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Juicy middle section, featuring a huge swath of intersecting 7+ letter answers. This is a tough feat to pull off, and Kameron does well in that center. RISKY to even try it — I try to stay away from sections this big, myself — but working in TONGUE TIED, FREE UNION, the dreaded FRIEND ZONE, BABY CAKES, and HOLY SYNOD all together is a coup. It's unfortunate that LIBELEE snuck it's way in there, as it would have been just about perfect without it. LIBELEE does have dictionary support, but to me at best it's a neutral entry.

Also unfortunate that INTERNEE shows up in the same puzzle. Having two of the same type of iffy long entries is not great. I did like the rest of the result in the lower right — NAÏVE ART is a term I enjoyed learning, and PA SYSTEM along with KOBE BRYANT about to start his final year in the NBA is awfully nice. QUIRED was odd to me at first, but I ended up liking learning that word, too. To pull that all off with just a REE and TEM is pretty nice.

I wasn't as impressed with the upper left. Great triple of GEMSTONE / PEACH PIT / ON THE ICE, all strong answers, but there's so much glue required to hold it together. Starting the solving experience with GPO, EEN, ETE, and TSOS nearby felt like too much all in one location. Spreading those bits throughout one puzzle is fine, but concentrating them in the starting corner is not ideal.

Overall, there was quite a bit of vocabulary I didn't know, which is perfectly fine. It did feel like there was quite a bit more of it than usual though — EAMONN, QUIRED, NAÏVE ART, FREE UNION, etc. A mixed bag, with a visually stunning center section, some terms I learned, quite a lot of gluey bits, and a handful of great long answers.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

Really nice finds; phrases that are self-descriptive of a word hidden inside. Sounds confusing, so here's an example: SPLIT SECOND = an order to split the word SECOND into S and ECOND. Another? CALL BACK is a hint that CALL is within CALL BACK … but backward = L L A C.

Matt gives us 11 themers, with a mix of anagrams, split-ups, and reversals. It got a little confusing to me, so I categorized them:

ANAGRAMS: 5

SPLIT-UPS: 5

REVERSALS: 1

To have just one reversal thrown into the mix — and at the very top of the puzzle — felt a bit odd. Sure would have been nice to have a second one to balance it out. Right in the middle of the puzzle would have felt more elegant, too, but CALL BACK is unfortunately an even number of letters, so that's not possible.

As neat as it was to realize that the letters L L A C were within CALLBACK, I think the theme would have cohered better with just the five anagrams and five split-ups.

A lower number of themers would have helped cut down the gluey oddballs, too. I had a rough go of certain sections where themers crowded together, notably in the DIGHT / STAGY area, which felt a bit FLIMSY. I can see the construction difficulty level there is high — that area needing to coordinate around three themers — but staying away from that type of intensely constrained arrangement might have been better.

A little better result in the symmetrical spot, but any time you have to rely on Maleskan words like ORLE, a shift in black squares or themers might be better.

I really enjoyed some of the longer material, TWO ROOM FLATS in particular. Neat that "lodgings" accurately describes a singular lodging. (I had to look that up after it stymied me.) PUBLIC ENEMY and START A FIRE were sure OKAY BY ME.

ME LIKE … well, me no likey that as it sounds odd without the final Y, but it could easily be personal preference.

Some cool finds; perhaps a bit too much packed into a single grid.

– puzzle by Matt Ginsberg

As a big fan of Poirot and his eccentricities, I enjoyed seeing the apt LITTLE GREY CELLS in the center of the puzzle. If you haven't read or seen any Poirot mysteries (shame on you), he often uses that phrase re: how he solve crimes.

And I hadn't remembered that Christie describes Poirot's head as "egg-shaped," but indeed she does. The actor David Suchet (pictured above) is just about perfect! It's like he wore an egg-shaped helmet in order to prepare for this role. Now that's method acting!

I might have preferred something more specific about Poirot's moustache than just MOUSTACHE, like how it's a handlebar, or how he sleeps with a snood (a tres chic moustache hairnet). In that same vein, it would have been great to have something more specific to Poirot than just DETECTIVE. It makes for an anticlimatic end to the puzzle.

Out of curiosity, I searched for other terms more specifically describing Poirot's oddities. "Pink-tipped nose," "upward-curled moustache," and how he utilizes "order and method" when employing his LITTLE GREY CELLS came up. I do like "upward-curled" better than just MOUSTACHE, but at 12 letters, it doesn't have a symmetrical partner. Having to adhere to crossword symmetry sometimes means you can't always get what you want.

That north section is tricky, having to work around MOUSTACHE and HERCULE POIROT. I can understand needing something like A LOOP or SO I — better to have just one partial in a little region though — but I would have preferred not to see Mr. MOTO in the grid, as it made me wonder if this was going to be a crossword generally about DETECTIVEs. I think it's more elegant to restrict fill so it doesn't dilute the theme.

It was good to learn that this is actually one of David's earlier puzzles, as I wouldn't expect to see gluey bits like ENS/CEE/DIR/ILS aggregated in one of his puzzles today. Neat to see how far he's progressed in such a short time.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

★ Fantastic puzzle. Simple theme — FIFTH, SIX-PACK, and CASE found at a LIQUOR STORE — but those three containers are disguised nicely within colorful phrases. I didn't know what was going on until I hit the revealer; that sort of opacity switching instantly to transparency makes for a great a-ha.

