New York Times, Wednesday, April 12, 2023

BROOKE: I'm so thrilled for Olivia and my collab debut! We barely knew each other when we started collaborating, but now we've been working together at Lil AVC X for about half a year. Olivia is such a thoughtful editor and mentor and has really amazing, creative ideas; it's a privilege to work with her! Her thoughtfulness and creativeness came through in this puzzle — the idea is all hers!

OLIVIA: I'm so grateful that Brooke contacted me about collaborating back in 2021! It was a pleasure to work with her then and an absolute dream to work with her now. This is the first Wednesday puzzle for both of us, and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

This theme started as an idea to create clues made up of anagrams ... the two entries I had at the start were [Notes set on stone] for ENGRAVINGS and [Least stale tales] for PAGE TURNERS. Luckily Brooke had the idea of switching up the execution by putting the anagrams in the grid. From there, we went back and forth with some fun options. Here are some others that were left on the cutting room floor:

• I WON'T OWN IT IN TWO [Refusal to buy something broken?]
• TEAM'S MATES STEAM [Friends of the squad hang out in the sauna?]
• TIMES EMITS ITEMS [The Gray Lady generates content?]
• KEATS TAKES STEAK [English poet orders the filet?]
• ELVIS VEILS EVILS [The King hides his sins?]

Messes up Jell-O-lover's cling film periodical? You know … ANAGRAMS AGAR MAN'S SARAN MAG?

Count your blessings that I stay away from anagrams these days.

I appreciate the smooth connections within these themers, not one herky-jerky or grammatically tortured. There are a TIN HOST (anagram that) of five-letter sequences with multiple anagrams, but so many would give nails-on-chalkboard-screeches when linked.

Take AELST, which has six possible anagrams: LEAST SLATE STALE STEAL TALES TEALS. Trying to pass off something like TEALS STEAL SLATE as [Robber ducks pull building material heist?] would get you the LEAST stars possible, and people might even tell TALES of your STALEness.

AIDES IDEAS ASIDE, on the other hand, is something that I could imaging Cinda Canning saying in "Only Murders in the Building." EARLY RELAY LAYER could easily describe a team triathlon wetsuit. And while NOTES SET ON STONE so badly wants to be NOTES SET IN STONE for the [Engravings?] clue, it works.

With four grid-spanning themers, you can almost always incorporate four long Down bonuses, and Olivia and Brooke delivered. The RED BARON brought back memories shared with Snoopy over a root beer, and material like IT'S A TRAP and ON AND OFF BOLSTERS the quality.

It's difficult for me to see almost any anagram puzzle as memorable, so all the additional touches were much appreciated. I'll never give RANTER'S SNOT to great wordplay like [Nonstarters?] for BTEAM.