New York Times, Monday, August 7, 2017

Here's how I know when I have a good early week theme idea … I come up with a theme idea, and I think to myself "Oh my gosh, that's so obvious, that's so simple and straightforward, surely someone has done this before!" Then I check, and it turns out it's either never been done before, or it was done a very long time ago. That's a good Monday theme.

I considered MOVIE DIRECTOR instead of FILM DIRECTOR as the theme tie, but I preferred FILM DIRECTOR because that includes both movies and television, whereas MOVIE DIRECTOR left out television. Also, there wasn't a length 13 theme answer ending in LIGHTS that I liked as much as the length 12 BRIGHT LIGHTS that I used.

The construction on this puzzle was not difficult. Since it's a Monday puzzle, I just did what every Monday constructor does. I tried very hard to keep the fill as simple as possible.

Originally I had TAXI at 7-Down, but Will changed it to SIRI, which is much better. I enjoyed putting FLOTSAM next to JETSAM. I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that's never been done before, so that was fun. KEVIN at 26-Down is vanity fill, but I also think it yielded the simplest fill in that area. My two kids were really into Pokemon Go at the time I constructed this puzzle, so I'm sure that had something to do with how POKEMON ended up at 43-Down.

Thanks for solving!

LIGHTS … CAMERA … ACTION! Nice sequence hidden at the ends of three phrases. I liked COVERT ACTION the best of the three — not only is it a snappy entry, but it gave a meta wink to the fact that ACTION was covertly(ish) hidden. CANDID CAMERA feels a bit old at this point, but it is a famed show. BRIGHT LIGHTS didn't feel complete without "big city," but it also does work.

FILM DIRECTOR serves its purpose to reveal what's going on. I would have preferred something less direct and more playful, but I can't think of what that might be. Also, this is a Monday puzzle, so FILM DIRECTOR's explicit, no-nonsense reveal is probably better to target a broader swath of solvers.

I usually am not a fan of bonus fill jammed into a grid at the expense of short fill, but I was wowed by FLOTSAM and JETSAM right next to each other — in the proper order! Beautiful. The letter starts that they force — FJ, LE, OT — greatly reduce flexibility, necessitating the inelegant triplet of ONT, RTE, DOR. But none of those three are bad by themselves. Well worth the trade-off for me.

I might not have been okay with that trade-off if the rest of the puzzle had contained a lot more crossword glue, but with just some MASC, ISR, B AND B (usually written B&B), I thought Kevin made a good decision to go ahead with that FLOTSAM / JETSAM pair, along with the associated prices he had to pay.

I would have loved a more oblique revealer I had to work for — I want to earn my a-ha moment. Maybe something like LETS ROLL or even a picture of a clapperboard made out of black squares? It's a tough balance — being too clever can sometimes leave a big chunk of solvers confused.