New York Times, Monday, April 24, 2017

Nothing Burger. I've been hearing it again and again, especially on cable news channels which I watch way too often. Today, Nothing Burger makes its NYT crossword debut. I'm serving it up with a first course, a side and dessert. Dig in.

Such meaty theme entries today … and they form a meal! Starting with a WORD SALAD (a more polite term for "word vomit"), continuing with a NOTHING BURGER (Kevin O'Leary from "Shark Tank" uses this all the time), some COUCH POTATOES, finishing with a HUMBLE PIE. I've seen COUCH POTATOES and HUMBLE PIE used before in similar crosswords, but the first two feel nice and fresh. Well done.

Strong execution, too. I'd expect at least a pair of good bonus entries from Gary, given just four themers, and he didn't disappoint. ARPEGGIO for us classical music-lovers, I SUPPOSE, HOT MIC, PEGASUS — all of them excellent lifts as I solved.

There's a bit of arbitrary TWOAM, URI Geller (is he really crossworthy?), a singular ALP, but nothing else that dragged me down. I want smoothness in my Monday puzzles — to make them accessible to newer solvers — and Gary did well in this regard.

I usually think inconsistency is inelegant — POTATOES is the only plural food item — but in this case, I like the inconsistency. Who eats just one potato, after all? (This really should be the case for PIE. I mean, it's PIE, people!)

Only minor nit was the "Utah blocks" on the sides of the puzzle — the sets of five black squares that look like the state of Utah. Gary was already going to have a long down on each side of the puzzle, so why not do it in a way to avoid Utah blocks? Here, you could take out the three blocks after OPENS, and put one in at the E of IRATE — the long down would then be at the bottom right instead of the top right.

Solid Monday puzzle. It would have been spot-on if the meal had been a more typical menu — maybe SOUP, SALAD, BURGER, PIE? — but now I kind of want to try that BURGER followed by POTATOES gut bomb.