New York Times, Tuesday, February 14, 2023

When I first started making puzzles, I thought rebuses were unbelievably cool so I made a list of potential rebus revealers. Many of them involved the word "square." I tried to make a version of this with meals as rebuses. It did not go well.

Then I got into other kinds of visual puzzles and tried to make a version of this with meals laid out in square shapes in the grid. It did not go well.

Then I gave up, which seems to be a key part of my puzzle-making process.

I don't remember when it occurred to me that some foods are just square shaped. Perhaps while eating a mint-flavored 51-Across. Hope you all enjoy this puzzle as much as I enjoy those! Also, I really like putting actors (especially theater actors) whose work I love into puzzles, and 6-Down is one of my absolute faves!

I would have loved yesterday's theme served on a single plate with today's! This kind of WELL-ROUNDED DIET and SQUARE MEAL are the stuff of my kids' dreams. Buh-bye, whole wheat toast, hello KRAFT SINGLES between SALTINE CRACKERS! Ironic that "square" would describe such unhealthy items as STARBURSTS and KLONDIKE BARS.

Similar humor to yesterday; I enjoyed imagining Drax the Destroyer befuddled by the English language. Today's puzzle kicked it up a notch in a way, because it's much harder to think of foods that come in squares than it is for rounded shapes. Physics likes efficiency, and WELL-ROUNDED so often more efficient than SQUARE.

In fact, the only "healthy" square item I could think of was whole wheat toast — and that's only quasi-square.

Unlike yesterday, it's difficult argue the case for any of these square-shaped foods being the slightest bit healthy.

Now that I've dissected all the humor out of the joke, I'll refrain from dissecting the fun out of the crossword. KETTLEBELL is a fresh term, and I'm sure there will be fans of MALE MODELS and THE CURE in solverland. Ella gives us another great example of a colorful and almost perfectly-clean grid, showing yet again that a five-themer crossword can and should live up to this standard.

I enjoyed the back-to-back WELL-ROUNDED DIET / SQUARE MEAL duo. There's something neat about having a longer arc over multiple days instead of one-off, unrelated short stories. I'd love to see this more.