New York Times, Wednesday, April 27, 2022

This puzzle arose in the usual way (for me, anyway): 1) "What is a common theme type I haven't tried recently?" I ponder. "Oh, phrases including words common to a beloved pastime/hobby. Ok. I like those. Which pastime to use?" My first thought: curling. Still a good idea — I'll come back to it!

Second thought: PINBALL! "Has there been one already? Hmm...no. Can I find any such phrases? Yes!" I arrived at the themers pretty quickly. What I couldn't find was a revealer (or even space for one). "How can I get PINBALL or something in here?!" I just happened to notice that PINBALL's letters were IN the themers I had found. So I circled them in my program just to see if I could somehow work with that fact. When I did, it kinda looked like a pinball was now bouncing around my puzzle. Huzzah! I thought this would be too squishy a justification/gimmick for the NYT, but I guess not!

It shows that relatively simple workflows, ideas, and executions can still yield paydirt. Also — I love that I was able to build a grid with long paired down non-themers in the NW/SE (warts they create and all)!

I love pinball. Ever since first seeing those flashing lights and the BUMPERS fired by high-powered solenoids, I can't walk by a pinball machine without inserting a quarter. A crossword built around PINBALL makes this wizard happy.

Even better was the quality of cluing. Right from the get-go, I was baffled by [One inclined to go in and out]. This former cat owner knew it had to be some sort of pet term, but what? Nope, that's a RAMP that's literally inclined so you can enter or exit a parking garage! Groanworthily brilliant.

Shortly after, [Pretty trim] bogged me down. This rock climber likes to think he's pretty trim, but it's more appropriate to my daughter's earsplitting squees over all things fancy. LACING is indeed pretty trim that she tapes onto everything.

And SHEET as something that's "kept undercover"? Slow clap, Alex and Will Shortz, slow clap.

Such a smooth grid, too, at least until the very bottom. Peter Gordon tortured Roman numeral math clue for CXX ... some people love 'em, but not me. Thankfully the clue for IXNAY made up for it, and more. I LOLed, trying to make sense of "igpay atinlay." Constructors who reuse or even copy clues: this is a perfect example of what I mean when I ask you to freshen your clues in an interesting way.

I so badly wanted a mirror sym layout, with bumpers formed out of black squares — heck, those black square chunks in the SW/NE are bumperish enough already! — and I found it odd that the pinball somehow skipped over the bumper in the top right. Even though the visual didn't do anything for me, I still enjoyed the homage to my golden days of spending hours trying not to get TILTed.