIF BAR, DATA LOSS kind of things are good enough — and make the rest of the puzzle elegantly smooth. It'd make for a better solving experience overall. Could have been an outstanding puzzle overall, rather than just above average.

Still, I loved the theme. So joyful and smile-inducing. Even with the problem I had with their gridwork decision, this was in POW! territory.

(Sam and Byron, now that you've both won multiple POW!s, I have to make you work even harder for them!)

A colorful trio anchoring this puzzle:

1. I wasn't around for The Hustle, but somehow a bunch of my friends and I got into DOing THE HUSTLE back in college. Funny how those things happen! A colorful feature entry that gave me a huge smile.
2. The DOOMSDAY CLOCK, a colorful feature entry that gave me a huge frown. As if I needed a reminder of what's going on in the geopolitical sphere! I also wonder if the DOOMSDAY CLOCK has completely lost its sense of foreboding since it's been near midnight ever since its very inception. Doesn't two minutes to midnight feel about the same as ten? People, make a scarier scale to reflect the crazy stuff going on with North Korea!
3. I'm thankful for MAD MAGAZINE, lightening things back up. Such fond memories of reading the ridiculous satires, making fun of everything and everyone. Yeah, so what if I still read it?!

Cool grid pattern, so tough to fill in the SW / NE corners. I get why Sam used a trio of black squares in each location, as turning these types of corners can be so tough without them. Unfortunately, these cheater squares nibble away at precious long slots, reducing 6-Across from nine to just seven letters. I like AGA KHAN all right, but it's not nearly as good as PRINT RUNS to me.

A good amount of nice material in this one, SPORTS BAR, DNA BANK, PHOENICIA snazzing up the joint. But with just 11 long answers (of 8+ letters), and ARR DIA ALPH TRAN to hold it all together … it's a very tough grid pattern to fill to my POW! standards.