Tracy Gray author page

THE GIRTH OF VENUS … I wonder how many irate emails we'll get today.

Crossword constructors have long relied on REO to make grids work. Such useful letters! I enjoyed the insidery nod today with the REO BALLOON — which also plays on the REO Flying Cloud! I might be one of the few people grinning at that connection, but maybe I can float this fun idea into more people's consciousness.

REO BALLOON worked well for a second reason: you can easily confuse O and D with a casual glance. (If you're a parent of a six-year-old still working on his letters, you can easily confuse his Q and his … is that an ampersand?) It's perfect for an art FORGERY.

It would have been great to have others so closely disguised. I'm sure there would be some fights in the Museum of Modern Art if they labeled van Gogh's masterpiece as THE STARRY FIGHT. Maybe THE CREATION OF A DAY is easier to overlook since that switch comes at the end, but Y and M are tough to confuse.

Tricky decisions. Jeremy and Tracy's point about random letter changes feeling inelegant is well-taken. Having them spell out something is appealing. FORGERY is apt for the theme, and getting those letters to swap in with the limited number of uber-recognizable paintings is a tough job.

It doesn't feel amazing, but getting FORGERY to pop out is interesting. Not at all a BIG OOF (which apparently is what the kids say these days?), as I appreciated hearing about Jeremy and Tracy's creative process.

DEPOSIT SLIP, SAN ANDREAS FAULT, HONEY BOO-BOO … easy day in "Name That Theme." No slip-ups for me!

Wait. MY BAD refers to four theme entries?

Swing and an OLE MISS.

Take a moment to admire the beautiful left-right (mirror) symmetry. This often allows for a happy face made of black squares, and I found myself smiling along. Great way to add a dash of solving pleasure.

Mirror sym isn't simply pretty, though — Tracy didn't have any flexibility in SAN ANDREAS FAULT 15 (few other fault lines are as well-known) and HONEY BOO-BOO 11, so regular symmetry would demand that __ SLIP and ___ MISS match lengths at 15 and 11. GIVE THE PINK SLIP 15 and JACKSON MISS 11 would work, but the former is a downer, and the latter's abbreviation makes it inelegant.

One way to make OLE MISS stand out is to place it in the center of the puzzle, ensuring that there isn't any Across fill that's 7 letters or longer. SHOT PAR and CABOOSE are outstanding bonuses, but they obfuscated OLE MISS.

Hardly a miss with the gridwork, which isn't always easy with left-right symmetry. The only entry that made me SALTY was LAIRD, which is potentially tough for newer solvers — at least, non-Scottish ones. Crossing it with YA-YAS is borderline unfair, as LOIRD and YO-YAS is a defensible guess.

Moving HONEY BOO-BOO down one row would help the south region since filling a constrained 4x5 chunk is much easier than a 5x5. Note that this would create four more three-letter words, though, and Tracy is already at 20 (editors tend to balk at 22ish). Always the trade-offs.

Entertaining Monday, and I appreciated that there was only one region of possible user ERROR.

★ Plenty of NYT crosswords have their ups and downs, but Tracy takes us on a thrill ride, featuring RAMPs to climb, SLIDEs to plummet down, and a beautiful diagonal of black squares to emphasize the concept. Way more ups than downs!

Many puzzles have featured diagonally rising / falling themers. This one was so much more enjoyable than others, partially because it wasn't so overly complicated that solvers griped to the depths of Tartarus (I learned a hellish lesson that day). The overt circles made it immediately clear what was going on, and I appreciated that. They also served as a pretty set of CHUTEs and ladders, reminiscent of that game board.

What put this puzzle over the top: two delightful "apticlues." (Coinage courtesy of the brilliant Jim Horne!) Many phrases would work with HILL, like ACHILLES HEEL or PHILLY CHEESESTEAK, but how many are related to something that actually ascends? Why have I never noticed the awesomeness of HILL inside Sir EDMUND HILLARY?

Same goes for PARACHUTE IN. DESCHUTES RIVER would have worked, but it wouldn't have the delight of CHUTE within a phrase that's coming down to earth.

There isn't any symmetry in the themer placements, which bothered me at first. There's enough flexibility in entries like SLIDE that at least one or two pairs could have exhibited some degree of symmetry. Ultimately, though, it's so hard to jigsaw these risers or fallers that I was impressed with Tracy's ability to work in six of them.

