Aimee Lucido author page

I enjoy this theme genre of "different things you can (verb)" since it's not seen nearly as frequently as others. You can blow a RASPBERRY, blow a BUBBLE, blow a WHISTLE, and blow a KISS. Great revealer in BLOW YOUR TOP, so apt that each of the four words is at the top of a themer!

Great job hiding the meanings, too. BUBBLE GUM from last week would have worked, but that would have been too direct. BUBBLE WRAP helps to delay the aha moment.

RASPBERRY PI is fun for us casual electromechanically-minded coders, and the clue did well to overexplain so technophobes could figure it out.

Another aspect that makes this puzzle interesting is that there aren't many other things you can blow. You can blow a FUSE or a GASKET, but there's no way to incorporate those two words into a phrase with any sort of misdirection. FUSE BOX or GASKET SEALANT would make the concept way too obvious.

It's usually best to alternate themers all the way down, all the way up, etc., so it's unusual to see BUBBLEWRAP hanging out in the middle of column five. This does make the north and south sections easier to fill, but that middle ratchets up. Jacques BREL and OSO could trip up newer solvers, so it's a good thing ECO got such an easy clue. Sorry, Umberto ECO!

Great revealer that helps this puzzle top many others of its genre.

I loved when Daniel Craig shook up the world of James Bond. Shaken or stirred? Damn straight, Bond shouldn't care about those things!

I appreciate that Aimee used JAMES BOND as a revealer rather than the much dryer MARTINI. Making that mental leap from Bond to his drink of choice is fun.

Anagrams are ultra-common in cryptic crosswords. Shaken and stirred are both used frequently. Before Craig came along, I'd have been confused by this theme since every other Bond requested shaken, not stirred, which doesn't make much cryptic sense. Yet another reason why Craig is my favorite of the Bonds!

At least until the producers sign on Idris Elba or John Cho.

Finding embedded anagram strings isn't as easy as finding fixed strings of letters, but some hacked-up code does the trick. It would have been so Bondesque if the ASTON MARTIN worked, but it doesn't have that second I, and MARTIN hardly disguises the game. The only other pizzazzy possibilities I found were HENRI MATISSE and SPIRIT ANIMAL, but these 12s would make grid construction challenging.

This Seattleite loves the inclusion of beautiful MT RAINIER, anyway.

I wouldn't say I liked the outdated ALERO up top or AMAIN sailing in the east, but working with a central 9 makes gridding tough. I did enjoy Aimee's balancing act, working in freshies like GANJA and ULTIMATE.

Loved the [It's full of beans] clue for BURRITO, too, plus BURRITO / BURRATA feels like the seed of some TOMAYTO TOMAHTO mantra.

Anagrams are a tough sell these days, but the indirect revealer of JAMES BOND sure was fun.

I'm not cool enough to know what Aimee's parties are like, but I sure appreciated being invited today. All those entries she highlighted mixed together to form an awesome bacchanalian rave. I'll gladly sit in the corner, eating my Japanese lunch dish of choice, TONKATSU, while enjoying the festivities.

Two clues that likely will cause confusion so I'll explain them, and one that amazed:

• PIANO, usually written as "p" on a score, indicates to play at a [Soft] volume. Jim Horne often plays PIANO on his grand PIANO, although his forte is playing loudly.
• This Seattleite gets a contact high just taking out his trash from all the POT smoke wafting about. I don't hear it called [Dope] ever, but that's definitely slang for marijuana.
• What field involves blood, sweat, and tears? Literally, FORENSICS!

Friday themeless have the most supply and least demand (from editors as a whole), so the bar has risen incredibly high. Something like NCR crossing RNS wouldn't have caused a second thought ten years ago, but the landscape is different today. OSH is a tough one to accept too, since it's not even a standalone word, just a chunk ripped out of OshKosh B'Gosh.

Aimee's entertaining voice came through so well, through both her entries and clues. Appropriate to have both ADORE and SWOON in the grid. With a few cleanup touches with a revision RASP, it'd have been an easy POW! pick.

MIND OVER MATTER, literally represented four times in the grid. Elegant that Aimee and Ella listed the four states of matter in proper progression: SOLID, LIQUID, GAS, PLASMA. Also elegant that their four MIND synonyms exactly match their respective states of matter in length. Tidy picture — see below, where we've highlighted the key answers.

A feat of construction; pairs of stacked answers difficult to work with. Not to mention requiring rotational symmetry! LIQUID ___ must match length with ___ NOODLE, and ___ SMARTS must also match length with PLASMA ___. It's a wonder that Aimee and Ella managed to find matching sets at all.

