New York Times, Monday, September 25, 2017

I can't really take much credit for this one. Will and Joel thought this was a fun and simple Monday theme but my initial fill was horrid and all those crossing words were too much for my wordlist at that time, even at the 78 word maximum. So ... handy dandy Frank Longo got called in to clean things up and he pretty much redid the whole puzzle from the ground up. The only entry that is a little dicey for Monday is THORA, but Thora Birch has made quite a name for herself as an actress.

Frank is actually quite busy and well-respected in the crossworld, but he manages to fly low under the radar most of the time. Despite the fact that Monday is the only day Frank has not been published in the NYT he turned down multiple requests to be listed as co-constructor here. Cycle, shmycle ...

At any rate, Thank You Frank!!

Five sets of crossing rhymers, each 2x5 letters, each sharing the same last four letters. (Highlighted below.) I like saying HOTSY TOTSY and HOITY TOITY, so those were winners for me.

Not so much HANDY DANDY, which the dictionary defines as "handy." Huh. I had just learned the term "Handy Andy" recently, so HANDY DANDY befuddled me. I thought maybe I'd missed some clever extra layer in the puzzle.

Bruce did a good job of spreading out those five crossing pairs of themers, and using his black squares wisely to make for easier filling. I wouldn't have been surprised to see some crossword glue in the NW and SE, but both regions came out nice and clean. CY YOUNG and RAY GUNS even make for excellent bonuses in the NW. Very well done there to Bruce and Frank!

Not quite as strong in the more open SW and NE corners, but still, the execution is good. SILTS is a strange plural, and REYES is a bit off the beaten path, but big 5x5 chunks containing crossing answers often require more dabs of glue than this to hold them together.

I enjoyed getting some BULL MOOSE and OPEN HOUSE; neat that they extended into that toughish HOTSY TOTSY center for an added degree of difficulty.

HONEY-DO is fun too, although it's not as nice as getting the full "honey-do list."

And FOUR SPEED … sometimes constructors have to choose between sparkling fill and clean but less interesting fill, and Bruce / Frank went with the latter in this case. I like their decision, especially because they already gave us some great goodies in BULL MOOSE and OPEN HOUSE.

Well-executed puzzle, but rhyming puzzles have been done to death. It takes a dazzling new feature to wow me in this genre, and the crossing themers didn't quite do it. It feels like there's a Schrodinger-type puzzle in here somewhere, with a single entry of (H/T)OITY … perhaps akin to one of Patrick Merrell's? That wouldn't be a Monday puzzle though!