Brad Wilber author page

"What connects these random things?" themes are among my favorites. It's so much fun to slap yourself in the head when there's a simple one-word revealer that clarifies the connection. It's even better when there's a great phrase that serves that purpose. LET'S PUT A PIN IN IT is fantastic, helping solvers realize that one might put a pin in a VOODOO DOLL, CLOTH DIAPER, or a BOWLING LANE.

And I loved the expanded thinking, putting a P.I.N. into an ATM. That's the kind of creativity that makes me stand up and clap.

I enjoyed the theme so much that I daydreamed about what other things you could put a PIN in. JEWELRY BOX would work. WRESTLING RING … not so much.

How about PASTRY DOUGH, with a rolling PIN? In golf, the flag in a hole is called a "pin." These two might have dulled the a-ha moment though; tougher to make the connection to a PIN.

Today is a rare case where I'd have liked "less is more." An ideal presentation would give three or four vastly different PIN meanings, followed by (LETS) PUT A PIN IN IT. Starting off with VOODOO DOLL and CLOTH DIAPER using similar types of pins, unveiling the revealer, then following with new definitions of PIN … I'm not sure if it's genius that it kept me guessing, or if it's inelegant.

I also wasn't wild about some of the compromises that five themers demanded. There wasn't anything egregious, but the pile-up of minor ACU ELO WTS kind of glue became noticeable. Reasonable trade-off to get the delights in POOL PARTY, HUMAN RACE, ONION RING, but it left me with a slightly MALADROIT sensation.

Fantastic idea; would have gotten my POW! with a few different choices.

JACKSON POLLOCK! Neat to see him memorialized in an artistic crossword. I'm usually not a fan of "spaced out circles" themes (Will Shortz isn't either; he finds them random and/or chaotic), but it's an genre for POLLOCK's splatter-painting style.

Wait. DRIBBLE? Further research does show that he indeed used DRIBBLE techniques. Maybe I watched Ed Harris splattering paint over a canvas too many times.

DRIBBLE does fit the orderliness of the P A I N T and T N A I P drips, all going in straight lines. Still, it doesn't do POLLOCK's non-orthogonal work justice. Even though having slanted P A I N T trails would have meant all sorts of grid construction problems — including the big-picture question of what entries are thematic — I'd have preferred something that more represented a POLLOCK creation. I bet that could be pulled off, with enough iteration.

A couple of dribbles in the grid, ACTA crossing ROTI particularly difficult if you don't know your crosswordese or Indian cuisine. Same with ESTER / ITE. We longtime solvers can generally get either without crossings, but something like ESNER (ESNE-esque?) and INE might look just as reasonable.

I love the idea of today's puzzle. Not so much this particular canvas.

John and Brad! I love these guys, John one of the founders of the Boswords tournament, and Brad editing for it. During a historically rough time, when a ton of people needed a lot of diversion from the woes of the 2020 world, these online competitions provided a huge amount of entertainment.

Themelesses featuring grid-spanners often live or die on the quality of those marquee entries. Some of today's resonated strongly for me. I've said I COULD EAT A HORSE many a time, and I sarcastically often ask my daughter, CARE TO ELABORATE? regarding her various experiments in straight-faced lying.

It's unusual for me to solve a themeless that has feature entries new to our XWI Word List. John and Brad debuted three today! I couldn't piece together THE MUDVILLE NINE at first, but I eventually pulled Casey at the Bat out of the corners of my memory.

I filled in ___ SATISFYING and pondered, what could the first word be? Given that my kids turn into demons when given bubble wrap, I figured it had to be CHAOTICALLY or ANNOYINGLY. Perhaps I had a typo and the entry was SERENITY NOW? I had to mull over ODDLY SATISFYING, but I ended up deciding it was an oddly satisfying entry.

DRIVEWAY MOMENTS didn't click until most of the letters were in place, but what a self-explanatory, descriptive term. That is, unless you have kids who notice you drive up and bang on the car window yelling WHAT DID YOU BRING ME.

I appreciated that John and Brad didn't stop at those five grid-spanning entries, but laid out six more long entries. This math dork loved the CALCULUS clue, misdirecting with "has its limits." Fun to see it near SUM TOTAL, too.

Great clue for PRESS ONS. "Digital applications," as in fingers = digits.

There were some compromises, like SALE TAGS not doing much with that long slot, and some ATTY EAN HIES ORIG to hold everything together, but I enjoyed picking up those new long phrases, easy enough to make sense of.

Perhaps I'd get some MOMENTS if I parked in someone else's DRIVEWAY …

Debut! And with Brad!