And Joel's fill. It's usually strong, but today it's spot-on, with something for everyone. Classic PIANO MAN for the ANTIQUERs; a LISTICLE (portmanteau for a list-like article) along with Elon Musk's SPACE X and COMIC CON for today's generation.

Joel uses the parallel down arrangement in PIANO MAN / SCRUB OAK and LISTICLE / ANTIQUER. This layout usually guarantees that some of the long guys will be dull, or some of the crosses will be ugly. You might argue that AMICA is esoteric, but I kind of like it, as it's easily inferable from the French AMIE, and the crossings are all fair. ISTS is the only marginally iffy bit in the lower left, and I personally think it's fine. So both of these corners came out fantastic, a big win considering the difficulty level.

I had a slight hitch at CASE CLOSED — Washington State liquor stores only sell hard liquor. I suppose you might get a case of fifths or something, but whoa, that's a lot of liquor! Probably a state by state thing.

Joel and I have debated over two different strategies on adding zest to an early-week puzzle. One way is to use a lower word count (72 or less), which tends to get you more 6s and 7s than normal. The other way is to pack in a lot of sizzling long fill (8+ letters), but that usually means going up to 76 or 78 words and causes a lot of 3 and 4-letter words.

Today, Joel gives us the best of both of these strategies, with great long fill, some nice 6-letter entries, and not very many stale short entries. Along with a solid theme I can't remember seeing, it's a big winner.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

Curious! PB has 201 puzzles in the NYT Shortz era now, but this is just his fourth Wednesday. He takes phrases synonymous with "in jail" and gives them amusingly apt interpretations on "crimes" that led the person to jail. Merely going to yoga class, you got arrested and are now DOING A STRETCH? Funny! I had heard variants of the UP THE RIVER one before, but serving beer -> BEHIND BARS and buying a McMansion -> IN THE BIG HOUSE gave me smiles.

Some good clues in this one, a trademark of PB puzzles. When it comes to generating amusing clue/answer combos providing strong a-ha moments, he might be the best constructor out there.

• [Person who picks his work?] is a MINER. You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, and of course you can pick your work if you have a pick-axe.
• I was baffled by [Savior of lost souls, for short?]. GPS indeed rescues we poor souls continually getting lost. (At least, those of us not so cheap that we eschew GPS for good ol' paper maps. Ahem.)

I found it inelegant to have SHIV in the grid. Some might see it as a bonus answer, but randomly placed answers which relate to a theme feel like they detract from the final product.

I also got a somewhat old-timey feeling in this one, pretty surprising for a PB grid. I'm fine with OLEO and EPEE — sometime you just need a dab of glue to hold a grid together — but getting ASTA, OSSIE, LAHR, Tommy AGEE of the Miracle Mets, and old CBS News chief FRED Friendly seemed like a blast from generations ago. Huh. Perhaps this was intentional, throwing a bone to older solvers; counterbalancing some of the more modern themes we've recently seen.

Neat theme idea, but the grid perhaps not up to the (immensely elevated) PB bar.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

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.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

Super solid offering from one of the best in the themeless game. Peter starts with an ambitious 16 long slots (entries of 8+ letters), and what a start. When you're working with that many long entries, it's tough avoid some of them coming out flat, but I count 12 strong entries. My favorite is ZIPLINES, the next best thing to climbing if you're going to be in a harness. And AL JAZEERA has great Scrabbly letters.

I appreciate how Peter's been working hard to transform his mid-length material into assets as well. WELL OK is a fun one, as is BIG TOP. RON PAUL is another good one, the politician cleverly staking a claim to the anagram. GULLET is not just an amusing and colorful word, but when paired with a clue as great as [Food channel], it's a plus for the puzzle. (Think of "down the gullet!" and channel = a passageway.) I love it when a clue so innocuously deceives.

Of the four longer entries that I thought were neutral, SNAPPED TO stuck out for me. I would usually count that as an asset, painting a vivid picture of a person jolting. But crossing OPTS TO made it feel a bit so-so, and the feeling of angst grew when I encountered TRIED TO and RAN TO. I don't mind these ___ TO, ___ OUT, ___ AT, etc. phrases in moderation — they're awfully handy to solidify a grid — but like Peter noted, four TOs in a 15x puzzle is maybe two too much for four me. Er, for me.

Some other great clues:

• ESSAY is something written by Salon — did you get tripped up by the capital S of Salon cleverly disguised at the beginning of the clue?
• Neat moment of realization, that a NOSY person indeed pays too much interest.
• FRAT PARTY is not only a great entry but the clue made it even better. (Frats get "rushed" by initiates.)

If it were any other person, I might have picked this one for the POW. The four -TOs complaint might seem ticky-tacky, and really, it probably is. But my bar is set higher for Peter's themeless puzzles than for most every other mere mortal.

– puzzle by Peter Wentz

Eye-catching grid. Even though the puzzle is chunked into three very separate sections, I was tickled by the visual aesthetic. Neat to see only four sets of connected black squares!

The 15-letter entries have to carry so much burden to create zing, as the next-longest entries are only 7-letters. I liked most of them, although RAISE THE TITANIC … I used to be a Clive Cussler fan, but not so much these days after I realized how repetitive they get. And RAISE THE TITANIC wasn't one of the better ones. If only the RAISE THE TITANIC movie had done better, but it was a flop. Sorry, Dirk Pitt.