Beautiful gridwork, too; unexpected given how difficult it can be to 1) work around diagonal themers, and 2) build even a normal 140-word Sunday grid. If I were a betting man, I'd have set the over/under for gluey bits at 12 for an average constructor. I've had the pleasure of working with Tracy and know how strong she is, so I'd lower that to 6. She was well under! She did go up to 144 words, but with all the sparkle of LOOM LARGE BRATWURST BEAR CRAWLS ROULETTE, I hardly noticed.

This is a great example of a puzzle that doesn't push the envelope of theme development, but does a fantastic job of presenting a concept that's both interesting and beautifully executed for the NYT's broad solving population.

I can Name That Theme in two entries! VITAL ORGAN, VIDALIA ONION, then I jumped to the middle row, confidently dropping in a starting V. No VEERing OFF for me! Down to the bottom right corner, a perfect place to drop in a dollop of Alberto VO5. 54-Down, [Colorful flower with "a face"] ... with such a kooky clue, it had to be thematic. PANS5. Done!

Cue sad trombone.

Initialism puzzles are so plentiful that these days, they need something extra. VO5 certainly is an apt revealer for five V O phrases. Impressive job working in the 5 — PAR 5 is seen on golf courses all the time, whereas something like HIGH 5 would have been odd, in the same way V-EIGHT is.

Closing off that bottom left corner sure makes it easier to grid around the VO5 / PAR5 crossing. It chokes off that region, though. I bet there are reasonable grid fills if Tracy took out the black square between EPA and OPS.

I hadn't heard of VIN ORDINAIRE, but that's no surprise considering I can barely tell the difference between red wine and red blood. Neat term to learn.

(If there were only something a few steps lower, like VIN ATROCE. I'd pay two dollars for that.)

Initialism puzzles can stand out if the initials are difficult to work with. V does have that quality to a certain extent, but some searching turned up VEGETABLE OIL, VISUAL OPTICS, VEAL OSCAR, VOLUNTARY OATH, VIRTUAL OFFICE.

Some sparks of fun in the cluing, wordplay like [Took a dip?] pointing to SAGGED — a literal dip. Riffing on a "pocketful of rye" for LOAF amused me, too.

I paused at the crossing of VIDALIA and ET ALII, since ET ALIA is also a valid entry, as is ET ALIAE. I'd be sympathetic to those who thought VIDALIA or VIDALAA looked correct.

It'd have been great to get more time separating this one from our last number-in-grid puzzle and something more to elevate it from the initialisms pack. Some excellent theme phrase choices, though.

I appreciate puzzles that solve better on paper than computer. With apologies to Mother Earth, there's something neat about a tip of the hat to good old paper.

Without the slashes in today's puzzle, my electronic solve was confusing, sometimes even frustrating. Hearing about Jim Horne's experience on paper elevated my view of the concept. It's neat (see grid below) how the backslash so clearly tells you that the doubled letters should be used in one order for Acrosses, and the other for Downs. OVERHEAD DOOR and BLOOD DRIVE look almost natural when presented like this.

It turns out that consecutive pairs of doubled letters within an entry are incredibly common. A quick program turned up hundreds of possibilities, and simple RegEx search on our finder located too many to display. Options are reduced by the constraint that there have to be pairs of entries, with the doubled letters switched, but even then it's not difficult.

Given the flexibility, I would have loved an extra layer, perhaps the doubled letters tied to something like DOUBLE O seven being a double-crosser? Or playing on TO (two) BE OR NOT TO BE? That'd BB a fun brainstorming session.

That said, Tracy and Tom did an admirable job of executing on this presentation, prioritizing colorful phrases for their themer choices, as well as working in wonderful bonuses like BUM A RIDE, TENOR SAX, ACID WASH, MOON PIES. Both are such pros that I wasn't at all surprised to encounter virtually no crossword glue. That's an outstanding display of craftsmanship.

Constructors of the world: note that Tom and Tracy wisely kept their word count at the max of 140. Don't be Icarus, flying too close to the sun with 138 or 136. A fantastic grid like this is imminently possible at 140, while 136 almost always requires serious compromises.

Overall, top-notch Sunday gridwork — everything I want in a Sunday NYT grid — but the concept left a lot of potential untapped.

We originally had GOAT YOGA in the GOATHERD slot. Will Shortz balked, wondering if it was well-known enough, and if it has staying power. It was probably the right call, although if you're looking for staying power, maybe a couple of baby goats on your plank is the answer. Hard not to squee at that.

Ever since Michael Bennett's introduction in which he declared his true allegiance, I've wanted to get WAKANDA into the crossworld.

It was a pleasure helping Tracy achieve her goal of "hitting for the cycle." She's hard-working, responsive, and a great listener.