It's a mark of technical excellence that I barely noticed minor AFR ALII ANIN glue.

Jim Horne mentioned that he solved this mostly as a themeless, and I did as well. While the technician in me appreciates the extremely difficult construction, it felt like a one-liner, not far enough away from the rest of the states of matter crosswords, to make the theme alone worth a 21x21 solve.

Thankfully, Aimee and Ella did a great job incorporating enough bonuses to elevate the experience. Ironically, I couldn't figure out IGNORATI, but I got such a laugh out of the word. PATOOTIE similarly brought a smile to my face, and this wannabe-Jedi loved MAY THE FOURTH (be with you).

Some great thematic phrases also helped elevate, like STREET SMARTS and PREGNANCY BRAIN, which somehow I caught while my wife was pregnant (and haven't shaken since).

There would be HELL TO PAY if a male constructor tried to pull off a [Boob tube?] clue for UNDERWIRE. That's so brilliant, so funny, and I'm so glad that Aimee made this one!

I also appreciated DOUBLE DARE and I RECKON SO, both fun phrases to say.

There's a Nickelodeon show called DOUBLE DARE? Involving crazy stunts with cymbals and slime poured on people's heads?

If anyone tells my kids about this, I will kill them.

Seven-letter slots are so hard to fill with great material, but I did enjoy HENDRIX, SNUGGIE (not to be confused with the Snugli), CAR GAME, and BRAVURA.

I'll leave the clever clues for that last one to Aimee.

It is tough to populate so much real estate with neutral entries like MEDIANS, SAYS YES, IN FRONT, though. I'd cash in all of these for a single 8+ sizzler that oozes with BADASSery.

Not wild about all the CLE ERN MDSE OTRO RIAL RTE glue, either, especially since this is a 72-worder, the max allowable.

A couple of entertaining clues, headlined by [High rollers' rollers]. I did a double-take on that one before realizing that the second "rollers" was slang for people's cars, in this case, LIMOS.

Not as much juice as I want out of a Friday puzzle, but that marquee UNDERWIRE pun was memorable.

DOUBLE CROSS gets at "a hidden TWO acts as a multiplier for a crossing answer." We've fixed up the entries for the database (see listing below), so [Duplicitous] is not ONE FACED but TWO FACED. Similarly with FOUR LETTER WORDS, SIX FEET UNDER, and EIGHT BALL.

I enjoyed FOUR LETTER WORDS and SIX FEET UNDER most, since these feel much more like marquee Sunday entries than the shorties, TWO FACED and EIGHT BALL.

This isn't a new concept — a recent one cleverly crossed two numbers to form plus signs — but I appreciated how well Aimee and Ella hid TWO. It's not the easiest "hidden word" to work with, especially when you're dealing with short phrases, so IT WORKS! and JUST … WOW are great ways to incorporate TWO.

Also cool that ONE, TWO, THREE, and FOUR share a letter with TWO, a curious fact that made this concept possible.

Will Shortz doesn't often accept puzzles that require a repeated, shaded hidden word. The problem is that once you fill in one or two, you can plunk in the rest without thought. That did diminish some of my solving pleasure.

POP A WHEELIE, such a vivid term! (Go watch BMX in the 2021 Olympics; amazing athletes!) STONE SOUP was interesting too. If you haven't heard of it, your curiosity is piqued by two recognizable words that seem to clash. A soup … made of stone? Yes, read all about it!

I enjoy when Sunday constructors try to push the envelope. This one had some inelegant aspects, including the repetitiveness of the hidden TWOs, the shortness of the crossing themers making them pale in comparison to the great long bonuses (using the full BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL would have been much better), and some rough patches like LOLZ / APIA / OPI right at the start. Still, I'd much rather constructors aim high than repeat an overly trodden path.

I hadn't heard the term INSIDE BASEBALL before — I figured it must refer to the infield fly rule's intricacies, what comprises a balk, why a fielder can't catch with their hat (true!), etc.

How a country that abhors rules can love a game with a nearly 200-page rule book is beyond me.

Some interesting discoveries; five-letter "hidden words" can be tricky to uncover. The clue for BREAKFAST ROLLS hit my ear funny because I'm used to them being more of a sandwich, but ASTRO inside is a neat find. And for considering myself an uber-nerd — a strange one, to boot — I'm ashamed not to be able to identify the STRANGE LOOP.