Brad Wilber is such a great guy and the former editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education's crossword, which sadly ended a few years ago. He was perfect for that job since he's an incredibly smart person who can pull out terms like MONONYM that are not only interesting but accessible. I have a terrible time keeping those -NYM terms straight, but the MONO prefix makes this one easier.

Will Shortz is extremely picky about "hidden words" themes these days because they've become overdone. Today's features one incredible find, EMINEM in MINE MINE MINE! Some solvers might wonder if that phrase is legit, but those solvers don't have kids.

The other discoveries aren't as mind-blowing because four-letter hidden words aren't as impressive. It does help if there's a rare(ish) letter like a K, and SPIN KICK is a vivid phrase. CARBON OFFSET is a modern term. It's harder to hide ENYA than you might think. Still, these three don't have the wow factor of EMINEM's six letters.

I also want a perfect revealer for hidden words puzzles, and while MONONYM does describe what's going on, it doesn't give a rationale for hiding the names. MIDDLE NAMES would sort of do it, but that doesn't get at the one-nameness. I don't think there is a perfect revealer, unfortunately, which is a ding on this theme concept.

Another approach was to disguise one-named singers.

I appreciated the huge number of clever or fun clues. My favorite was [Body part where a shoe goes]. Probably like most everyone, I filled in FOOT, especially when the middle OO worked fine. Fun head-slap when I realized it referred to a horse's shoe.

A couple of rough patches in the grid, a bit of ELEV HELI, and SLUE is tough vocab. I've learned SIENA from crosswords, but if you haven't traveled to Tuscany, that might be a head-scratcher. Fair crossings for everything, though, and some might appreciate learning something new.

Not my favorite hidden words puzzle, but that EMINEM find was fantastic.

I love Doug and Brad. Doug and I share a fascination of all things superhero — I'd bet $100 that he settled for MOOD RINGS only when GREEN LANTERN RINGS didn't fit. And Brad and I are both avid "Great British Bake-off" fans, so getting POT DE CRÈME was a delicious treat.

I leaned toward giving Brad and Doug the vaunted El Jefe Handshake, with so much fantastic WORDS FAIL ME, LA DOLCE VITA, the snow-capped OLD SMOKEY of song, and the hilarious clue for ESPERANTO. If it wasn't Doug who worked in the word "fartas," I'll eat my shorts.

My bromance can only go so far, though, DUN a strange flavor on top, APORT and REDRAFT making for cracked pastry crusts, and NYRO/DYNE/ARTE a soggy bottom.

It's a shame. The flavors were so well-thought-out, stunning clues for HIT LIST (that's "offer" as in someone who offs), BROKE EVEN (excellent repurposing of "point of no return"). Doubly-yummy: BAKE SALES, because it once again reminded me of hanging out with Brad, and also the laugh I got out of "generate a lot of cookie dough."

I'm happily sending Doug and Brad through to the next round, the tasting experience enough to overcome the technical flaws. Not a star puzzle, so the handshake will have to wait until next time.

Fantastic RETURN OF THE JEDI clue! Talk of an emperor's fall had me bamboozled. And that's even more impressive, considering that "The Empire Strikes Back" is one of my all-time favorite movies!

Brad and I are huge fans of "The Great British Bake-Off," discussing it at length at past crossword tournaments. It's crazy to think that me, an uncultured brute, not only knows how to make choux pastry but has actually made it. The pastries tasted delicious, although, on the scale from looking like turds to resembling eclairs, they trended toward the former.

Thankfully, it turns out you can polish a turd with a little icing.

CLAFOUTI, though … yikes. It reminds me of watching "Monty Python" as a kid and being puzzled by a skit where a blancmange terrorized the countryside. I had that same terror when trying to complete CLA_OUTI, where the missing letter could have been E, F, I, M, or T. Crossing a specialized foreign term with an undisclosed member of a C suite — CEO, CFO, etc. ...

(I did figure out that the "millions" in [Overseer of millions at work] referred to millions of dollars, but not quickly enough to prevent my stock price from plummeting.)

I generally dig mini-themes, but today's didn't land well. While I did like the visual, PLUS SIGN was way too easy, and QUINCUNX felt like some sort of horcrux split out of Voldemort's soul. At least, when I struggled with QUIN_UNX and a random French word.

I struggled mightily with this one, and I DON'T LIKE TO BRAG, but in the end, I finished, with near 100% certainty I was right.

If you round up from 52%, that is.

A lesson in humility was useful for my long-term growth. And I did love many of the clues — HATFIELD not being the real McCoy, that's fantastic! Worth the price of admission right there.

