August Miller author page

THIS / TOO / SHALL / PASS is a perfect mantra for today's day and age. Fantastic choice for a "first words of phrases form a saying" theme, although again, Gandalf might disagree.

Great selection of phrases, each one of them colorful, colloquial, curious — or a combination of them all.

It often bugs me if a theme feels too easy to put together, and this one does have some elements of that, since there are hundreds of phrases that begin with THIS, or TOO, or PASS. (SHALL is much more limited — all I could find were SHALL I CONTINUE, SHALL WE SAY, and SHALL I GO ON.)

However, when you have four sparkling phrases like THIS ONES ON ME, that deserves a round of bubbly. Well done!

I've heard THIS TOO SHALL PASS so many times, but I've never thought about its origin. Neat to learn that it goes way back to olden Persian days. I might have preferred PERSIAN as a revealer, since it seems unclear if ATTAR or another poet coined the term. The constructor in me loves having a new way to clue ATTAR, though!

Such a peaceful, feel-good puzzle. Much more than C-worthy (great clue for OKAY!) — just like the grid execution. PARTY BUS and TRASH ART, along with ROBOCOP and MLB TEAM = fantastic bonuses. Perhaps a tough cross in OUTRO / OTOH, but otherwise smooth enough, with some modern touches like "We Don't Talk About BRUNO."

I almost UNITED the UNDOTTED words today.

Tricksy concept, DOT THE IS interpreted as "transform any I in the grid into a DOT rebus for the Down direction." Took me so long to figure out what was going on that I went ity. Great rebus finds, though, AVOCADO TOAST so hipster, JUDO THROW evocative, and YOU DO THE MATH another snazzy phrase.

Note how August always used phrases that broke DOT across words — that's typically one of Will Shortz's criteria for these types of puzzles. Something like AMUSING ANECDOTE is not as interesting.

At least that's what my kids tell me.

Flipping rebuses go back decades, Jim Horne immediately recalling a brilliant one in which Liz Gorski played with ON/OFF SWITCHES. That gave perfect rationale for why the rebus should work differently in Across and Down: ON and OFF rebuses switch! I didn't mind not knowing exactly what to write in those special squares.

I had a more difficult time rationalizing today why I should be using I in one direction and DOT in the other. What to write in each box? I finally shoved in I/DOT, although that looked vaguely I/DOTic.

Strong construction, the end result both colorful and clean. A construction secret: although it's much harder to solve a flipping than a normal rebus, flipping ones are much easier to construct. Simply enter AVOCAIOAST and fill around it as per usual.

Don't get me wrong. That doesn't take away from the care August put into the grid. Easy to GUSH OVER mid-length entries like DOG LEG, GUNSHY, OZARKS, and RHESUS.

I found the concept confusing enough that it didn't generate a clean, sharp a-ha moment, but it was a nice change of rebus pace.