New York Times, Monday, November 19, 2018

I began working on a crossword grid, inspired by just having viewed "The Shape of Water" at the local movie theater. Originally I was headed for a theme involving various water shapes (like drip, puddle, stream, spray, or whatever), but that approach never seemed quite satisfying enough. Then somehow my mind wandered off to another fine film, "The Color of Money" — whose title interestingly had a similar "shape." And then a third shapely theme entry suddenly came to mind: "The Sound of Music." I decided the Crossword Gods were trying to tell me something.

I liked this grid layout, for housing the three grid-spanning themers. It allowed some breathing room for a little BIGCHEESE fill while minimizing the 3-letter answers.

My submitted puzzle title was "Film Fam." My favorite submitted clue was at 44-Down, and was "Started to blow a straw house down."

Beautifully consistent set of themers today. Look at all the layers:

• All movie titles
• Each fitting the pattern, THE ___ OF ___
• Both blanks containing exactly five letters
• All three cluable in a punny way

In this day and age of dense themes, I often find that three 15-letter entries feels thin for my taste. But when they're this consistent, I'm okay with it.

Low theme density opens up huge possibilities for sparkly bonus fill. I'm a big fan of BIG CHEESE and BABY BUGGY — they inject nice color into the solve. Even mid-lengthers like HEY NOW! and MAKE ME elevate the quality of the grid.

I was hoping for more snazzy bonuses, though. With just 45 theme squares, I'd expect at least four long bonuses. One way to do this might be to remove the black square between EVAN and SAT ON. The black square between GATO and ALOE is another candidate, too.

Another advantage of doing one of these is that it'd open up the grid, letting the solving feng shui flow a little better.

There's a case to be made, that focusing on the short fill is way more important, when it comes to Monday "starter" puzzles. But I think it would have been possible to both add in more long bonuses while at the same time smoothing out WHELM / ORFF, MATRI, NEER. These aren't terrible offenders, but it's important to make early-week puzzles as accessible to newbs as possible.

TWOD (2-D) is a divisive one. I use to think it was fun and even a little clever. The fact that it's never seen written like this in real life was beside the point! Now that I've heard lots (and lots and lots) of complaints from rookie solvers though (similarly, things like AANDE, VEIGHT), I avoid them in my own constructions.

The theme piqued my interest enough to figure out what other titles fit the tight pattern. If only THE ILIAD OF HOMER had been made into a movie!

(Okay, good thing it wasn't. Man, was that boring. Sorry, ancient Greeks!)

It's interesting to see the evolution of clues. THE SOUND OF MUSIC has appeared many times. In 1959, it was a "Coming production about the Trapp Family." By 1962 it was a "Broadway hit." By 1978, it was the "Most popular film ever produced." Today's "noted" clue is the first time wordplay has been used for this answer.