For themes in today's genre, I always brace myself for the incoming blitz of THIS PUZZLE MAKES NO SENSE emails. It's even hard to figure out how to present the solution (we've added highlighting below) so that it's easy to understand. Explaining it — ONE UP hints that the sequence of letters O N E rises up, and then the rest of the answer continues from the start of the rise — still generates looks of confusion.

It might help to look at Tracy's previous two puzzles, one effectively the same but opposite in operation, and one playing on UP phrases.

Still don't understand? Do what I do: nod quietly with a knowing look. If nothing else, it makes people annoyed.

I enjoyed all the themers Tracy picked, all colorful and evocative. I would have preferred if all of the ONEs had gone across words of a phrase, like DRAGON EGG, but then again, this type of theme is confusing enough. Perhaps it's better to leave out yet another layer of potential puzzlement.

ONE UP is a perfect revealer, though it's not at the perfect placement. Curious choice, given that placing it at 72-Across seems possible.

It's also a shame that our old crossword friend Brian ENO didn't make an appearance as a bonus revealer! He could have been slipped into 63-Down, with just some minor adjustments.

Generally solid gridwork, with only a few gluey bits. Only nit is that I'd have tried hard to avoid HAMA, who's less minor than the easy to figure out SSE. As a general rule, it's best to avoid any short entry that hasn't been used much in the NYT.

I like this theme type every once in a while, and it was fun to get a bit of a trick on a Wednesday. It'd have been better to have more time separating this example from the previous ones, though — especially since Tracy was the one who wrote them. Adding a tiny bit extra to help elevate it from the pack, in the vein of ENO as a secondary revealer, would also have been great.

When Jeb approached me with the WATCH YOUR STEP revealer Tracy mentioned, I was underwhelmed. Isn't WATCH YOUR STEP too general, covering everything from potholes to stones to curbs to dog poop? I had a similar issue today, although I like Tracy's interpretation better. WATCH YOUR STEP has a much stronger link to holes than to snakes.

I usually get a ton of questions on these "sticking up" or "sticking down" puzzles — Tracy's last one, unfortunately from just a few weeks ago, was a prime example — so we now err on the side of highlighting in bright colors (see grid below). Hopefully, that makes the HOLE, DITCH, PIT, and GAP stand out.

I enjoyed the themers where the drop-down word spanned the words of the phrase, i.e., CREDIT CHECK. Usually, Will Shortz tells constructors to avoid ones like NO CHOLESTEROL and HOSPITAL STAY because the other words (NO and STAY) come across as superfluous. I used to think this was bunk, but I've come to see the wisdom in that opinion.

These "drop down" puzzles are so hard to build because every themer must be expressed in a T shape. Filling around each intersection is often a bear, and when you have four of them, you're bound to run into severe trade-offs. Toss in a long central revealer — crossing one of the themers! — and stuff like ACEH, AOKI, NEBS, ETAT, ICI are gonna be prices to pay.

I enjoyed a lot of the extras, though, DEMO CREWS, FANNIE MAE, BAD RAP, BEER BONGS, SPOT OF TEA helping to make up for some of the rough patches. Strong work in the two big corners.

Overall, a solid Thursday idea that's a little different than usual "drop down" themes. I'd have liked MIND THE GAP as the revealer, though — spot on for this concept — and one fewer themer, with more smoothness, would have been ideal.

(Publishing this in early 2020 would have been nice, too, considering how close it is to both Jeb's puzzle, as well as to Tracy's last similar one.)

Solvers sometimes flood me with questions about certain theme types, and today's is near the top of that list. It's a tough call — do you make the conceit blatantly easy by circling the relevant tricksy entries? Or do you risk solvers not understanding what's going on, leaving with a feeling of frustration (that they then take out on me)?

Honestly, I don't write all the puzzles! Nor does a computer!

Tried and true example of this theme type, which I've seen playing off both UP and DOWN. I appreciated three aspects of Tracy's theme execution:

1. Each shaded word is both a real entry, as well as a fine ___ UP phrase when reversed.
2. The shaded words all come at the start or end of phrases, never the middle.
3. There's a nearly 50/50 mix of starts and ends. While there would be more consistency if Tracy had put them all at the beginnings, that would have flooded the left side of the grid with shaded squares, making for an unappealing visual.

I wasn't a fan of all her themer choices, though — HIGH-SPEED DIAL-UP in particular. I asked a couple of IT friends, and they all gave me that sneery eye roll that defines the industry. (No bitterness about Centurylink and its intensely horrible customer service, not me!)

REVERSE PHONE LOOKUP is better. At least it Googles well (millions of hits when in quotes). I wouldn't use it to seed a themeless, though; more a utilitarian term, like BITWISE OPERATORS or DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURIBILITY.

