New York Times, Tuesday, August 6, 2019

The idea for this puzzle came after I saw mention of Britain's Royal Navy, and found it interesting that both ROYAL and NAVY were shades of blue. Just for fun, I started thinking about other shades in my head to see if I could find other pairs with the same property. As soon as BABY POWDER came together in my head as the best anchor entry, I knew I needed to try to finish the theme set for a puzzle.

Hundreds of blue shades exist here and there. I wanted to make sure the ones I chose came up pretty consistently on color palettes, so as not to reach into obscurity. ARCTIC and OCEAN appear on short lists of common shades for online palettes, so I felt comfortable with that choice, and ditto for COBALT and STEEL. I had a few options to tie together these four pairs with a fifth entry, like SHADES OF BLUE, but with the symmetry necessitating a ten-letter entry. BLUE ON BLUE worked and felt like a good fit.

The clue for 55 Down is my favorite, having a soft spot for word origins - I'm glad Will left it in.

Hope you enjoyed the puzzle!

Oof, second day in a row that a constructor has been scooped. Different revealer, but essentially the same idea. This instance is tougher to swallow than yesterday's since the WSJ has a big solvership — more people will be scratching their heads today, wondering why this theme sounds so familiar.

Will has said that he doesn't care about other venues — the NYT is an ocean liner, ignoring what sailboats and yachts do. There may be only a small minority of solvers who do multiple puzzles a day, too. (I'm in that boat, but as you all know by now, I'm weird.)

I liked Jon's themer choices. In the other puzzle, I wondered if ROYAL BABY was a real thing. Yes, I know that kings and queens have babies just like the rest of us. (Although if I were king, I'd order my scientists to create a way to spawn or bud new royals. Needless to say, I'd be a terrible king.)

All of Jon's themers were well-chosen --four phrases I wouldn't bat an eye at in real life. This mechanical engineer says COBALT STEEL is a great one but understands that normal people may cock their heads. Infidels. The curse of normality!

The gridwork could have used some polishing. ROYAL NAVY splits things in half, an arrangement that often causes problems, due to those four biggish corners. (See: AJA / ANAT, IEST, OONA.) The middle can also be problematic; so many down answers have to work through multiple themers. (See: SYD / AEC / ECTO.)

The long bonuses made the gloopy bits easier to swallow, thankfully, CHEER UP / TOWN CAR, KLEENEX helping to ELEVATE the solving experience. It's not a trade-off I'd make, especially for an early-week puzzle where solvers might take one look at AEC and walk away. I understand the thought process though — if you have zero strong bonuses in your grid, that's no bueno either.

The revealer confused me — I was expecting a blue on top of another blue — but it does work. Ish. I'd have preferred simply BLUE as a revealer, assuming rejiggering theme choices for symmetry was possible.