A lot of colorful fill today, excellent use of mid-length slots. Aimme is spot-on, that CAT LADY, BULLDOG, WHAT IFS sizzle. NARWHAL, CHILLIN', DREIDEL, HASHTAG are fantastic one-worders, too.

I wasn't as enamored by all the glue required, though — AGUE, ADIA, and ATOI can trip up not just newer solvers. I'd sympathize with non-millennial solvers who got the OBI/BAE crossing wrong, too. With such a wealth of riches in the 7-letter slots, I'd have loved more balance between color and cleanliness, which might have reduced the possible sticking points for Monday solvers.

Delightful clue for RING: a good thing to have "on hand" at a wedding, indeed.

Ultimately, this comes down to a "hidden words" puzzle, so I'd have enjoyed longer finds. An hour of searching turned up ORANGE RIND and (1ST) MARINE REGIMENT, which this Seattle homer would have loved.

SPIN THE BOTTLE is so full of crossword potential, a constructor's dream. I have notes on several ideas for executing this, including the strings OTTLEB TTLEBO within words, bottles like BUD spun in the grid, even a big (upside-down) bottle made out of black squares. I never thought of this implementation, though. I admire the creativity!

The concept might still be unclear to some. The Across answers use the letters B O T T L E, starting from 6 o'clock and going clockwise. The Down answers use the same letters, but they start from 12 o'clock. Thus, the BOTTLE is spun 180 degrees. Sort of.

It didn't entirely make sense why Acrosses and Downs used letters of different spin positions, but it is done with consistency.

It's not hard to fill a grid region so that in one square, two letters form equally valid Across and Down words. Take GA(TB)OR, for instance. There are dozens of patterns that could be valid for the ??(TB)?? sequence. It does, however, get increasingly harder as you go, since every time you fix something into place, the rest of the grid loses flexibility.

I was impressed that Aimee and Ella got most of the special squares smooth. LITRE and EATER (is that EATRE in England?) aren't great, but the rest are all fine. Great work there.

Mostly excellent bonus fill, too. USAIN BOLT is retired, but who can forget that Olympics where he looked like he was jogging? WASSAILS, LOSE FACE, EVA PERON, also excellent.

I did wonder what ABOUTNESS was all about ... Eliot Ness? It appears to be a library-specific term, exactly as clued. It is two recognizable words. Man, did it look bizarre, though, and it feels a bit too insidery; smug. Of course, now I'll be dropping it into everyday conversations.

I could have used more polish on the short fill — ESO OSO TSO is so many SOs, and ASA ATOB STL UKE, whew! — but given so many constraints, there had to be some trade-offs.

All in all, I like the innovative thinking, but the a-ha level wasn't as high as I like for a Thursday puzzle.

This is how expert solvers break into a themeless puzzle:

• 5-Down, [More urgent], has to end in ER.
• 22-Across, [Crafts created on a rotating platform], will probably end in S. Given the first finding, it has to end in -RS. Rotating platform, ending in -RS …
• A-ha! Can't fool me. POTTERY is plural but doesn't end in S.
• Then it's s simple matter of filling in letter patterns. Crosswords are easy!

At least I had the R at the end of DIRER correct. SPIN ART, what a fun answer and a clever trap that I totally didn't fall for.

I loved most of Aimee's long entries, BAR TRIVIA, a highlight, especially with that clue using "loaded" in the "boozed up" sense. Single-worders often don't do much, but PHILISTINES will convert even the single-word-pooh-poohing philistines.

INATTENTIVE and TIDES OVER are on the dull side, but the latter is elevated a touch by its eating-related clue. What can I say? I like snacks.

It's an unusual grid, which I appreciate since I see so many of the "four triple-stacks in each of four corners" grids. The central scattering of black squares is pretty.

The rough edges weren't as pretty, though — it's tough to avoid some ALTE DESC MAI ORIN seams when you interlock so many long answers throughout the entire grid. When you cross SPIN ART INATTENTIVE NAVEL GAZERS EGOSURF BANANAS, a dab of ALTE is almost inevitable.

I enjoy hearing constructors' thoughts on their process, and Aimee's note piqued my attention. I don't know the right answer, but I have definitely soured on the Potterverse. Not to the point where I won't read it to my kids, but all of Rowling's vitriol sure was a bummer.

Great collection of feature entries. I also liked getting an insider nod to Aimee's former CS career in SAFE MODE. Transitioning into full-time writing is anything but safe, so kudos to her!