Doug! Come on, my comic book nerd buddy, no X-men clue for SENTINEL? I've generally been disappointed by the X-Men movies (save Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen's dynamite onscreen chemistry), but "Days of Future Past" was surprisingly well done. The backdrop of the Nixon-era xenophobia applying to the mutant homo superior threat—

Fine, I'll stop! Party pooper. But SENTINELs as mutant seek-and-destroy machines — powered by the DNA stolen from a mutant — is a compelling storyline I'd love to see tapped again.

Brad! So much smarter than I — er, me — but never SNOOTY about it. Sometimes I worry that I won't be able to figure out the more erudite touches in Wilber puzzle, like LLOSA, but I appreciate the way he classes up a joint. I can imagine him seeing PHARAOH and figuring that it has great cluing potential, like its meaning of "great house." Such a memorable clue!

I recently rewatched some "Schoolhouse Rock" episodes, getting a fun throwback to my childhood. Neat to see ACTION VERBs innocently clued as [Spring or fall].

An even more brilliant clue was [Quick buck, say]. I was thinking about con games, get rich quick schemes, but a literal buck never crossed my mind, even though I'd made a puzzle using this same trick!

The grid had a bit too much of TARN (yikes!), SST, XERS, especially for a 72-word themeless. A lot of fun marquee answers, though, and I always like seeing the creations of two of my favorite crossworld people.

PSY/CHO! It's such a fitting split, the movie poster containing a vertical slash through it.

Wait. The slash on the poster is horizontal, cutting every letter in half, not PSY/CHO into two parts. Never mind.

Okay, I buy Brad's explanation of the split personality issue = PSY / CHO. I did also wonder if this might be offensive to those with mental health issues, though. Mimicking the movie poster with a black horizontal slash across the puzzle might have avoided that issue (explaining that it's art copying art).

And a jagged line of black squares across the middle of the grid could have split the puzzle in half! What can I say, I love it when crosswords break the rules. This would have been a perfect reason to do so.

Kudos to Kevin for finding a symmetric set that so fully describes the movie, and to Brad for polishing it. Neat how PSY and CHO fortuitously intersected other themers.

There's such a high density of thematic material, though — it's no surprise that there's a price to pay. I didn't mind any one entry, but the agglomeration of BRIS SCTV IONA BOFFO POLER APER made me pause. I definitely wouldn't give this puzzle to a newer solver, except if he/she were a huge ALFRED HITCHCOCK fan. Even then, I might pause.

Perhaps a less traditional "here are a bunch of things about X" tribute concept — if not a black slash mimicking the movie poster, perhaps arranging themers to form the famous shower scene? — could have been more memorable.

Brad is one of my favorite people in the crossworld, an erudite savant who edits the Chronicle of Higher Education crossword. (Don't worry, I had to look up "erudite" and "savant" too.) He goes by the clever moniker, "Bewilbered," so the clue for OTTER as a bewhiskered animal bemused me. My solving enjoyment always goes up when treated to these insider nods.

Strong work in disguising items that are commonly in a PURSE. I did catch on to the theme early, after just LICENSE and KEYS, but I stopped to admire how different the meanings are, in the crossword as opposed to the purse. That's some DRAMATIC LICENSE right there!

Most purses might as well be Hermione's charmed handbag for all I know, the varied and multitudinous contents bewildering. A driver's LICENSE, set of KEYS, sure. Spare CHANGE ... people still use cash? So 20^th century!

The one that made me hitch was CHARGER. I do carry a phone CHARGER with me, but I'll have to ask around to determine if this is indeed an oft-bepursed item.

Loved the TONYS clue, too. How appropriate for Tony Shalhoub to win a TONY. I'd say I'd one day hope to win a Jeffy, but that stupid "Family Circus" kid ruined the name forever.

A ton of CHEERY mid-length fill, like SHOO-IN, ANYHOW, GO DEEP, OFF DAY, even EEYORE bepleasanting the experience.

I wasn't hot on a couple of blips though: ANON crossing AGOAT, some ATILT / ALIT, and SLUE potentially befuddling to newer solvers. Some glue is expected given the quantity of strong mid-length fill, but it's not a trade-off I would have made for a Monday grid. I much prefer erring toward the side of smoothness, not color, for an introductory solve.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked Brad's themer choices. What else is often found in PURSEs and easily disguisable? WIPES, perhaps, hidden in STAR WIPES? Maybe. A PHONE … as in PURSEPHONE!

Drat it, that's Persephone. So close, yet so far.

I haven't enjoyed a debut entry as much as COSMIC JOKE in ages. Not only is it a beautiful, existentialist, Vonnegutesque term, but I struggled so mightily with the -MICJ- string in the middle. It had to be wrong. Had to, had to, had to! What a joy to finally piece it together, sitting back and admiring the awesome entry.