Alan does work in some snazz using his 7-letter slots, EUNUCHS and GOALIES elevated by their great clues. I'm glad EUNUCHS was clued in its metaphorical sense, rather than its (insert crude joke here) sense. And [Ones who have saving accounts?] fooled me but good. I should have seen the weirdness in "saving" vs. "savings" but I missed it (unlike HOPE (GO) SOLO, who got almost everything this year!).

Certainly some prices to pay, though. That middle section tossed me over its lap and gave me an old fashioned spanking. I guessed at the ETAMINE / AMICE / GANNETS crossings, and like the bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, I chose poorly. ETAMINE is so crossword-friendly — check out its Es and Ts and its perfect consonant alternation — but pretty solver unfriendly.

And as with most grid-spanning triple stacks, the crosses required compromises. The top didn't bother me too much, even with a RLS / DES / ISTH concentration, as those are all fairly minor and common. The crossings on the bottom stack felt like a higher price to pay, what with the oddball RESAT, and a slew of IT IN, UNARY crossing NON U along with the toughies INA and TAL. (Note: chess players consider TAL a must-know person, and crossworders looking to improve their skill ought to follow suit.)

Great first impression what with the beautiful patterns of white space and connected black squares, marred somewhat by compromises throughout the grid.

– puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld

Impressive debut! Sunday 140-word puzzles are incredibly tough, maybe five times harder to make than a weekday 15x puzzle. I was worried to see a new constructor's name on a Sunday 140-worder, expecting a ton of gluey bits. Wow, was I pleasantly surprised!

I tore through the top few rows, all so nice and smooth. Sure, there's A NUT and STYE up in the starting corner, but I really don't mind STYE at all. And A NUT is a tiny price to pay to get a biggish corner with HOT PLATE and OPEN MIC. Great to complete the first couple of rows with just a minor STL (which Cardinals and Rams fans won't mind at all!).

Really nice to get a little snazz in the rest of the puzzle with SNOW CAP and CANDY EGG, and more importantly, I didn't hitch anywhere due to gluey bits. Well, the ETAPE / ETTE / HET UP region didn't feel great, but if that's the crunchiest part of a Sunday puzzle, that's not too shabby.

The theme — X THE Y phrases wackily clued as if they were parts of want ads — largely worked for me. Retail marketer to FILL THE GAP was funny, as was a cocktail waitress to CALL THE SHOTS, and a cruise ship band to ROCK THE BOAT. We even get an edgy answer, FLIP THE BIRD interpreted as a stunt pilot's job ("bird" = nickname for a helicopter).

A blackjack dealer needed to HIT THE DECK was the only one that fell flat for me. I'm curious to hear what kind of casinos Melanie is going to. (First rule of casino club, we don't talk about casino club?)

Odd choice of clue for ATOM. A perfectly good word with lots of science-related cluing potential, and we get A TO M, a half of a two-volume encyclopedia? I can see that the same old clues for ATOM get boring. But really …

A well-crafted puzzle. The (10!) themers are on the short side for a Sunday puzzle, and Melanie did well to take advantage of this, flipping two of them and pushing them to the puzzle's sides, thus making more space for the eight across themers.

Looking forward to more from Melanie!

– puzzle by Melanie Miller

Shapes of cheese today, a WEDGE, CUBE, BLOCK, WHEEL, and … SLAB? What, no Kraft American "cheese" SLICEs? As a somewhat lactose-intolerant fella who indulges in cheese (much to my wife's chagrin), it was neat to see some cheese-specific shapes. A WHEEL of cheese is so iconic, the big red disk of Edam. And who hasn't had a WEDGE of brie in their fridge?

I did some searching for "slab of cheese" but didn't turn up much. Why not include the much more common SLICE instead, I wondered. CW uses interlock (theme answers highlighted below), but this does create inflexibility:

• Once you place SAY CHEESE — great revealer, BTW — some sort of cheese shape must cross that answer at the second E.
• WHEEL works great for that purpose.
• There aren't that many ?????? WHEEL options, and some other cheese shape must cross the fifth letter of that themer. Tough!

Looking at all the constraints, it's pretty cool that CW got the SAND WEDGE / RUBIKS CUBE / MENTAL BLOCK intersections to work out. I might have favored a non-interlocking layout in exchange for upgrading SLAB, but that's personal taste.

Given all the crossing themers, CW does a great job with the fill. Those areas in the middle of three themers — SEASIDE / WHISK / LPS and WHOS WHO / OASIS / PIE — are treacherously constrained. Neat to see very few gluey entries throughout the entire grid. DTS and NEWSY feel a little old-fashioned to me, but that's about it that I noticed.

CW's diagonal lines of black squares sort of segments the grid into three pieces — the NW corner, a diagonal swath from the SW to the NE, and the SE corner — which makes it easier to fill, as you can tackle one chunk at a time. That's not ideal for solvers though, potentially requiring them to jump around the grid instead of flowing through it like water. But considering how devoid the grid is of ugly entries, I think it's a fine trade-off.

– puzzle by C. W. Stewart

Nice idea here, PORK pulled so that it stretches through the theme answers. Jay and Daniel had to find phrases that 1.) start with P, 2.) end with K, and 3.) space out O and R, but there are many options out there considering the freedom in where you place the O and R. I thought PLYMOUTH ROCK was a really good one, and PUSH YOUR LUCK was pretty good. (Not having DON'T in front of PUSH YOUR LUCK felt a bit odd.)

