New York Times, Monday, March 25, 2019

ACME: Every now and then, Kevin sends me a ton of creative ideas to see if anything strikes me. We have radically different styles, though complementary, so we like to collaborate. He is a grid master with out-of-the-box ideas (see his Mullet puzzle!). We've made lots of puzzles, but this is only our second one for the NYT.

Two word phrases that start with the same two letters is fairly straightforward, so we were able to generate a long list of possible theme answers. After arguing whether or not LILYPAD is one or two words, or how well-known LUKE PERRY is (who knew how timely!) we put together a set ... neither made the final cut!

What makes this unusual is Kevin managed to get SEVEN theme entries (plus a three letter reveal) into a Monday puzzle! My job was to make the fill as smooth as I could.

(There is a bonus theme answer if you parse 23D, perhaps clued as "Hollywood dog star?")

KEVIN: I like collaborating with Andrea for many reasons. She's easy to get along with and has a great sense of humor. When I bring her an idea, she always does something to it that makes it better. Most importantly, she's a fantastic judge of what is and is not clean fill.

We had a ton of LP expressions to pick from for this puzzle. Some of my favorites that didn't make the cut are LUNG POWER, LINKIN PARK (we miss you Chester Bennington), LATERAL PASS, LITMUS PAPER, LANDING PARTY, LIBRARY PASTE, LOTUS POSITION, LACROSSE PLAYER, and LEARNERS PERMIT.

I'm glad we were able to get seven theme answers into the puzzle and to make two of them downs that crossed some of the across theme answers. That was not a gimme. There was no guarantee that was going to work, but we were able to get it to work, which was great.

For the record, I still don't know if LILY PAD is one word or two without googling it. It's two, right?

Thanks for solving!

The colorful LEOPARD PRINT makes its second appearance this month! I'm sorely tempted to expand my wardrobe, much to my wife's chagrin.

Mathematics has an entire subcategory of study called "packing problems." It's not just theoretical, either — there are important applied problems related to shipping, molecular structure, and of course, packing one's bags for a trip. And let's not forget crossword construction!

Packing four theme entries into a 15x15 puzzle is boring. There are so many ways it can be done; way too much flexibility. But when you up that to five or six or even seven themers, that's when constructors crack their knuckles in anticipation of a Herculean challenge.

When a puzzle packs in a ridiculous number of theme answers in an elegant way, it's something you want to study. Delight at. Clap for. It's like the feeling you get upon finally solving a "fit these pieces into a frame" brainteaser. Check out the elegance of the packing puzzle on the right, for example.

When the ultra-high density is enabled by blunt force, though …

I don't mind when constructors take on personal challenges, if the resulting grid sings for solvers. And sometimes a high-density packing can have a wow effect — I heard some praise for Bruce Haight's SS puzzle, for instance.

But when there's so much to turn off newer solvers — AGA TSE NEAP ERE UNI etc. — the degraded solving experience makes IT SO not worth it.

Now, I did like some things — YOWZA was fun, as was MOOCH (huge "Mutts" fan here). I also appreciated that Kevin and Acme made an attempt to elevate the overdone "initialisms" genre. If there had been a reason to include seven LPS, perhaps some band named LP7 or whatever, I'd have said it was justified.

But the ultra-high density approach, replete with such a high amount of crossword glue, doesn't make for a good gateway puzzle for newer solvers.

ADDED NOTE: reader Jeff Doyle-Horney points out that there's an eighth themer — a young dog from SoCal at 23 Down. Ha!