HOSTESS TWINKIES and HOT PEPPER EMOJIS made for delicious feature entries. I know the former is bad for me. But gosh darn it, they're so satisfying. Especially when deep-fried. Twice. The latter wasn't entirely familiar to me, as I'm still not much of an emoji user. Aren't there a million emojis these days? Doesn't it seem arbitrary to choose these specific ones to feature? There's probably some hilarious special meaning to HOT PEPPER EMOJIS (that all the kids are giggling at me for not knowing).

Along with some MC ESCHER, SEA SNAKE, TINKERER, GREENLIT, there were enough strong entries to keep me happy.

Brad's Saturday Stumpers and themelesses in general are some of my most favorite and most feared puzzles. (That's how I'll define "Wilberian" from now on.) He has such a wealth of information, being a librarian and all, that I always pick up something new from his puzzles. He's usually good about not introducing too much, making sure that all the learning doesn't turn off solvers.

Today, it was STANHOPE. I enjoyed reading up on it, basically an old-school term for a horse-drawn carriage, named after an old English dude. I'll tuck this term away for trivia nights. STANHOPE being the sole new term for me, the puzzle didn't come across as teachy.

COACH K might be tough for some, but the longtime Duke bball coach (you might go by COACH K too if your last name was Krzyzewski) is no doubt crossworthy. Five NCAA championships!

I enjoyed COSMIC JOKE so much that I thought about handing out the POW! based on that alone. But with some wastage in MAIN GATE, SYSTOLES, RECAST, IMARETS — all fine entries, but all paling in comparison to COSMIC JOKE — and a bit of CEE, TO BED, NAES, it didn't quite make it.

Kind of a COSMIC JOKE that COSMIC JOKE made everything else seem less interesting in comparison!

Love, love, love that Emanuel Ax and Brad teamed up to make a crossword related so closely to their lives! Visuals in crosswords can be so much fun — the musical eighth note made of black squares delighted me. It has been done before (Liz is a violist!), but it's still neat.

"Words that can follow X" puzzles have fallen by the wayside, so if you're going to go down that well-worn road, I think it's important to do something above and beyond. The musical note visual helped in that regard.

Having NOTE as a revealer (SOUR NOTE, MASH NOTE, HIGH NOTE, HALF NOTE) was a let-down though. I like to work a little for my a-ha moment, especially in a mid-week puzzle — no spoon-feeding! I'm not sure what would have been better, but something like HINT clued with a reference to the musical note?

I loved QUAKER GUN, what an evocative term! DAYMARE too. GRETA GARBO, MANGIA (Italian for "eat!"), ANECDOTAL, even PLAY AREA clued cheekily toward Ax's profession = so much great bonus fill! Almost felt like a themeless puzzle in that regard.

Prices to pay for these goodies, though. I don't mind a little ENE RONS UNAS LEROI SASE; generally minor and forgettable. But the upper left and lower right corners ended up giving the puzzle a rough-around-the-edges feel. It is difficult to fill around crossing themers — the starts of WHISKEY SOUR and MONSTER MASH combine to create inflexibility up in the NW — but A CENT + ERE I + LE ROI makes for an inelegant start to the puzzle.

Same for the end — A FATE + N CAR + the tough HALLO and AGLET…

(I usually would employ cheater squares (a black square at the R of RHODE or first A of AFATE to smooth these sections out). But some constructors much prefer a cleaner, more stark look to a puzzle.)

But overall, so neat that two musically-driven people came up with something so related to them.

So much fun to see these guys work together. I really enjoyed their secret initialisms puzzle, each of them contributing a BW phrase.

Great to get such exciting entries as TECHNO MUSIC, THE BURBS, FINESSE SHOT, BOHEMIANS. TROMBONISTS might have been my favorite one, especially with the misdirecting [Ones using slides] clue, since I was a trombonist for a long time. I'm still waiting for someone to incorporate SAD TROMBONE, a juicy answer in my personal word list, into a grid …

I always learn something from a Wilber puzzle, and the same goes for a Walden. Not surprising that the effect more than doubled today, some sort of synergistic effect from the two of them teaming up. That piece of CESAR ROMERO trivia was really interesting. BARBICEL was tougher to grok, but the crossings were fair (perhaps I'll use it in discussions with my toddler, who's becoming obsessed with birds). And the ancient Egyptians have always fascinated me, so I enjoyed picking up that the SCARAB was used as some pharaohs' seal of office.

