New York Times, Wednesday, July 18, 2018

I submitted this puzzle as a Thursday with the rebus squares uncircled. My idea was that the grid would be an archaeological dig site where solvers would uncover the "fossils" one by one, ultimately realizing that they spell TYRANNOSAURUS REX.

As for the actual construction process, I came up with this idea while I was waiting for a flight at JFK, and I built most of the grid in the airport terminal. I was especially excited about crossing DIG SITE with F[OS]SIL, and I made a point of making the rebus entries as lively as I could. When I got home, though, I realized there was a problem: My theme entry OEDIPUS R[EX] felt too similar to TYRANNOSAURUS REX. After redoing the bottom, I ended up with the current version.

FOSSILS … as rebuses? Not sure I get the rationale why fossilization would mean that things would shrinkify in this way? And wouldn't it be weird to find T. Rex pieces in proper left-to-right, top-to-bottom order?

Maybe it was an anal T.Rex?

Qualms about the theme's raison d'etre aside, great gridwork from David. Strong theme entries like I HEART RADIO, PLAIN TRUTH, IN ARMS REACH, etc. He did have a lot of flexibility in placing his rebus squares, but still, his ability to place them within fun, long entries was far from SPOTTY.

Neat to work in OS as part of FOSSIL, too!

I did wonder about GYM BUNNIES, though. At one time, I had that scored very high in our XWI Word List, but I downgraded it due to possible offense some might take. I reread some intertubes articles though, and it seems like since GYM BUNNIES can refer to any gender, and some GYM BUNNIES refer to themselves with that term … I still would much rather use GYM RAT, but that's personal preference.

OWIE got a fantastic clue — [Baby bump?] usually refers to when a woman starts to show, but what a great repurposing here.

Overall, great gridwork, with an interesting notion of crossword grid = DIG SITE. I'm still not sold on the theme execution using rebuses. I might have preferred a more Gorskian approach, the pieces forming the shape of a T. Rex head (like the "Jurassic Park" movie poster). I rarely say this, but perhaps this could have made for a better Sunday grid than a weekday.

But it's still a memorable idea.