This came so close to a POW! Chock-full of colorful entries and fun clues, there was so much to love.

Usually, when there's a marquee 15-letter entry, there's not as much juice as in a usual themeless. Not the case today! Impressive that Aimee still included 14 other long (8+ letters) slots. I especially like how she ran so many through the middle of EARTH SHATTERING: POTHOLES, SHARKNADO, COPARENTS, PLACEBOS.

Even more impressive: she used all her slots so well! CONTAINING is the only one that didn't do much for me, and that's an amazing hit rate. BINGE WATCH, ESCAPE ROOM, EVANGELIST, SIXTH SENSE, HEADHUNTER … MAKE IT RAIN is right!

There were so many clues that were spot-on. Sometimes themeless clues get too clever for their own good, making me feel like a moron for not getting them. Not to worry, since "… requires thinking inside the box?" is perfect for ESCAPE ROOM. [Org. that holds many conferences] is trickier, but it's so brilliant. (Not conferences that people attend, but conferences separating the NCAA divisions.)

It pains me that my constructor's brain nit-picks. That lower right corner has MAKE IT RAIN and I DON'T WANNA, so I should love it. Is having two tough propers in AKON and WINN worth it, along with TWI? Maybe, but I couldn't stop myself from seeing if there were cleaner and equally colorful possibilities if you stripped back the corner. (There was a sharknado of options.)

All throughout the grid, I tried to ignore the pauses I took at EPH, NACL, BOSSA (can't clue it many ways), as well as RECUT reechoing RELIGHT. Couldn't do it, though.

These days, 70-word themelesses have to be absolutely perfect; stunning for me to perk up. Sometimes I get wistful for the days back when I first cracked into themelesses and simply enjoyed them.

I was so sure we'd see MIND THE GAP in a recent puzzle. Nope. but I was right today!

Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a gap.

I've seen plenty of puzzles involving rebuses, and plenty of square-skipping ones as well. This is a fun combination of the two, the GAP rebuses needing to be skipped over to complete two-word entries like REPO MAN and ICE AGE. Far from a BAD IDEA, indeed!

It was an elegant touch not to have any other two-word phrases in the puzzle. I'm usually all about the juicy multi-word fill phrases, but today, keeping the bonuses to single-worders made the down themers pop.

I did wonder, why not go with a multi-word themer instead of SINGAPOREAN? GAP breaks across the words of the other theme phrases, so why not something like COPPING A PLEA, matched by GROWING APART?

Hey, GROWING APART would have been perfect for this theme!

Although Aimee had great flexibility in choosing her down themers — any phrase of length 4,3 for the REPO MAN slot, for example — she had to interlock two of the sets into MIND THE GAP, eating away at precious flexibility. The center shows strain with PEES and ATRA, for example. Having to spend so many black squares in that center also meant big corners that can be tough to fill. See: ESCS / ARA, etc.

Overall, a solid concept with just a few cracks — gaps, shall we say? — in the execution.

Solid. Tight. Cheeky.

What? NO, I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE CROSSWORD. YOU KNOW, "DAMN RIGHT" IS CHEEKY?

Pervs.

I've seen a lot of butts — er, butt themes — over the years, but(t) there's room for one more, especially when it has all the components that an early-week puzzle needs:

• Consistency. The butt word is first in each phrase. The theme isn't perfectly consistent because the middle entry has three words while all the others have two, but the "the" in BEHIND THE SCENES is almost ignorable. Plus, it's a great phrase, which leads into …
• Snazziness. Great picks for the theme entries. (I probably shouldn't use the word "pick" when writing about a butt theme, but there I went.) This MBA is all about the BOTTOM LINE — which just happens to be the lowest of the themers! No one except me will notice this, but it's a touch of elegance.
• Tightness. (See, I told you I was talking about the crossword!) What other "butt" slang can you think of? There are words like KEISTER and HEINIE, but you can't hide those at the start of phrases.
• Revealer. The BUTTHEADS — or BUTT HEADS — finale is so apt. Describes the concept to a tee.

I give the gridwork a rap — some might say a bum rap — due to a lot of DEUT ENE ERE MTN ETTE ELL ARAL. Thankfully, it's all minor; still passable for an early-week product. Not terrible for having five longish themers.

And the novel grid layout did allow for some great color in NUTELLA (which I can't eat right now since my son is still in the muck of diapers), DUNGEON.

All in all, it felt more American Values Crossword-ish than NYT — no surprise since Aimee is part of the team over there. DAMN RIGHT it did.