New York Times, Tuesday, March 23, 2021

This puzzle has a pretty straightforward theme: my favorite thing about it is that each of the theme answers has a personal tie-in. My daughter Eva, who lives in Santa Barbara, surfs with BOARDING PASSION; my brother Mike, a CPA, has helped multiple clients with IRS AUDITS (though not any IRS AUDITIONS that I'm aware of); and as a marathoner myself, I've participated in many a race that felt like a RUN OF THE MILLION.

Proceeds from this puzzle are going to support my alma mater, the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, where future leaders sharpen their analytical skills so they can bring them to bear on the many complex issues facing our country and the world.

I've seen this concept a few times, all the way back to 1994, but the added zing of EXTRA CHARGE is a fantastic extra layer. That's the type of bonus that you need to make a standard theme type stand out.

The meaning changes in PASS to PASSION and MILL to MILLION are excellent; drastic modifications. Funny to imagine anyone having a PASSION for being BOARDING a plane in this day and age …

I did pause at AUDIT to AUDITION, as they seemed related. I managed to sweep that aside to continue with the rest of the puzzle, but it kept eating at me. It turns out they share etymology, both derived from Latin for "a hearing, a listening." I still appreciated the image of an IRS applicant being tested with crazy number questions, though.

Back when I was hiring for my pharma startup, I used to ask techs how they'd add up the numbers from 1 to 100. I was looking for creative or even simple solutions, anything from putting the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and summing to doing Gauss's trick of (1+100) + (2+99) + … (50+51). Learned a lot about candidates who started mumbling, "one plus two, that's three, add three is six ..."

Nice to get some rarely-seen-in-crosswords CARPORTS, MID-MONTH, DRY SALTS, PUMPS GAS, although I'm not sure if any of these are going to make anyone pump a fist. I more appreciated Farrah FAWCETT and MALCOLM as excellent uses of mid-length slots.

With four themers, today's standard is to have a perfectly clean puzzle, and there was too much ANON AZO BORA ON UP XER. Part of the issue is that threading long bonuses through the middle of the grid isn't usually as effective as placing the long downs in the usual spots — connecting BAND and SIRI, for example.

Overall, not a standout execution, but I did appreciate the impact of that great revealer.