Alison Ohringer author page

FIX BREAKFAST = make breakfast … or repair it?

In my household, it's usually both. Jake (age 2) has a thing now where he rips a piece of food apart and then gets upset when it can't be rejoined.

This is my life.

Fun fact: in Canada, FIX BREAKFAST isn't a thing, as much as "make breakfast." Hadn't occurred to me until our resident Canadian Jim said, "Eh?"

There might be an additional layer of cleverness that I'm missing here, but I did appreciate that Alison and Erik found four staple(ish) breakfast foods that have an in-the-language phrase associated with them, all meaning "food that's been marred in some way."

(Do people eat healthy APPLEs for breakfast? Fie on you, says this unabashed BAGEL-eater. What was that doing in the middle of the puzzle, BTW? That makes me feel even more strongly like I am missing something I'm not smart enough to grok.)

Such beautiful gridwork. Five themers, with one of them a central 11, usually is a recipe for crossword glue. Not today. I didn't run into a single dab, and what with OCTAGON, TUNA FISH, PATELLA, AVATAR, and WOKEST (what the kids say these days about being socially aware, as it would seem), the product is both clean and colorful.

Note the careful use of cheater squares, before NFL and after ALSO. I wish more constructors would deploy these types of black squares. Rich Norris over at the LAT calls them "helper" squares — that's so on point. The NW region is at least three times easier to fill (with color and cleanliness) with the assistance of that one extra black square.

Fantastic craftsmanship, but the theme didn't do that much for me. I'm going to keep thinking about it — that BAGEL in the center has to be purposeful.

(No? Just the best available fill? Bah.)

Congrats to Alison on the debut! Working with one of the best in the business, reigning ACPT champ Erik. Can't go wrong there.

LOST IN THE SHUFFLE … how to explain this? Theme answers are made of two words, and if you remove one letter from the first word and them anagram the remaining ones, you get the second word.

Thus, that key letter is GHOSTED?

Hmm. One definition of GHOSTED is "ended a personal relationship with (someone) by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication." So, that key letter says buh-bye when it comes to forming the second word?

It is nice that the key letters form the word PHANTOMS, echoing the GHOSTED idea. It didn't produce a sharp a-ha moment for me, but I appreciate the attempt to work in an additional layer of cleverness.

Solid gridwork, as I'd expect from an Agardian production. Just a bit of super-minor OLLA APSE kind of stuff — now that's great craftsmanship, especially for a Sunday puzzle! Way, way, way less crossword glue than average makes for a feeling of elegance.

Erik's much younger and hipper than me (funnier and smarter, too), so it wasn't a surprise to encounter several things I didn't know. SERENA SLAM is where you hold all four Grand Slam titles at once? I wonder why the press didn't make up a neat name like that for the people who did it before her (Billie Jean King, etc.).

BBC ARABIC was new to me too, but I also liked learning that. Except it seemed to me like BBC ARABIA would have been such a better title. (Probably a good thing that I stayed out of marketing.)

APARNA, too. I don't know that she's become crossworthy enough to be a theme answer — cool that CHER is hidden inside NANCHERLA! — but as fill, absolutely fine.

The a-ha moment wasn't strong enough for my taste — I'm still wondering exactly why those letters fit the term GHOSTED and PHANTOMS — but there were some strong themers like CARMEN MCRAE, as well as enough SAM HILL, LIME JUICE, RUSH HOUR, THE NERVE bonus fill to keep me going.