Not a huge fan of PIN ONES EARS BACK or PHONE PRANK, though. I had to look up the former, and it does seem legit, but I doubt I'd personally ever use it in writing or conversation. And PRANK CALL is so much more awesome than PHONE PRANK, which feels a bit dictionary-ish. Finally, mixing YOUR and ONES felt inelegant. Typically Will prefers the ONES usage to YOUR in these types of phrases, but PUSH ONES LUCK would have missed the R in PORK.

Hilarious SOS clue. [Message spelled out in coconuts, maybe] brought me back to my days of watching Gilligan's Island. Anyone remember the time when astronauts were going to pass over the island and the castaways formed SOS out of logs, only to have Gilligan mess things up so they spelled SOL? Sure was nice for Sol, one of the astronauts ... not so much for any potential rescue. Gilligan!

Also enjoyed getting MEANY in the grid, although it's because I've been reading "Encyclopedia Brown" to my nephew. Bugs MEANY makes for such a classic bad guy.

Not an easy layout, with five longish theme answers. Not a surprise to see some gluey entries pop up throughout. I usually try to stay away from OH TO (awkward plural) and SMIT (anything requiring "old-style" in the clue). Considering the repetitiveness of the circled letters, perhaps four themers would have been better, allowing for cleaner fill.

On that note, after getting the first two themers, it was automatic to fill in the circles in the last two themers — a bit anticlimatic. Would have been nice to get more variety. Pulled RANK, AWAY, OUT maybe?

– puzzle by Jay Kaskel and Daniel Kantor

Themers whose letters all exhibit mirror symmetry. A couple of months ago, Jim and I submitted a similar theme to Will, who let us know we got scooped. McCoy! (shaking fist)

Ah well, it happens all the time. Jim and I had created a long list of possibilities, including WHAT A HOOT, OUT WITH IT, MAMMA MIA, and even MAHI MAHI. It was a little odd to see that last entry in the grid, but not thematically.

TOMAYTO TOMATHTO was not on our list — very cool one; a fun pseudo-spelling of the famous phrase from "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." It looked bizarre at first, but it sure is more snazzy and accurate-sounding than TOMATO TOMATO (whose letters all also exhibit mirror symmetry!).

Given the theme, it would have been nice to get a grid whose black squares also exhibited mirror symmetry. More elegant that way, methinks. And SELF-REFLECTION is a pretty good revealer, but it didn't quite hit for me, as it doesn't totally get at "an object which appears the same in the mirror." Then again, MIRROR SYMMETRY is accurate, but not nearly as colorful as SELF-REFLECTION. Always the trade-offs.

Love the cluing today, right on my wavelength. Warren Buffett's awesome "The Wizard of OMAHA" nickname, the physically weak but strong-willed Aunt MAY from "Spider-man," and the GLORIOUS Leader, Kim Jong-un = lots of fun. I'm curious if Kim Jong-un can beat his father's record for most consecutive holes-in-one (478 at last count).

And a buddy of mine calls the MRS "Wifey," which I think is hilarious. My wife sadly doesn't agree. Harrumph.

So overall, some nice finds in the themers, especially TOMAYTO TOMAHTO, the effect muted a bit for me by getting scooped. Again … MCOY!

– puzzle by Tom McCoy

★ I love seeing a new trick. Plenty of puzzles have utilized blank squares, but I can't remember any quite like this, where SERVICE BREAK is interpreted as SER VICE (note the "break" in the middle). Great idea.

I liked how Jim used his longest across answers for this themers. COMMER CIAL (break) is a great answer, and SPR ING (break) VACATION is pretty good too. With a gimmick that's hard to uncover, it's so helpful to have an idea of where the tricksiness might show up.

Since theme answers go both across and down, it would have been great for all of them to be longer than the surrounding fill. SHAVETAILS is a neat answer, but for me, it mutes the impact of the theme since there are so many short themers. A bit confusing.

On the other hand, some people also like finding those little hidden surprises, like B AD lurking so innocently. I can dig that.

H HINGE is likely going to cause some consternation, especially as it crosses the difficult ANTHER, but I thought it was neat. It's a very common hinge, and that HH start is so wacky. The real question: when will THINGE show its amusing head in a NYT crossword?

Hmm. I could have gone without HAG and OLD BAT in close quarters. Two derogatory terms targeted at a similar demographic felt like too much to me. Perhaps that's too touchy, but it bugged me.

So, some flaws in the puzzle, like SHORT L UNCH (break) feeling awfully made up, and I would have loved a few more long, zingy "break" answers (MADE A CLEAN BREAK, CAUGHT A LUCKY BREAK, etc.). But these days I can overlook quite a bit if the theme tickles me. Very fun solve.

– puzzle by Jim Hilger

Return of the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class! With Natan Last at the helm, they collectively produce a nice themeless featuring such strong entries as AFFLUENZA, IM ONTO YOU, RADIO PLAY, and JUMBOTRON. Even the ones I wasn't familiar with sounded interesting, like SNOCKERED. I still prefer STONKERED's color and fun, but having a wide variety of synonyms for "drunk" sure makes it easier when you want to tell someone you're magoogled.

IM ONTO YOU felt especially nice, as it took me a while to parse it correctly. Turns out I MONT O YOU (homage to a Swiss Alp) isn't really a thing. That's one great feature about multiple-word entries — the can be so trickily fun to parse.