Perhaps a little too much learning in one sitting for my taste, though. I follow the NBA pretty carefully, but Dan ISSEL is outside of my knowledge base. OLEAN plays poorly to the black hole that is my deficiency in geography. RAMON Novarro similarly falls into my lacking knowledge of older actors. They're all fair(ish), but it felt like a lot in total.

This is one time where I understand some people telling me they like entries akin to ADIT. I'm sure Brad and Byron struggled against including one of the worst old-timey crossword glue entries, but it did help me break open the right half of the puzzle. Still, ADIT is hard to swallow.

Great clues:

• What kind of series could possibly start and end with S? MTWTF, bookended by Sunday and Saturday.
• It took me forever to figure out why [Common Allen wrench?] would mean ANGST. Makes much more sense when you think about that capitalized A, and Woody Allen.

A challenging puzzle with a bit too much crossword glue for my taste. Still, quite a few fun entries, and I did learn a lot.

I love seeing Doug and Brad on a single byline. They're two of my favorite people in crosswordland, and the sheer diversity of answers they exhibit as a team is stunning. I really like puzzles that have something for everyone, and it's pretty tough to beat them in that aspect. From the classic ETHAN FROME to the recent HOGWARTS, from the kooky GEWGAW to the bizarre-looking BUSHSR (think: Bush #41!), there's such a huge range of entries. Sometimes I feel like a single puzzle is focused too much on baseball or pop culture or stuff from the 1950s or whatever. Not the case for a Wilberson.

And as usual, they bring a bevy of clever clues. [Gondola settings] made me think about speed or position of chairs, but it meant the background setting of SKI RESORTS. [What you might have for bad eyesight] had to be SPEX or CONTACTS or even a LOUPE? No, it's your GENEs. And my favorite, [Little sweater] so innocently makes you think about a piece of clothing, but it's a PORE.

Brad and Doug always bring a ton of great fill to their themelesses. I count about 15 assets — GUITAR SOLO and HOGWARTS my favorite — that's outstanding work. There are a few entries like ALTERATION which I don't count as assets (ADDED NOTE: Doug knows me too well), as they're more everyday words than colorful ones, but Doug/Brad started with enough long slots that if they didn't convert one or two into something great, the asset count is still a big number.

All of that, with virtually no gluey bits! What can you even point out? Some might argue UPCS (Universal Product Code, in merchandising lingo) is a liability? But I think as long as an acronym is very well-known and in popular usage, it's fine. Maybe not everyone knows what they are by name, but who wouldn't recognize the thick/thin black bars on virtually every product sold?

I personally measure themelesses by [assets minus liabilities], and a fine themeless scores at least 10. Here, with a score of 15 = another Wilberson winner. If it hadn't been for Peter Gordon's hilarious April Fool's Day puzzle yesterday, this would would easily been the POW.

I always learn something new from Brad's puzzles, and today was no different. I always smile at Sam's goofiness shining through his puzzles, and again, today was no different. Great combination these two bring us today, entries from all walks of life. Very cool to get such a wide range, from the RIG VEDA and DAWN RAID all the way to SIPPY CUPs and OUR GANG.

There's a ton of entries/clues I was unfamiliar with, so I'll explain them:

• MOSSAD is Israel's intelligence agency, not just a generic [Spy group]. I imagine including "Israel" in the clue would have made it too easy?
• The VIZSLA hunting dog contains such a weird string of letters. Just think if Sam and Brad had used the MAGYAR VIZSLA!
• I follow stock markets pretty closely, so DAWN RAID was somewhat familiar. It's too bad the clue couldn't have been longer and more interesting due to space limitations, explaining how it's a tactic sometimes used in takeover attempts, to sneakily build up a large stake before the target company notices.
• SPIEGEL apparently is a mail-order company … right here in America! Perhaps it's not as big here in the West Coast. Or for us folks that buy new clothes once in … never.

I like that Sam and Brad were careful with their crossings. With so much material that felt unfamiliar to me, they still managed to assemble the grid in such a way that I was able to successfully finish. SPIEGEL / VIZSLA / RIGVEDA was almost a guess, but other options like SPIETEL or SPIEGEF just didn't seem as much of a recognizable name as SPIEGEL.

Loved two clues:

• [What isn't working?] confused the heck out of me, even after I filled in METIME. Took a while to realize it was ME TIME!
• [Shorts popular in the 1920s and ‘30s] made me put an S at the end. And then I went through cargo shorts, jeans shorts, etc. until it finally dawned on me that it was referring to movie shorts. Just beautiful.

Just on the edge of too much crossword glue for my taste in INST, PORTO (tough to clue any other way), EER, ALOP, etc. but a great variety of entries to tickle all parts of my brain.

