New York Times, Thursday, July 30, 2015

So I was making this puzzle last fall and I fielded a question to my Facebook friends (real and otherwise) as to whether or not the base phrase at 28-Across was fair game. Shortly afterward, Jeffrey Harris IMed me as he thought he'd figured out what the theme of my puzzle was just by that one answer. He was wrong, as his guess was the theme for this puzzle that ran today. As a shout-out/thank you, I put HARRIS at 10-Down, symmetrically opposite the ALCOTT reveal. How about that for an Easter Egg?

Well-executed "Little Women" theme, MEG AMY BETH and JO tossed into normal phrases to produce wackiness. I've seen a lot of "Little Women" crosswords over the years, so it's neat to run across a new take. TOUGH NUT(MEG) was a good one, and BIG(AMY) BUSINESS gave me a chuckle.

BEQ's website puzzles are sometimes too heavy on music clues/answers for my taste, so it was nice to see a good range of subject areas in his fill. From a PLUG UGLY to a YOGA MAT to MULLAHS to GUESS NOT, the longer fill covers a pleasantly wide set of topics. I also liked how BEQ laid out his grid to include a few more 7-letter entries than usual, allowing him to add a bit of zest with UNEARTH and KNELLED.

Nice job on the shorter stuff, too. Now I see that there's a lot of 3-letter words (24 of them!), but I didn't notice that during my solve because most of them were innocuous. KNT always looks odd to me, but it appears to be a legit chess abbreviation.

I did stumble on the ANNA / VAL section down south, tripping up my finish. Having given up on "Breaking Bad" and not being familiar with "Howard the Duck," that intersection was rough. I can see why BEQ/Will decided to toughen those clues way up, as Thursday puzzles are supposed to be really tough, but that sort of esotery doesn't feel like a very fun type of tough to me.

Overall, a good showing on a theme that I would have preferred to see on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Will has said in the past that all he wants from Thursday puzzles is that they're harder than Wednesday ones, but given how many great tricks and gimmicks we've seen over the years in Thursday puzzles, it's usually a bit of a letdown to see a standard theme type.