Along with SIT UP BENCH — we call it an inclined bench at my gym — and PIN-UP GIRL — I'm glad it wasn't a dude who wrote this puzzle! — I wasn't wild about the themers as a whole.

It's not easy to come up with sizzling, long phrases with some of these ___ UP phrases. Can you think of anything else for DIAL UP besides DIAL-UP MODEM? So this would have played out better on a Thursday, allowing for snappier themer selections. "(KOOL) IN THE SKY!" (it's a bird …) would have been awesome.

Excellent gridwork helped keep up my interest, thankfully. Hardly a blip in the short fill, which is tough to do with so many L-shaped themers — some of them crossing! A couple of long goodies like BEER GARDENS, PRESS PASSES, BEE STING, BASE TAN, EGO TRIP, TORN MCL, too. High-quality craftsmanship can go a long ways toward retaining solvers' attention.

Crossword constructors live a dog's life. I wonder if that's what inspired Tracy today!

The great goddess Crucivera only rarely sends a seraph to float an idea within your grasp. Even if you can catch it, it's a painful path to publication. The rough timeline for a Monday puzzle, in a typical case:

• Ideation: 3 days
• Gridwork: 3 days
• Cluing: 5 days
• Waiting for Will's yea/nay: 3 months
• Revisions: 5 days
• Queue time to publication: 9 months

It's soul-sucking to wait with bated breath until the day finally comes that you can post on Facebook that LOOK MA, I'M NOT A TOTAL FAILURE, SEE?

(Humph. You make puzzles? You brother saved eight people's lives today. Why can't you be more like him?)

Even if you don't have Asian parents, you too often get scooped because of the long lag time. It's especially rough when someone else's puzzle with the same theme comes out less than a week before yours.

A vast majority of solvers won't be aware of the AVCX crossword since the NYT's solvership is so much bigger. Shouldn't matter, right? But it matters to us constructors.

Will has done a lot over the years to shorten the overall process, which used to be perhaps twice as long overall. I appreciate that he's brought on more people recently to help reduce the 3 months of waiting for an answer. I bet he'll eventually bring that down to 1 month.

Queue time to publication is a harder one. The WSJ is much better about that, averaging about 3 months, but they don't get nearly as many submissions as Will, who gets about 125 a week. Maybe Mike--who edits the WSJ and is close friends with Will--has some advice on how to reduce that painfully long lag to publication.

Tracy's puzzle is solid, with excellent themer choices, and top-notch gridwork — such a hard task with five longish themers. It's a near-perfect gateway puzzle, one I'd gladly hand to a newb. It has to bittersweet for Tracy though, given the circumstances.

When Tracy mentioned this idea to me, I thought there was no way that there'd be enough DEER synonyms.

And if there were, there surely couldn't be a way to cross them in pairs, through a shared letter.

And if we could somehow make that work, there'd be zero chance that all of the synonyms would be containable in solid phrases.

And if by holy hell all THAT managed to be doable — fat chance, I said — there was NO FRICKIN WAY that it could be laid out in a crossword grid.

As it turns out, we found more than enough synonyms, BUCK the only one we weren't able to use because it shared no common letters with any other synonym. (Sorry, BUCK ROGERS!)

They managed to cross into pairs.

What? All six had solid phrases like FAWN OVER?

BUT. But but BUT! There was no way we'd possibly lay out the crossing pairs — plus DEER XING — in a grid.

The great goddess Crucivera is cruel! Gnashing of teeth!

I hate giving up on an idea when it's that close to working, so I tried dozens of arrangements using normal symmetry, and then dozens more with mirror symmetry. Finally, I hit upon this layout, which seemed to be the only one possible one.

Forgive my blasphemy, oh great and glorious Crucivera! I will sacrifice many pencils to you.

Tracy did a wonderful job of filling, especially in the SW corner. We had pegged this as a Monday theme, accessible to most anyone, so we wanted to make the fill as newb-friendly as possible. In some iterations though, I had put awesome (to me) material in the big bottom corners, proud of all the juice. But looking back on it, much of it was too tough for newbs. Tracy helped us dial it back, favoring smoothness over going gonzo. I learned a lot from her Monday approach.

★ I love an early-week puzzle that's JUST FOR KICKS! (KICKS is what the young kids call shoes these days. Well, not anymore now that I've started to use the term myself.)

Such a hilarious image of a cat burglar, walking upside-down across a ceiling in fashionable SUCTION shoes. Love it! And PLATFORM shoes no doubt make you the life of the PARTY. Great repurposing of the common political phrase, PARTY PLATFORM.