CORY Booker finally gets his due in the NYT crossword! Stanford undergrad, Rhodes scholar, Yale law, mayor of Newark, and now New Jersey senator. Not to mention his saving a woman from a fire back in 2012. Sure takes a lot to supplant the "Boy Meets World" CORY that's usually used!

Some nice entries today, DANCE CRAZE such a fun one. SPREAD EM is also catchy, although it reminds me a little too much of when I got harassed by a cop a few years ago. Sometimes I wonder if a white guy would have been asked to step out of his car and then shoved against the door, only to realize that he indeed wasn't drunk or even tipsy, as he protested. Anyhoo, hopefully SPREAD EM doesn't induce similar reactions for other solvers.

The top left triple-stack is pretty nice. I wasn't familiar with CABOT COVE, but apparently it's famous from "Murder, She Wrote." These proper nouns are tricky — I'm sure MSW fans will squee in delight over this one. Others will need every cross to piece it together. Divisive.

I wasn't as big a fan of the opposite stack, as it reminded me of Rich Norris' advice to me a few years back: single-word entries can be tough to make snazzy. ELECTIVES has some potential for a clever clue to make it sing. OBSOLESCE feels slightly off to me, as "goes obsolete" is much more common to my ear. MARTINETS is pretty good, but even as the best of the three entries in my opinion, it's not an entry that makes me want to incorporate it into one of my puzzles.

I much prefer entries like MAKE NICE, HOT MIC, and even DNA LAB. All are colorful, and it's fun for me as a solver to have to figure out where a space should go.

I appreciated the low number of gluey bits. With just a few (minor) entries like ADAR and RECTO, which will be perfectly fine to many, it made for a smooth if not pizzazz-filled solve.

NORSE GODS hidden in colorful phrases. ODIN, THOR, LOKI, and … TYR? Apparently Kevin and Brad aren't afraid of getting on Baldur, Frigg, Freyja, and Sif's bad side. Seriously though, it's too bad BALDUR doesn't get his due, as he has a great story, the "invincible" one getting killed by his one downfall, mistletoe. Someone have a famous kid named ARCHIBALD URANUS or something.

Great construction. There was so much excellent fill that I had to stop and admire it a few times during the solve. Five themers with a central 11 is a tough arrangement, so it's really cool that Kevin and Brad worked in BOSSMAN and LAW FIRM adjacent to that central TRUTH OR DARE. Great bonus material! I also liked those big SW and NE corners, with the juicy HEEL TAP, TELL MAMA, and EN VOGUE. Even BARRON was fun for this financial type (although BARRONS would have been much better).

Interesting to work in two Olympic figures, Matt BIONDI and SHANI Davis. I think the former is perfectly legit, with 11 medals, including five golds in one Games. SHANI Davis … I usually avoid that S???I pattern because SHANI is one of the few entries that works. But I read up more on him, and the fact that he's the first black athlete to win a Winter gold in an individual event is groundbreaking. Okay, he's perfectly fine too.

Took me a while to figure out why PIANO was an apt instrument for Alicia Keys. Keys. Keys! D'oh! Good one.

Nice to know that an EEL's blood is poisonous. Eel's blood vs. mistletoe? I'll take my chances on the latter.

Really strong execution. If TYR had been at ODIN, THOR, or LOKI's level, this would have been a serious contender for the POW.

★ This puzzle tickled me. Perhaps it's the piles of drivel that I read to my daughter that make Dr. SEUSS stand out? Not all his work is amazing, but so much of it makes reading board books (over and over and over) at least palatable. Love the "Because after all, / A person's a person, no matter how small" quote from "Horton Hears a Who," for example. It's easy to make rhymes, not so easy to make ones with a neat story and a flowing meter.

Kevin and Brad did a nice job of getting in a good amount of longer fill without introducing too much glue. I love MALE EGO, the easily bruised thing, and it's nice to see the full EMO BANDS instead of the usual EMO. I also liked getting Brad's erudite vibe in the mid-length stuff: PRECIS, NEWELS, MENSA, and ABSCAM, thankfully updated with an "American Hustle" clue.

I did notice a ton of 3-letter entries, which made me feel like I was switching from one answer to the next awfully fast. There are a whopping 28 of them, which explains it. Thankfully, most of them were innocuous, with just a bit of TES and UNA, and ABA and ANA kind of things.

I would have also liked to have the DR in Dr. SEUSS as part of the revealer, or at least SEUSS positioned in a central or final across slot. Tough to do with five themers, though.

