New York Times, Thursday, February 1, 2018

Love me a good parsing puzzle. Roman of Hollywood isn't a "Roman," but an R. O. man = RYAN O'NEAL. Great consistency, Damon finding "person" terms readily hideable within regular words: ROman, LEgal, MAlady, REgent. Tight set, too — I'd be remiss in saying that the only other possibility I could find (besides SAlad) was REmiss.

*rimshot*

INITIALLY initially didn't click with me. Yes, the first two initials are at the start of the first word, thus doubly "initial." Thinking about it for a while, it does feel like there's cleverness that should have produced a stronger a-ha moment for me. Not sure why it's still feeling like a stretch — perhaps it's a bit too punny for my taste?

Good gridwork. The obvious glue is stuff that gets listed on editors' spec sheets, i.e. abbrs. (RETD), tough foreign words (A TOI), entries that might feel esoteric (NENE). The one that interests me most today is A LOAD. It feels bad to me, but how is it different than A LOT or A TON, which both feel fine? Perhaps it's because I usually hear A LOT or A TON by themselves, but A LOAD always comes with "of"? Hmm.

AGE TEN was another that made me pause. It is a milestone age, turning double digits. But I don't like the idea of paving the way for AGE FIVE (when most kids start school) or AGE TWO ("terrible" time for tots) or other arbitrariness.

APERY is another odd-sounding word — if you have to convince yourself that yeah, it's probably fine because it's in the dictionary, it's probably not. But the fantastic clue rescued it for me. Love the clever repurposing of the word "Impressionism."

All in all, a neat idea. I think I would have given it the POW! if 1) the INITIALLY revealer had hit me more strongly (subjective call), or if 2) the people had all been drawn from the same walk of life, tightening up the theme set even further. Lots of people whose initials are MA, for example.

Would have been POY! (year) status if everyone had been the first to do something in their field … thus triply INITIAL!