WATER MOCCASINS wasn't as amusing to me, as you can't see synchro swimmers' feet that much, but it worked well as a kooky redefining of the moccasin snakes.

I liked the theme notion so much that I would have loved a fifth themer. But not sure what that could be — maybe FLATS, in TORTILLA FLATS? HEELS, in TAR HEELS?

Totally fine to stick to four though, especially if you're going to buckle down and make the grid great. So much room for bonuses in the fill and Sam and Tracy didn't disappoint. MEMOIRS, TROUNCED, G FORCES, HOOPLA, SUPERSIZED? WHAT A TREAT! Sam and Tracy, YOU WIN!

Note how well they spaced out their bonus fill, alternating up / down, trying to keep them as far apart as possible. Generally speaking, the less long bonuses have to interact with each other, the easier it is to fill the grid smoothly.

And a nice and smooth product, indeed. I might have tried harder to avoid EMIR and EDDA for an early-week puzzle, but I can see the case for those being terms an educated solver ought to know. Short gluey entries are usually easier to ignore, anyway, than longer globs. Something like GO NOW is a bit harder to let slide — seems a bit awkward, doesn't it?

But those are minor nits. An early-week puzzle that both gives me this many kicks, and demonstrates high craftsmanship, easily deserves a POW!

SELFIES featured today, tourist attractions all with the M-E string — get it, ME in a selfie? Fun idea. Some neat finds, too, the JEFFERSON MEMORIAL, MADAME TUSSAUDS, TIMES SQUARE all places people go to visit.

BTW, I cringe every time I hear people say "usie," as in a selfie with more than one person. Old man hanging on to the past, kicking and screaming at newfangled terms!

What with so many tourist attractions across the world, I wondered about some of the ones Tracy picked. People go on vacation to see the MALL OF AMERICA? (Sadly, probably yes.) MET LIFE STADIUM I hear is a neat ballpark, but it felt like it paled in comparison to the grandeur or historical value of the three I mentioned above.

RIVER THAMES felt not as strong, too. Don't people tend to take pictures in front of various tourist attractions, with the Thames in the background? Hard for me to imagine going to England specifically to see the Thames.

The theme clues … tl;dr. The puzzle would have been greatly improved by more concise cluing. References to Facebook felt unnecessary. Also, all the kids tell me Facebook is only for old people now, so that made the puzzle feel behind the times. (They won't tell me what is in, for fear that I'll get on.)

Nice gridwork. Tough to get a Sunday grid perfectly clean, but Tracy got pretty darn close, just a bit of SEM and ORANT (a praying figure). That may not seem like such a feat, but most Sunday grids contain well over 10 gluey bits, making those puzzles feel inelegantly crafted.

And how about those great bonuses? OVEN TIMER as a "dingy" thing … as in it dings! RAT TRAP as a [Bad joint], joint = slang for "place." RED TAPE, CAPTCHA, TETRIS, ALARM BELL, LEFT AJAR — all those helped keep me solving. Tracy did so well with spacing out her themers, using black squares wisely to create good separation for easier filling. She's a pro.

Overall, I thought it was a fun idea that got repetitive much too quickly. Also, the mix of places, statues, river, mall, gave it a lack of tightness that "all places" or "all statues" would have allowed for. I think I would have loved it in a 15x15 puzzle, where all these issues could have been addressed.

Love it when a Monday puzzle hides a theme like this! Tracy treats us to a BBQ with WINGS, DOGS, BRATS, and SLIDERS. I enjoy seeing how long it takes me to figure out a Monday theme — often two themers is all it takes — but I doubt I would have figured this one out without the BBQ revealer. Nice!

I did like DOGS and BRATS better than the other two, though. BRATS got obfuscated especially well, not just a different meaning but a different pronunciation (between BRATty kids and BRATwurst). SLIDERS … perhaps I don't go to enough BBQs, but I don't think of SLIDERS (little tiny hamburgers) getting put on the grill. The patties are, sure, but the full SLIDERS, no. Unless you want grilled buns? Maybe I should try this!

Good execution, but I finished with an error for the first time in years in a Monday puzzle: ARGOS / DOH instead of ARGUS / DUH. As a Greek mythology buff, I was embarrassed. As a solver, I was annoyed. Was the error my fault? Maybe ... probably ... but I would have asked Tracy to rework this crossing to make it less ambiguous. Crosswords need to set up the solver to win, and I don't think this crossing did that.