Most of the time, I'm not wild about puzzles that have most of their oomph in the clues, but seeing snippets of Dr. SEUSS did it for me — beautiful idea. I'm big fans of both Brad (who publishes my stuff in the Chronicle of higher Education) and Kevin (who I roomed with at the ACPT two years ago), so I was glad to see a solid and entertaining Tuesday puzzle of out their collaboration.

★ A great puzzle from some of my favorite people in crosswordland. Always a treat to get a Wilberson themeless, usually a range of entries going all the way from erudite to hip. That upper left corner, with a Riemann ZETA function (an elegant math function) crossing a football TAXI SQUAD, exemplifies what I love about their co-constructions.

Interesting grid today, with far less long slots than average. The upper left and lower right feature the standard triple-stacks of longish answers, and both of them are beautiful. They contain six excellent answers, and five of them felt super fresh. (SOUTH POLE I've seen a few times in themelesses, but it's still quite a good entry what with its nice [Lowest point?] clue.)

Where this diverges from usual themeless layouts is that there are fewer 8+ letter slots — only 10. This tends to make me worry that there won't be as much stellar material as I like, but Brad and Doug make great use of their seven-letter slots, with SYNCHRO, REGIFT, and UNIBROW. And it was amusing to see STAN LEE clued with respect to his Marvel movie cameos. He's such a visionary … and such a terrible actor. Yeesh.

Along with some supporting sixes — the interesting-sounding UBANGI river and the trivia of multiple FERRETs being called a "business" stood out to me — it makes for a count of roughly 13 assets. That's not a sky-high number, but it's fine as long as the liabilities are kept to a minimum.

And cleanliness is one area that Doug and Brad excel at. The top left stack only needing the minor glue dots of WIS and ETD, the lower one nearly perfect (SAS doesn't bother me, as it's a major airline), and what else? "AMY'S Kitchen" makes tasty, reasonably-healthy frozen food, so that's minor to me as well. Maybe GOOS, as it's an odd plural.

Overall, a great mix within the grid entries, something for everyone. I'm not usually very good with the upscale references, but I did enjoy learning more about Mahler's quartet of OBOES in his "Symphony of a Thousand" (which Jim tells me is not often performed because it's so expensive to put on) and the fact that there's Le Cordon Bleu as well as Cordon Bleus, the distinguished chefs. Along with some great clues like [Pen set] = SWINE, this one was a real treat.

A fun solve from two of my favorite people in crosswordland. Typically themelesses contain slots for 12-16 long entries (eight letters or more), as it's too difficult to work in more than that without generating compromises in fill.

Not today! An amazing 20 long slots. It took me some study to figure out the engineering behind this one. It all starts from the upper left and lower right regions, which "turn the corner" into L-shapes — so daunting to fill. A total of 12 long slots in just those two corners alone!

With so many long slots, the conversion ratio (assets to total long entries) doesn't have to be as high as usual. Heck, if you put neutral words in eight of the slots, you still end up with 12 nice entries.

So how do they do? I love entries like KIDS MEAL, TIME SAVER, SMELL TEST, DIXIECRAT, IM UP FOR IT — all colorful and/or vivid chunks of language. Others like SNARLS AT, LISTENED, ADORATION, LETTUCES aren't as nice, as they provide filler for everyday conversation. And the ACE AWARD seems to me nearly a liability, given the clue which further emphasizes how outdated it is.

Overall, I'd say about 11-12 of the entries are excellent; a decent number of assets — more than enough to balance out the just a few liabilities like ASST and ENL (maybe SNERT too, although I always had a soft spot for him). Solid puzzle.

The coup de grace was the clue [Noted employee of Slate]. Surely that had to be someone working at the online zine Slate? No, it was Mr. Slate, Fred Flintstone's employer at the quarry. Such a clever misdirection.

Always a treat to see the Wilberson byline. Today's puzzle gives us an impressive 16 entries of 8+ letters. Loved seeing OLIVER TWIST. SEATTLE SLEW and its great clue that misdirected toward an Olympic track star. LEAD VOCALS. JOE CAMEL with a brilliant [Pack animal?] clue. FIGURE SKATE. So much goodness packed into a single grid.

And what a conversion rate! Out of those 16 key slots, really only REST AREA and STENO PADS stand out to me as so-so, mainly because their common letters make them frequently used in themelesses. That's 14 great long entries, a huge quantity for one puzzle. Throw in the confusing OJT???? pattern of OJ TRIAL and it's impressive how many assets this duo works in.

Not without a price, though. The stacks of 11s in the NW and SE corner already force six three-letter words into the grid design, and we get up to a whopping 17 three-letter words in total. That's not always bad if they can be disguised as the normal CRY, ELK, OPS, SPA, TON, YEW types of entries. But when about half of them are of the AFR, AMO, ATO, DIR, NEC variety, it becomes quite noticeable.