Then again, multi-word phrases have to be spot on in order for me to count them as an asset. DOTTED THE I feels like someone didn't dot all the I, yeah?

Er, didn't dot all the Is.

A couple of gluey entries like IS SO and A DRAG are to be expected. GAYER felt more off to me, given its clue, [More like Paree]. I wonder if Natan submitted an edgier, more fun clue? Not sure if there's any way to clue that such that it wouldn't be offensive to someone, though.

Speaking of clues, what a fantastic misdirection with [Ring exchange]. I confidently filled in I DOS, which fit so nicely ... except that it didn't. I've seen so many similar clues for I DO or I DOS that I didn't even think it could be related to the boxing ring exchange of JABS. Fun when a clue innocently seems like a gimme to veteran solvers, but it actually favors solvers who have fewer preconceived notions about certain clues.

A couple of older names in the grid, which is perfectly fine with me if they're classic people or characters. Ratso RIZZO is a classic. Luca BRASI, one of my favorite movie roles. Peri GILPIN … as much as I loved "Frasier," I don't know that she's achieved a timeless quality.

Some beautiful entries spread through the grid, along with some that didn't quite hit for me.

– puzzle by Natan Last and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

I owe Joe Krozel for all the good advice he's given me over the years. Hearing from him and reading commentary he's written for his older puzzles has been invaluable.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Nice concept; phrases whose second word can double for a past tense verb. I've seen similar sorts of themes before, but I can't remember MARK FELT as an example. As Don mentioned, there are a lot of examples of this type of word, but he and C.C. did a nice job of picking some strong theme phrases.

I found it confusing as to where the themers were, so I highlighted them below. I wish the themers had stood out by themselves rather than requiring asterisks, but that would have meant getting rid of the shorter ones like MARK FELT, which I quite liked. Always the trade-offs.

With nice pieces of long fill like HOME COURT and GAS GRILL, the themers didn't stand out very well for me, so I solved the puzzle as I would a themeless. That's not a terrible thing, as Don and C.C. put in a lot of good entries, but it further confused me when I went back to study the theme — I wondered if COURT and GRILL were somehow parts of the theme too.

What with the stairstep arrangements of black squares breaking up the middle of the puzzle, Don and C.C. were forced to leave big open corners in the upper left and lower left. This is a tough task, as 9x3 chunks are rarely easy. RAIN DANCE is a nice entry, as is BE A PAL, but I found AFFIANCED an oddball to kick off the puzzle. SERENADER could go either way for me — I struggle to figure out if it's truly legit or it sounds made-up.

Perhaps opening up a pair of those stairstep black squares in the middle of the puzzle would have allowed them to work with not as wide-open corners. I'd much prefer a 9x2 stack with one fantastic entry than a 9x3 stack with two neutral or not great ones.

Overall, I liked the idea, but it might have packed more punch as a weekday puzzle. I feel like the best Sunday puzzles are the ones that absolutely cannot be done in the smaller 15x15 format, and this one felt like it could have been a strong Tuesday or even Wednesday puzzle.

– puzzle by Don Gagliardo and Zhouqin Burnikel

HARDY HAR HAR! Amusing (pun intended) phrase hidden at the beginning of themers. I was more a "The Three Investigators" kind of kid, imagining myself to be the Jupiter Jones character. Terribly unathletic, too smart for his own good, so much so that no one liked him — what kid wouldn't want to be that?

Hmm.

Although I do like HARDY HAR HAR being opaque until the end of the puzzle, LAUGHING OUT LOUD didn't seem quite apt. Not that I ever say HARDY HAR HAR, but it seems to me a sarcastic phrase, akin to VERY FUNNY BUSTER. Perhaps kids these days have done something with LOL that I don't know of.

Some nice touches in the mid-length fill with MADCAP and TIPTOP (with its insidery clue … [Acme]!). I would have liked some longer fill too, which could have been made possible by removing the black squares in between EZRA/YER and IRV/UGLY (among other possibilities). Even one pair of 8+ letter entries peps up a grid so much for me.

Speaking of those two corners, Acme is a big fan of Scrabble and of Scrabbly letters. In the upper right, it does add spice to get a J and a Z. I personally wouldn't make the trade-off of having SWEE (partial-ish entry) and ALEE (esoteric term) to get the J and Z, but that's a judgment call — it was interesting to read her viewpoint, which is perfectly valid. I prefer when Monday grids are silky smooth, more like Acme's bottom left corner. Not as high-Scrabble value with just the K, but not a gluey bit down there.

For a 78-word grid, I'd expect there to be nary a gluey entries in the grid, and the old-timey SERE is a noticeable standout for me. This is totally subjective, I see SERE as one of the outliers from the bad old days of crosswords, the type of entry that turns people off from crosswords. It's one I'd like to see gone for good.

Congrats to Acme for NYT puzzle #50!

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels

MIDDLE EAST interpreted as "phrases with EAST smack dab in their middles." Bill's elegantly chose themers which are both colorful and have EAST exactly in their centers. With so many phrases containing EAST in various places, that exact centering is a much-appreciated bonus.

Speaking of bonuses, kind of fun to have YEASTY and FEASTS. Normally I don't care for themers shorter than the surrounding fill (like FOUL TIP and IMPASSE), but having them in the center of the grid sort of fits with the theme. Thumbs up.