I didn't mind the KAHLIL / LATH intersection as much, as the final letter in KAHLI_ … well, I guess I'd understand if solvers thought KAHLIM or KAHLIF could be probable. It'd be different if LATH were a word I saw every day.

It's too bad. There were some nice bonuses in PRIME TIME, SIGHTSEER, OUTTAKE, along with just a few PANDG (P&G) type dabs of crossword glue, so the rest of the grid I thought was well done.

Monday puzzles are so tough to create — you want to ensure that novice solvers finish with a fully correct puzzle to achieve that burst of elation. It just takes a single box to throw that off.

The hidden theme worked 75% well for me. If Tracy had used LINKS (any other sausage terms I'm missing?) instead of SLIDERS and fixed the tough crossings, I would have given it POW! consideration.

BLACK ICE played upon today, with ICE quasi-rebused inside four black squares. (See the grid below for a visual.) At first I thought it would have been better to make the BLACK ICE squares stand out somehow — perhaps having them be the only isolated black squares in the grid? — but then I remembered that the entire concept of BLACK ICE is that you can't actually see it coming. Fair enough!

Did you notice that Loren and Tracy picked theme phrases such that they didn't need to use a giveaway "[no clue]" indicator anywhere? For example, ADV(ICE) COLUMN has COLUMN show up as a normal word — plus, they clued it so it disguises the meaning (newspaper COLUMN vs. building COLUMN). I was wondering why VAN had gotten such a tough clue (VAN Cliburn, the pianist), but it all made sense when I realized that it was obfuscating the VAN in POL(ICE) VAN. Nice.

Some sizzling themers, too. MR N(ICE) GUY was my favorite, but ADV(ICE) COLUMN, SERV(ICE) DOG, POL(ICE) VAN were all big thumbs-ups in my eyes. All of them worked well, although I did have to convince myself that OFFICE TEMP was a real thing. (It is. Mostly.)

Pretty clean grid, especially considering working with four theme pairs plus a revealer ain't no joke. True, NO D(ICE) and (ICE) AGE are shorties, but still, any time you have to fill around crossing themers, it can get hairy really quick. Strong results, with just some minor ESSA and the oddly arbitrary Y SHAPE in that tough opening corner.

TEMP did give me pause, given its [Time's partner, informally] clue and its ENNIO crossing. I was iffy on Morricone's first name (so thank goodness I do a lot of crosswords!) — ANNIO / TAMP seemed plausible too. TIME and TEMP? I'm still not sure "time and temperature" flows off the tongue, but Google seems to disagree with me on this as well. Harrumph.

Nice to get a few bonuses in the fill, especially MONGOOSE, and an appropriate TEAMWORK for this pair of constructors. Well executed overall … although after much thought, my brain wanted to take the BLACK ICE concept to its extreme, with completely random spots of BLACK ICE, so that you couldn't predict where they'd show up.

Stupid brain.

Oof, this grid was a bear. The skeleton alone nearly didn't come together, what with four pairs of long crossing answers needed. And we had to lay them out such that they didn't interfere with each other! Eight long themers is tough enough in a 21x21, but try intersecting pairs of them and cramming them all in. Not easy.

And then there was stupid old crossword symmetry to worry about. Tracy put together a good set of theme answer pairs to start, but we quickly realized that having to intersect answers at the E of RED each time was going to give us a symmetry nightmare. Specifically, the placement of the letter E within BLUE vs. GREEN was not good.

A few days later, it occurred to me that if we pluralized GREENS, we could make everything work. Tracy disliked the pluralization, though, and rightly so — a lone plural themer is inelegant. My a-ha moment might have come when eating HASH GREENS — er, (BROWNS) — which is much more natural in the plural.

Once in a while, the crossword gods throw you a bone.

The grid came together fairly quickly after that. I laid out about 20 skeletons before landing on one I thought would work. It also looked like we might be able to go down to 136 words so we could add in a whole bunch of snazzy material. But after a lot of back and forth, we came to the conclusion that it just wasn't going to be worth the crossword glue needed to hold those (not-so-snazzy) long fill together. I hate giving up on a tough construction challenge, but we decided it was the right thing to do. Going up to 138 words allowed for much, much cleaner fill, and still a good amount of KOHLRABI, TEND BAR, STOPGAP, RAZOR WIT, CATSUIT, I DOUBT IT, etc. sort of bonuses.

Such fun when a collaboration comes together like this, where we have to work like the dickens and struggle through so many problems. Finally getting across the finish line hasn't felt so satisfying in ages.

