HEADS UP! David uses words that can precede HEAD, running upward within grid entries. Very nice find in STOP ORDER (pothead, redhead), ...
read moreHEADS UP! David uses words that can precede HEAD, running upward within grid entries. Very nice find in STOP ORDER (pothead, redhead), where two heads are better than one. TWO BAGGER didn't feel as nice, as BOWHEAD … is what? Seems to be a type of whale? For all the ___ HEAD entries in existence, this doesn't feel like a strong one.

I usually am not too impressed by interlocking theme answers, but I like what David did today, running DEDICATES, RAW DEAL, and MURDER ONE through HEADS UP. To get four intersecting theme answers right in the middle of the puzzle is pretty neat, and the price of I SHOT seems worth it.
It's unfortunate that I SHOT intersects TO BAT though. Inelegant to have two long partials in one region, highlighting each other's existence.
The high theme density is pretty cool. To have 11 "words that can precede head" = an extremely tight packing. On the other hand, most of those hidden words are placed into short themers, i.e. PINhead in NIPS, which makes them less exciting. I might have preferred if there were fewer theme answers which packed in two heads, or where longer words were hidden across a phrase, like HIGH TIDES. (Edith Head, the famous costume designer.)
Speaking of high tides, SANDBANK is a curious word. It is in the dictionary, but I've never heard or seen it used before. MIDDIE was new to me as well, but that seems more inferable, a diminutive of "midshipman."
A neat find in STOP ORDER containing two well-known "heads." If you're not familiar with a STOP ORDER, it's very common in stock trading, although I usually hear it as a "stop-loss order." Stop loss orders got a lot of attention back in 2010 during the "flash crash," when prices of some stocks took a nose dive but rebounded nearly instantly. It was a bad time to have STOP loss ORDERs in force on your positions …