New York Times, Tuesday, July 7, 2020

I'm thrilled to be making my NYT debut! A quick thank you to Ross Trudeau, my parents, and my girlfriend for their help and support in this process.

Devising novel theme ideas has always been the toughest part of construction for me. To combat this (bear with me here as my nerdy desperation comes out) I began inspecting things I'd see in daily life for names that could do double duty. Finally, though, I got the greatest birthday present a guy can ask for: a workable revealer. They say big things come in small packages, but I guess the stuff AROUND the package can come in handy, too.

I initially shied away from using TOILET as a "wrapping paper," and the version of this puzzle I submitted used GRAPH instead. Will and the editorial team encouraged me to look past the breakfast test and suggested A TOI / LET GO as a theme combo, and I think the puzzle is all the better for it. An earlier version of the puzzle had ASMR / MR OWL in the northern section, but that didn't pass muster with test solvers. I'm especially happy with 59A in this grid, and the 8D/54A connection especially tickles my fancy as a fan of movie trivia.

I hope you find something nice wrapped in this one!

It's been so long since we've had a "warp" puzzle (words warp from the right side back to the left) that I was pleasantly bamboozled. "Name That Theme" quickly went off the rails, today. I guessed that MUS / LIT was MUSLIM ... with one letter changed for some reason.

LET/TOI … LETTOR? As in, a person who lets?

BON/CAR …

Okay, I got nothin'.

Even after hitting WRAPPING PAPER, it made no sense. Usually, this sort of "wrap" thing indicates that MUS and LIT "wrap" the row, meaning that they bracket the inner contents.

Great moment of realization when I finally figured out that the words started on the right and "wrapped" back to the left (LIT/MUS, TOI/LET, etc.). I also appreciated how Kevin chose four examples of well-known paper from different walks of life. All of them containing exactly six letters was a nice touch, too.

There was a lot of interesting fill. It's HALFTIME, BEER ME! SODA POP, AMULET, RICHARD GERE's full name, PRESTO! It's true that the theme allowed for more flexibility than most themes — ending in LIT and starting with SUE aren't tough constraints — but Kevin executed well.

There was some ACRO ASST ATOI (tough to avoid this one) ENE ANOWL, but it was mostly minor. Whenever you have so many overlap regions, you're bound to need some crossword uglies. Most important thing is to make them as unnoticeable as possible, and Kevin did well in that regard.

Entertaining debut. Newer constructors often ask me what types of themes they ought to work on, and my answer is the maddeningly vague "something different and interersting." I enjoyed how Kevin misled this veteran solver, but did it in such a way that all the pieces were there for me to inevitably figure out what was going on.