New York Times, Monday, September 19, 2022

LESLIE: This may be your first time seeing my byline, but it's not my first puzzle; I've previously published under my maiden name, Leslie Rogers.

It was a delight, as always, to collaborate with Andrea — she has such an eye for picking out which themes will be successful, and she brings so much joy to the discussion of theme entries. Self-indulgently, I would have liked to represent my household's professions with OK COMPUTER and HIS DARK MATERIALS, but hopefully, the set we landed on is more cohesive and accessible.

To my fellow constructors: I certainly do not recommend using a 4x14 set of theme answers. If you want to stick to 38 or 40 blocks and include long bonus entries, those bonuses will likely either have to (1) go in the same direction as the theme (in this case, down) and possibly cause confusion about whether they are theme answers, or (2) go in the opposite direction and cross at least three theme answers apiece, which is very constraining. Given the constraints, I'm glad to have at least squeezed two longer bonuses in. Enjoy the puzzle!

ACME: Meeting Leslie right here in San Francisco was one of the many things I love so much about the puzzle community! We had such fun working on our first CAP AND GOWN puzzle, despite our different ages and backgrounds (I didn't know DATASET, she didn't know BILLY IDOL ... OK Zoomer!), now Leslie has pointed out we are two for two! ;)

This one was all her idea, I just coached from the sidelines when I thought four 14s would be tough to tackle. I was pushing for LET'S GET PHYSICAL which was a 15 ... This puzzle was created so long ago, Ms. Olivia Newton-John was still alive and well, but that would've made for a super tribute!

We had a dozen back and forths about some of the fill (and a little clean-up in one corner at the editor's request), but overall, a surprisingly smooth ride. I'm down for science, down for a third collaboration, and just down for Ms. Rogers in general!

Congrats to Leslie, who got married a month ago!

Leslie and Acme have puzzle-making DOWN TO A SCIENCE! I loved their last collaboration, and this one was almost as fun. This person of science enjoyed how PHYSICAL, SOCIAL, and EARTH were well-hidden at the ends of phrases. Orienting the themers vertically was perfect, too, placing those thematic words DOWN low in the grid.

Such beautiful phrases! Perhaps ANNUAL PHYSICAL isn't snazzy, but ever since I turned 50 this year, I've changed my mindset about dreading my annual. I have such little control over so many aspects of my life, that I'm eager to see how more exercise than ever (what else has there been to do?), will affect my bloodwork.

That said, I'll look forward to returning to retro ICE CREAM SOCIALs some post-pandemic day (instead of gorging frozen treats after my kids go to bed, then blaming Santa for the thievery).

If only psychiatric science had been included today, for my kids' sake.

Some A+ cluing work. It can be difficult to write fresh clues for humdrum words like LIAR and EDIT — especially for a Monday, when puzzles need to be newb-accessible. "Make-up specialist" might go over some folks' heads, but I won't make up excuses for this bit of brilliance. And the telltale question mark does its job well in [One way to reduce one's sentence?] — as in shortening something verbose.

(Jim Horne, who's already flagged my post as too long, is playing Oscars walk-off music.)

It's tough for me to POW! any puzzle that has a whiff of a "words that can precede X" theme, but this one came close. With so few oopsy MESSUPS in gridwork, this could have won out in many other weeks.