YAWP is an interesting word to kick off the puzzle. I personally think it's hilarious and love it, but I was surprised when Ben Tausig commented that it was probably his least favorite entry in one of my recent puzzles; an oddity. It's good to remember how much subjectivity there is in the crossworld.

With four long themers and two shorties, I appreciate how much thought Bill put into his grid. Not only does he work in some nice long fill in SUGAR PEA and SKILL SET, but he uses the 7-letter slots well, giving us FOUL TIP and PERSEUS. Best of all, the short stuff is relatively smooth and clean. I don't care for the forgettable DR. T role, and A FLY and FREI aren't great. But the latter two are necessitated by the bonus themers, YEASTY and FEASTS, so I think that's an okay trade-off.

At first I thought having ESTE, the Spanish word for EAST, was inelegant. But it's 1.) another trade-off for getting in those two bonus answers, and 2.) there's something kind of cool about where it's placed in the grid: in the east.

And a great piece of trivia about PACMAN, a game that can be played "perfectly." (This factors into "Ready Player One," one of my favorite reads in recent memory. Can't wait for the movie.)

All in all, some little trade-offs but all reasonable, given how much extra material it allowed Bill to work in. If "SHE Bangs" had been clued to the awesome William Hung "She Bangs" meme, I might just have given it the POW!

– puzzle by Bill Thompson

★ Something so pretty about those WATER / FALLS, yeah? I'm a sucker for a puzzle with a visual element. It's a shame that this couldn't have been printed in color, but I went ahead and added my own artist's representation of bubbling waterfalls below.

I remember talking to Parker Lewis years ago when he first got back from his Peace Corps mission, and one of the ideas he was tossing around was WATER falling in different parts of the grid. Not quite the same as Tim's, but too similar. Ah, getting scooped ...

Bendy themers always up the difficulty in grid filling. Here, it's not as bad as usual, because Tim chooses to go without symmetry in his waterfalls, giving himself high flexibility. Normally I'm not a fan of that, finding it inelegant, but there's something picturesque about the non-symmetry of the falls, just like in nature. Water goes where water wants to go, after all.

It's clear to me that Tim spent a lot of time and iterations figuring out where the falls could go without causing serious compromises in the grid. Not easy to work VICT / TORIA and YOS / SEMITE into regular words … nice to weave YOS into the end of ARROYOS instead of going with the easy road of YOYOS.

Now, it's not without its flaws. I know Suze ORMAN pretty well, as I think she's done some nice things with empowering people to take charge of their personal finances, but solvers not knowing her might be gnashing their teeth at the OMRI Katz crossing. Maybe it's fair, as both of them are semi-famous? Not ideal, though.

Similar situation in the lower left corner, UTZ unknown to this West coaster. REZA is awfully tough to pull out from memory if it's there at all, so that was rough. I do like the color the Z adds in, but I don't think it's worth the price.

Even though there are some compromises typical of the bendy themer type puzzle, I really dug the visual impact. Neat idea, and good execution.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

Nice idea for a rebus, AIR getting COMPRESSED into a single square. Since so many rebus puzzle have been done by now, my strong preference is for there to be some rationale, some interpretation which justifies it. This is a nice one. Check out our list of rebus puzzles — especially in older ones, people just chose some random string and rebused the heck out of it.

I like how Jules incorporated AIR into some of the puzzle's longest entries. AIR hidden in PR(AIR)IE DOG and CL(AIR)VOYANT and UPTON SINCL(AIR) = fun and twisty to uncover! I also like that in these three examples, the word AIR isn't explicitly part of the entry. It is nice to get some bonus AIRs through the puzzle, but CON AIR and SEA AIR (and the odd BAIRNS) I could do without. With no rationale of why eight AIRs is the appropriate number, having just five or even four, with all of them hidden so nicely in longer answers, would have been my preference.

Grid is stretched out to 16 rows in order to accommodate UPST(AIR)S DOWNST(AIR)S — fun to have a marquee answer with two rebus squares. If you stretch a grid to 16x15 or 15x16, you'd think the word limit of 78 should go up proportionally, meaning that it's okay to go up to 83 words. That's what Jules does today, but I prefer keeping close to if not under that original 78 word limit. Today, we see a whopping 39 entries with length = 3 or 4, almost half of the puzzle. That's a huge number of shorties.

UPHOLDER … for only having two pieces of long fill, I want them to sizzle.

Pretty well executed otherwise. It can be tricky to fill rebus puzzle grids, because every rebus square you put in means you have both an across answer and a down answer frozen into place. The AIR string is easy enough to work with, so Jules did have some flexibility, but he did pretty well to keep the glue to the minor stuff: TET, ESO, SCH, ATT, etc. None of those stick out enough that they affected my solving fun.

– puzzle by Jules P. Markey

Big chunks of wide open space are both pleasing to my eye ... and fear-inducing. A swath like the middle of today's puzzle is so visually stunning. But knowing the painful process of constructing a giant section, it fills me with worry, wondering what compromises I undoubtedly will see.

Thankfully, David pulls off a very nice fill with five good to great across entries — and two long downs crossing through them! All this with just LAINE (a bit on the outdated side?) and ANNAL (much more common in the plural). Smart to start off with the bottom of the five entries, looking for something both colorful and containing friendly ending letters.