Fictional swear words = an amusing crossword idea. I knew SHAZBOT right off the top, and that was super fun to plunk in. And having watched every episode of M * A * S * H, I knew HORSE PUCKEY too! Er, HORSE HOCKEY. Dang it. Er, DAGNABIT!

I did find DAGNABIT to be "one of these things is not like the others" though, as I hear it in normal use — not all the time, but it does come up. Not knowing who Deputy Dawg was, I wondered if the word originated from him. But it appears to be a variant of "goddammit." Huh. Dammit.

I was surprised that I needed every cross to get JEEZALOO — given that I've seen every episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." Huh. I seem to have wasted much of my life, dagnabit. At least I've never seen an episode of "Spongebob"! Although, OH BARNACLES sure didn't come easy. Double dagnabit.

Loved the bonus of RUMOR HAS IT … and SNAPCHAT / OIL HEATERS were pretty good too. With five themers, Tracy could have skated by with just a pair of bonus entries or two, so the extra effort was appreciated. A bit of SYCAMORE, RHOMBI, MENTHOL, and GASBAGS helped keep my attention through the solve.

Nice, clean grid. If a bit of AZO is all you end up with, you can be proud of yourself. ON HIRE was a bit weird — not sure why I love quaint British terms like "lorry" and "anti-clockwise" but not ON HIRE … gor!

LOVED the clue for GIRL, referencing Mo'ne Davis, the Little League star. Able to pitch a 70 mph fastball at age 13? Damn, GIRL! (I once tried at one of those carnival "how fast can you pitch" stations. Ahem … barely broke 50 mph. As a 20-year old. Triple dagnabbit.)

I'm shazbotting glad I don't have a censor today.

"Words that can be preceded by" theme today, something we rarely see these days. (Most editors take very few of them now.) A few months ago, Tracy asked me about this idea, and I mentioned that although it is indeed a "words that can be preceded by," what might help elevate it is that some of the terms — SKINNY (JEANS), LOW RISE (JEANS) — are fresh, colorful phrases. It also has a somewhat "fashionable" feel to it, making it a little more upscale.

Tracy does a nice job with her grid, especially considering the theme density. Five longish phrases, including a 15-letter one, are tougher to fill around than jamming oneself into a pair of SKINNY JEANS. Just getting a smoothish, cleanish result is an accomplishment, but Tracy works to give us the nice UP AND AT IT (AT EM would have been just perfect!). TWO HANDED is more workmanlike, but getting some OPAQUE, ENSUITE helps elevate the solve. I like seeing those careful touches, showing the constructor's desire to do something more for the solver.

Relative lack of DRECK, too — I was almost all the way through the puzzle before I hitched at the south. Not surprising that two themers (FLARE GUNS and CUT OFF SAW) sandwiching a six-letter word (ENESCO) would be the boggiest section. All the ENESCO crossings are fair (although that entry in itself might turn off some novice solvers), but to have any ?STAR, NEURO, and the slightly odd UNCAP doesn't do that region any favors. It's a lot to cram into one tiny section.

I wasn't familiar with the term FLARE JEANS, but fashion is not at all my forte, and it does Google well. I felt as a mechanical engineer I should know CUT OFF SAW, but it didn't hit my ear very well as something like, say, CHOP SAW. Research shows it's a real thing though — perhaps I've been out of engineering too long.

Nice execution through most of the puzzle, along with some great phrases like SKINNY DIP and BAGGY EYES, helping to overcome my personal ennui with this type of theme.

Easy-peasy! At least, easy — EASY DOES IT describing themers starting with E and Z.

Initialisms are a standard crossword theme, so I appreciated 1.) Tracy's decision to use at least one tough letter (Z) and 2.) incorporation of a good revealer. EROGENOUS ZONES is a very nice answer, and EMILIANO ZAPATA felt like it was someone I really should have been able to fill in right off the bat.

EBOLA ZAIRE … talk about a downer to lead off one's crossword puzzle. Out of curiosity, I wondered what other 10-letter phrases could follow the E* Z* pattern. Surprised that I couldn't find any good ones!

ED ZWICK … this Seahawks fan might have preferred END ZONE, but there's no doubt ED ZWICK is crossworthy. I did hesitate when reading up on him (such a prolific directing career!) — seems like he goes by Edward?

Some fancy work in the NE and SW corners. A 9x4(ish) chunk is so hard to fill with color and cleanliness. I really liked the NE, with SALT PIT, FINE TUNES, and MIX IT UP (TAKE APART isn't as strong to me) at just the price of an OER. Very nice!

The SW wasn't quite as stellar for me, given that it cost ANA, ERES, and NANS in order to get not quite as many fancy entries. NANS especially stood out (the plural of NAAN is usually NAAN, yeah?), what with other awkward plurals — SOYAS and ELSAS — elsewhere in the grid.

