Sheldon Polonsky author page

The last time this theme was done, I was outraged. E doesn't equal MC—it equals MC SQUARED, so the five squares should be E / MC or at least E / MCC! Are we shouting "Fake news!" at laws of physics now?

Sadly, that feels like it's coming shortly.

Thankfully, I learn (albeit slowly), so I already appreciated that the MC was "squared," as in put into a single square. Neat how Sheldon crossed the central entries through one of those special squares, EINSTEINIAN and EEQUALSMCSQUARED. We've inserted a slash into the five squares below, to help you visualize what's happening.

FOR SOLVERS WHO DESPERATELY NEED TO KEEP THEIR STREAK OF PERFECTION ALIVE: enter either E or MC and it should be marked as correct. Other options that are supposed to also work: E/MC and MC/E.

Almost as confusing as relativity itself.

Rebus puzzles ideally want their special squares placed inside long themers. Although BENCHMARK isn't that snazzy of an answer, it's a lot more interesting than IDLEST, for example. It would have added a touch of elegance to have DREAM CAR be longer than ELEGANCE — my inner word nerd would have swooned at ROMZOMCOM.

How do you go about creating a grid with such weirdly-acting squares? Best approach is to start with the more difficult constraint — your four long *MC* entries — since "must contain the letter E in a certain position" is hardly rocket science. After that, there are some construction tricks you can employ. I won't get into them because time would slow to a crawl for non-nerds.

For those folks lucky enough to encounter the concept for the first time, enjoy!

The late Merl Reagle was an anagramming savant. I had the fortune to hang out with him at several ACPTs over the years, and it was phenomenal to watch him work. Not just simple anagrams, either — we're talking about double-digit letters. It's appropriate that MERL REAGLE anagrams into MR REAL GLEE.

We've had a slew of anagram crosswords over the years, including many "aptograms," i.e., anagram pairs that mean similar things. It takes a lot for yet another one to stand out, but some of today's findings do just that. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is one of my favorite movies, one I used to watch every December. Seeing it swirled into [True fellow is a find] is almost as magical as the movie's happy ending!

Even better is the fact that this appears to be a novel discovery. If you can easily pull back the curtain and find theme entries off internet lists, so much for the wizard's magic. I wouldn't even know where to begin when it comes to anagramming 17 letters, and I'd probably give up after an hour.

Not all of them wowed me — [M. Ryan, what's her yell?] oddly replaces Meg with M — but I enjoyed this anagramathon much more than I expected. Given his excellent wordplay cluing, too — [Signs in a bookstore] is a fun way to misdirect from GENRE section signs) — I'm on the lookout for more fun from Sheldon.

I dearly want tricky, rule-bending puzzles on Thursdays, but many solvers vociferously disagree. Will Shortz has a tough job, trying to cater to such a wide range of tastes. He did a fine job straddling the line today, with a theme that seemed easy enough on paper, but one that put up an enjoyable fight.

It didn't take long to uncover RENAISSANCE FOUR, given how familiar my son has forced me to become with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. FOUR from "fair" felt easy enough, too, so I worried that this would be yet another Thursday that disappointed.

Not so! That "air" to "or" sound change wasn't as simple as I thought. Even after solving MUSICAL CHORES, it took me a hot minute to figure out the CHORES from "chairs" change. And then I sat back to admire the neat transformation involving a big spelling change.

The huge winner for this sci-fi dork: aliens shouting there's NO TIME TO SPORE! Worth the price of admission all by itself.

Sheldon didn't go down to 72 words like Byron and Chris earlier this week, but he did use some tough vocab that you might expect to see in a low-word-counter, ANTRUM in particular. However, for a Thursday puzzle — with a surprisingly difficult-to-grasp theme concept — it syncs well.

Yes, some solvers won't know what ANTRUM means, but it's (just as valid) as ZOYSIA, and given the day of the week, encountering something one doesn't know isn't uncommon.

I frequently ride Will about running Thursday puzzles boringly simple themes, making them not worth the Thursday effort of fighting with tough clues. On paper, I should have criticized him again today, but I enjoyed the crunchy solving experience, the themers more difficult to make sense of than I would have imagined. Well done to both Sheldon and Will!