After looking up Frankie LAINE, I decided being billed as "America's Number One Song Stylist" is pretty crossworthy. I still bet David would have preferred either someone more well known, or a regular word which could take a clever clue.

I like "clue echoes," when a single clue is used for two different entries … but only if the clue is used with two completely different meanings. I love when people are able to make those crazy connections. ORCA and PIRATE sharing a clue (ROUE and RAKE too) isn't that satisfying to me; simply synonyms.

Neat to see how David's body of themeless work has progressed over the years. Earlier on, some of his creations felt closed off, segmented into three or more chunks, so it's great to hear that he put a lot of effort into opening up this grid. It's hard enough to run strong entries through a big stack like this middle one, and to do it with APPLE CIDER and BRONX CHEER is pretty spectacular.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Barry is known for his desire to work in high Scrabble value letters, and he does so in spades today. At least one each of the four bigs (J Q X Z), and the six Js is amazing. Typically these Scrabbly letters aren't easy to work cleanly into a grid, so it's really impressive that I only hitched a few times during my solve.

I especially appreciated how much care Barry took with his shorter fill, only SYS, ENES and SKEDS blips on my radar. Yes, RAYE and IVES are a bit on the older side, but they are definitely famous people. Where I winced slightly was hitting some of the mid-length stuff:

E-VOTE: is this a thing? "e-voting" seems to be legit. E-VOTE … for my money's worth, the jury's still out.

UNREELS: okay, this appears to be fine. It just seemed odd to me.

BOATEL: again, this term (a "boat hotel") is just not in my wheelhouse.

PUNNER or a PUNSTER? Merriam Webster defines PUNNER as "a ramming tool." Huh.

That said, I'd usually take questionable mid-length stuff that I don't see that often over questionable short stuff I see day in, day out. At least it's fun to try to decide if something like BOATEL or PUNNER is legit.

Beautiful entries featuring those Scrabbly letters, JAZZ QUARTET accounting for a J, a Q, and two Zs alone. Barry is smart with his placement of these tough letters, usually dropping them in right at the beginning or ending of a word. Makes his job much easier.

Finally, a great clue: [Not pass the bar?]. I thought about the corner bar first, then the legal bar, and it took me forever to land on a sand bar (thus RUNning AGROUND). A majority of this puzzle's cluing was simply ultra-hard, and it would have been great to get a few more fantastically creative clues like this. I like a solving challenge, but I love me a clever clue.

– puzzle by Barry C. Silk

Neat concept, playing on MUSICAL REMIXES to anagram musicians / musical groups into funny phrases. It's neat that Joel went an extra step by keeping all the anagrams musically-oriented.

People sometimes ask why I say that creating a Sunday 140 word puzzle is so much harder than a weekday 78 word puzzle. To start off, if you simply scaled up a 15x15 78 word puzzle, you'd end up with a 21x21 puzzle containing 153 words. Wait — 153 words is a whole lot more than 140, isn't it?

Well, yes it is (I do good at maths). That means you have a whole lot fewer black squares to deploy than you might want, and that many more of your fill entries are going to have to cross multiple themers.

Take the lower left corner. In a weekday 78-word puzzle, you'd be able to separate GENIAL ROCK and NURSES SONG more. Toss in a black square at the S of STEWIE, perhaps. Much easier to fill! But if you do that in this 21x grid, you have to take a black square out somewhere else to compensate. Do you see any easy ones to remove? I don't. Joel manages to get this corner filled without using any short glue, which is impressive, and also gives us ON PATROL and REASSURE, two good entries.

In the opposite corner though, I'm not a huge fan of CLOSE CUT (FLAT TOP seems better to me) or AXILLARY (yikes, not just AXILLA, but AXILLARY!). It's still impressive that Joel doesn't have to resort to short ugly gluey bits, but these long guys don't exactly sing, to my ear anyway.

Overall, it's impressive that Joel can keep his high level of quality, avoiding the usual short cruddy entries necessary to hold a grid together. And although some of the mid to longer entries didn't wow me, I did love seeing such colorful answers as SAG AWARD, WINE RACK, even OOCYTE and ISRAEL with its interesting piece of trivia [Jacob's name after he wrestled with the angel]. Even if a thing like PAINT POT isn't familiar to you, it's fun to see something you don't run across every day.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

★ I have three criteria I look for in a great Monday puzzle. Let's see how Lynn does:

1.) Theme that doesn't evoke an "Oh, I see that sort of thing all the time." I was utterly baffled as I uncovered the first themer, finding the sequence … USTI? Baffling. I actually went back to make sure I hadn't entered something incorrectly. Even more confusing was to uncover USTI a second time. I wasn't sure if I could enter that string twice more automatically or not, because it looked so strange.

Finally, I hit ITS UP TO YOU … and scratched my head. It took a moment to realize Lynn's wordplay: ITS up to U = write ITS upside-down and have it run up to the letter U. Great, great a-ha, especially for a Monday; a perfect balance of easy enough for beginners and interesting for veteran solvers.

2.) Colorful fill. Even with five themers, I would expect at least two pieces of sizzling fill from a great puzzle. Lynn leaves herself two long slots, and SKIN DIVING / ROMANESQUE are both beautiful entries. Now, with five themers and two long entries, there shouldn't be much room for other long stuff. But Lynn still gives us extras with HAVE FUN, SHAR PEI, TWEETER and KISS ME.