For a standard theme type, I love having something extra; some bonus. While it's nice to get the lovely CANOODLES type of bonus, how cool would it have been to have something like EASY PEASY, with E*Z* and P* Z* phrases? Or limit all theme phrases to different makes of cars, with EASY RIDER as a revealer? That last one would almost certainly be impossible, but it's fun to brainstorm ways of elevating a standard theme type into something standout.

I imagine BANDS TOGETHER inspired the puzzle theme, two pop bands glommed together to make either a real or a wacky phrase. My knowledge of pop music is woeful at best (huge jazz and classical fan, along with old-school rock and rap) so I'm glad Tracy and Acme used mostly giant-name bands. I still had to look up TRAIN, FUN, and FREE, but a quick Google search tells me that they are indeed bands. Huh.

I dug the neat discovery of RUSH THE DOORS. It's a phrase I've heard before in relation to Black Friday sales, so it's fortuitous that it just happens to be two bands put together. BOSTON CREAM pie is one of my favorites, so that was fun too. EAGLES WINGS and YES NO DOUBT also seemed like legit phrases in actual use.

I wish there had been more consistency though, as the rest of the themers are pretty made-up sounding. It's perfectly fine to have a crossword where every themer is as wacky as FUN SMASHING PUMPKINS or POISON FREE, but the mix of spot-on real phrases and kooky ones didn't do it for me. And ONE DIRECTION TRAFFIC ... it's neither real nor very kooky.

With any Sunday 140-word puzzle, there are bound to be a few minor gluey bits of the LAI, AUST, TGI, HOC variety. Pretty easy for me to overlook these short and common offenders. But throw in a few more AGTS, OAST, OGEE, ORIG, OLEIN entries, and it starts to affect my solving pleasure. I can understand why Tracy and Acme might have gone to 138 words in order to reduce their number of 3-, 4-, and 5-letter words (like Will's been looking for), but I'd much rather have more short words that are cleaner, than fewer that are gluier. Sticking to a 140 word count can help achieve that.

Some very nice long fill added to my solving experience, ISAAC NEWTON, UTTER ROT, and PRIMROSES my favorite. (PRIMROSES reminds me of Prim, Katniss's younger sister in "The Hunger Games," who Katniss sacrificed herself for. Hey, we get PEETA in the grid too!) A couple of neat single words were bonuses too, APTITUDE, INDIFFERENT, STALWART all adding ELEGANCE.

Theme phrases with three letters repeated, thus THREE-PEATs. Hopefully the NYT won't get a legal notice from Pat Riley, who trademarked the "three-peat" term in anticipation of his Lakers winning their third title in a row. (They failed, ha!)

I had seen some of these before, most notably MISSISSIPPI turned into MISS(ISS)IPPI, but Tracy found a couple nice ones. Obviously, CHEN REPUBLIC is my favorite. (My reign of power over the aforementioned country is a bit tenuous these days, what with a one-year old.) I couldn't quite figure out what the base answer was, so finally uncovering CHECHEN REPUBLIC (another name for Chechnya) was a neat moment.

I would have liked more of those neat moments, ones that really disguised the base phrase. It was a real challenge to figure out ENTE(NTE) CORDIALE for example, and I very much enjoyed that struggle. The rest came a bit too easily. I ran a quick query on my personal wordlist and came up with a few that could have been more challenging to uncover:

• BAR(BAR)Y PIRATES
• BEST (EST)IMATES
• COWBOYS AND I(NDI)ANS
• FEATHERS ONES (NES)T
• IT ALL MAKES SEN(SE N)OW
• NEAR (EAR)TH ORBIT
• PICKED UP THE C(HEC)K
• UC SANTA BAR(BAR)A

Some people pooh-pooh the idea of using coding to help with a crossword theme, but I'm all for it.

I liked a lot of the longer fill Tracy used. SMARTPHONE and TOUCH AND GO make a great pair of long downs, and AT LEISURE and RAN RAGGED add color as well.

You might wonder why some short gluey words like ODA, ELENI, OTARU, ADITS, NOLI, and LAH appear in crosswords. They are undesirable to see in modern crosswords, but they're also so useful in building a grid. Note 1.) all the common letters and 2.) the alternating consonant vowel patterns — both of these qualities make it so tempting to use these types of entries in assembling a grid. I wouldn't have minded a little less good long fill in order to cut out some of these gluey bits.

A fun solve, and my defeat of the two themers which put up a struggle was satisfying.