New York Times, Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Shaded squares usually make a puzzle's theme readily apparent. Filling in even one set often gives away the game. It's rare indeed, that not only did I not guess the theme from one corner, but after four corners, I still didn't comprehend.

Heck, even after I uncovered the revealer, it took me a hot minute to figure out the concept: CORNER THE MARKET = the letters of T H E M A R K E T mixed-up into 3x3 squares. The K makes those letters difficult to arrange into one 3x3, so doing it four different ways carries a high degree of technical difficulty.

CORNER has been played upon many times in crosswords. There's corner KICKS, corner STONE, corner STORE, corner LOT, the HOT corner, KITTY corner, ROUND the corner, and even a CORNER corner. This might sound Bubba Blue-repetitive, but there's a great deal of variety within, from rebuses to bending answers to a rebus that Sam Donaldson meant to be a missing square.

Having done dozens of CORNER puzzles, I appreciate that Trip presented a variation I've never seen before. The finance guy in me loves the revealer, too. Such an evocative figure of speech.

Will Shortz doesn't take many of these types of puzzles anymore, because the shaded letters tend to force serious fill compromises. Trip, who I greatly respect as a meticulous co-editor of Zynga's Crossword with Friends, usually wouldn't let so many ETH ATRA DETRE/ARED gluey bits stand.

I did enjoy some of the bonuses, WESTEROS a fresh entry, and SERAPHIM evocative. The concept is certainly innovative. However, it was so difficult to get past all the grid issues caused by the heavy constraints.