I didn't care for THE DOLE — how often do you hear the phrase without "on"? ON THE DOLE is also a potentially offensive term, so it's not my favorite from that respect either. Slight ding.

3.) Clean short fill. With everything Lynn packs in, I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of glue to hold it together. AM I and IS IT are partials (more or less), but what else? Some might groan at UMA since she hasn't been in a big role in a long time, and the ARAL Sea gets more coverage in crosswords than it probably deserves, but those are fine by me. Stellar work.

– puzzle by Lynn Lempel

Shout out to my Seattle friend, Jeb! (John E. Bennett = JEB) Jeb and his wife had Jill and me over for brunch a while ago. Super fun to talk shop with nice people.

Jeb uses six big circles (it looks much better in the print version) to form "balls." There's a SOUR ball, a HAIR ball, FOOT ball, BASE ball, MEAT ball, and a POOL ball. This sort of layout is very tricky, as each one of the balls causes so many constraints. When you throw in a revealer — JUST HAVING A BALL — it becomes that much more difficult.

This kind of puzzle is even trickier, since none of the "theme answers" are very long. This means that some of the fill has to be long instead. I love FOOLS ERRAND, very colorful, and OBSESSIVE / NEWSPAPER aren't bad. PARONOMASIA … it took me every single crossing to fill in, so frustrating in that sense, but I decided I really like the word and will find ways of using it.

Filling around everything mentioned above is so hard to do cleanly. Each one of the six ball areas has minor dings. The top left is actually quite nice, with just OFT a blip. Continung to the next region, CHROMO feels a bit outdated. Then OH FOO … on one hand it sounds so made up. On the other hand, I'm going to find ways of using it too, because it sounds so funny.

The other three balls show us the British RASE, the outdated SSTS, and the kind of gross EGESTS. All in all though, for the high level of difficulty, it's not bad.

I'm not sure I liked JUST in front of HAVING A BALL — felt like something tagged on to make the central answer 15 letters, which is SO much easier than working with a central 11. Ah well.

So, some compromises due to such high theme density and constraints, and some head-scratching entries which forced me to do some thinking. I like it when a puzzle challenges me to think.

– puzzle by John E. Bennett

I can't remember when I've seen such low theme density. On one hand it felt thin, but I did enjoy how much room that opened up for Ian to work his themeless magic. It was a real treat to run across so much great material in a "themed"puzzle. I found these to be colorful:

• SLOW BURN
• NEW MANAGEMENT
• HANS ARP
• HOMECOMINGS
• YES WE CAN
• BANK ALARM
• GAME SHOW
• SOLAR PANELS

To get eight pieces of snazzy long fill made for a pleasurable solving experience. Nice change of pace for a Wed puzzle.

The theme … I liked the HUMPDAY idea, incorporating four CAMEL humps. It sure would have been nice to have some extra layer to it, though. Perhaps having different types of HUMPS, i.e. MOOSE, RHINO, BISON? Or to have just two humps, and add other CAMEL parts to help flesh out the visual? Not sure what else could have been done, but it seems like there's missed potential here.

I hold Ian to a very high standard — he's one of the tops in the game, IMO. So it was a little disappointing to see more than just a couple of gluey bits, in the form of EBONS, ANE, ERG, OUSE, SNO, etc. Minor stuff, nothing that glares red, but it's more than I'm used to in Ian's puzzles. A trade-off today, Ian giving us a high number of great long entries at the price of a few more gluey ones.

– puzzle by Ian Livengood

I know I'll get alternate names today, so let me see if I can head you off at the pass:

• K.J. McDaniels of the NBA's Rockets, although he's not a star.
• K.J. Choi, who won the 2011 Players Championship.
• M.L. Carr of the Boston Celtics, who won two titles with them.
• K.J. Wright, outside linebacker on the SUPER BOWL XLVIII CHAMPION SEATTLE SEAHAWKS' "LEGION OF BOOM"!

I can just see all the non-sports fans rolling their eyes. Okay, K.J. McDaniels isn't gridworthy, but a MEMBER OF THE CHAMPION SEAHAWKS' LEGION OF BOOM FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

(Please, no wisecracks about last year's Super Bowl. Still too soon.)

Although there's no "trick" per se, I enjoyed this change of pace Thursday puzzle. Joon gives us a nice "what do these things have in common" theme, one I haven't seen before. I've highlighted the themers below; all phrases that start with two consecutive letters of the alphabet, reversed. Very cool that Joon was able to find a symmetrical set!

With a fairly wide-open grid, it put up a Thursday fight for me. I felt victorious when I finally figured out that a [Bug detector?] had nothing to do with computer bugs. Nice misdirect, masking the fact that bugs have ANTENNAe. Generally nice usage of those seven-letter slots, with NEW DEAL, BAWL OUT, and RAIMENT standing out. I could have done without the oddball INKLESS and THEREAT, but they do help make for a smooth grid.

And BA BARACUS FINALLY MADE THE BIG TIME! I've been waiting for a long time for my childhood hero to get his crossword props. I pity the fools that kept him out so long.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too demanding out of what I want in a Thursday puzzle. It's unrealistic to expect a weekly new trick or gimmick that's never been imagined before. So I like this compromise, a puzzle with an interesting set of themers along with some meat to its fill. Good stuff.

Off to go clean out my inbox. So many spam messages advertising E.D. PILLS …

– puzzle by Joon Pahk