New York Times, Thursday, March 23, 2023

Hello Puzzledom! This one has been in the hopper for a long time. Very excited to see it in print. I've always loved crosswords where the acrosses (usually rebuses) read differently than the downs. I did this in December, 2015 with a DIE/DICE puzzle. Probably my favorite example of this is Francis Heaney's legendary flags Sunday puzzle from 2010.

There was some debate on whether or not to have a revealer or a note that tells you how to unlock this puzzle. I'm pleased that the solver will need to figure out the key phrase. I hope you all find it a challenging and satisfying aha moment!

Construction of this puzzle was not easy. I endeavored to have more ONEs that broke up as O - NE or ON - E, but it was virtually impossible with so much thematic content. The ONE phrases needed to be short and there was a dearth of words that were both short and broke up in such a way. I found the best way to to construct this grid was to isolate those rebus squares. Also, I am quite pleased that I only have a single ONE that I use as the number one (AS ONE).

A small plug: I'll be performing The Enigmatist at the Kennedy Center in June 2023. If you're in the area, please join me for a night of puzzling and magic!

Thanks for solving, everyone!

It's great to experience a boundary-pushing rebus the likes of which I've never seen. I experienced a similar struggle as with the last one, but thankfully today's wasn't as much of a brain-buster. It was easy enough to figure out that there was some sort of ONE rebus going on. Figuring out how to put ONE and ONE (and ONE) together was a different story.

Such a neat a-ha moment when I finally hit on the old saying, "Two's company and three's a crowd." ONE and ONE makes TWO, which substitutes in for the word COMPANY in (COMPANY) COMMANDER and THE EAST INDIA (COMPANY). Add ONE more to make the WISDOM OF THE (CROWD) and (CROWD)SOURCING.

There is the small matter of how "Three's Company" raised me, but those tales are best saved for my kids' future therapy sessions.

My first reaction after figuring out the concept was that including TWOS COMPANY THREES A CROWD would have been great — especially considering I was sure that the WISDOM OF THE (AGES) indicated that I was three years old.

Maturity-wise, at least.

I like that David put his trust in Thursday solvers, though. The a-ha moment was so much stronger because I had to work for it. I took pride in earning it, and I bet I'll be in good ONEONE today.

Fantastic clue for THE NBA, hiding the capital R of Rockets at the start of the clue. They're tanking so hard to jockey for position in next year's draft — someone clever might be able to link "rocket" and "tank" in a delightful clue.

Such a smooth solving experience, especially with so many rebus squares to work around. Wrangling with a completely new rebus mechanism can be frustrating, but David's gridwork eased my path forward perfectly.