It is a valiant attempt to save NEC with a clever clue. But for those who don't already know that NEC sells semiconductor chips, this wordplay clue has more potential to cause further annoyance at seeing NEC rather than rescuing it.

I bet DRACO MALFOY will be a divisive entry. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I knew it right off the top, which was a lot of fun. But as characters go, he's pretty one-dimensional. SEVERUS SNAPE, who's probably as recognizable to non-HP fans as DRACO MALFOY, is my choice for the antihero of our time.

(SPOILER ALERT!) The love of Snape's life slowly outgrowing their childhood friendship. A turn toward the power and social status offered by the Death Eaters. Snape's role in leading to He Who Shall Not Be Named taking Lily Potter's life. Seeing in Harry Potter's face two clashing elements: Lily's eyes, but also the features of Harry's father — Snape's mortal enemy. And the piece de resistance, Snape's final sacrifice.

Oh right, this post is supposed to be about crosswords, (sadly) not about Harry Potter. Anyway, a ton of great assets, offset by a good number of liabilities.

Another nice themeless from the BOY WONDER duo, Brad Wilber and Byron Walden. An interesting grid layout I haven't seen before — always neat to see a new skeleton. It features a lot more seven-letter entries than normal, while leaving less room for entries of eight or more letters. This can make it tricky to fill a grid with snazzy stuff, as most of the time pizzazz comes from those 8+ letter entries. But fill like SKI TEAM and PINE NUT help to take advantage of those spaces.

Some beautiful entries today, NADERITE is not a term I knew but it's highly inferable. And TAD LINCOLN, what a nice entry. That crossing OUTLANDERS was awfully nice. And E LEARNING is a great example of an in-the-language term adding some recency to the NYT puzzle.

There are so many interconnects today. On one hand, this helps a puzzle flow for a solver, making it so easy to move into different parts of the grid via multiple entries. That NW corner is so wide open, with so many different ways to break in. However, it does make grid-filling a real challenge. With the long OUTLANDERS and TAD LINCOLN running through it, it causes all sorts of constraints. I have such a high standard for both of these guys' work that it was a bit of a surprise to see ASK AN, even with a neat clue.

And look at the SW corner, SUCH a great triple stack of STALIN ERA / HOVER OVER / E LEARNING. Beautiful, top-notch stuff. However, check out the huge spaces that allow a solver to get in there. What with OUTLANDERS already being fixed in place, it becomes super hard to find clean crossings. AVERYS is a bit inelegant, in that it's difficult for me to think of one famous AVERY, much less two. And exiting that SW corner is a bit of a rough patch, with DIONE / ROODS / ISERE. All fair entries for a Saturday NYT solver, but not ideal to have them all lumped together.

I was wowed by the SE though. With all the aforementioned constraints, that corner by all rights should contain at least a bit of junk or glue. Framed by SOURCE CODE and ANTHRACITE, they do wonderful things in that space. Even DOZER is fine by me, although I would have much preferred a clue related to "The Matrix." Dozer and Tank, two of my favorite characters in the flick. All that, plus a Z and an X? Masterful.

Some great, Saturday-ish clues today. [Handy talent?] was so confusing, until it finally dawned on me that the clue was talking about the composer Handy. And [Spots likely to smear] for ATTACK ADS, that's just brilliant. My favorite though, will not be everyone's cup of tea. The clue for SERF took me back to all those times I've watched that movie — I can't help but laugh every time I think about those two mud-flinging serfs discussing systems of government. To each their own, eh?

So perhaps a little bit more glue than I typically see from either of these guys, but that's relative to an ultra-high bar. Great Saturday workout.

★ Loved this one; right in my personal wheelhouse. A pinch of culture, a dash of history, add some devilishly clever clues, finish it off with one of my personal heroes, BRUCE LEE, and you have a Jeff Chen special. I'd make a Kato / POW! joke here but that would be just too easy.

Brad, who is soon taking over the helm at the Chronicle of Higher Education's crossword, is as exacting and detailed with today's puzzle as ever. The construction itself is quite nice, with an artist I didn't know but should have, PAOLO VERONESE, straight across the middle. That's flanked by CAMEL CAVALRY, an awesome term in itself, and CAMERA TRIPOD, an already good entry made even better by the misdirectional [Stand for a photo]. I considered answers to the effect of STRIKE A POSE and PUT ON UGLY SWEATERS TO TAKE A FAMILY PHOTO AT JC PENNEY before getting it. Lovely that it didn't even need the telltale question mark, which would have given away some of the cleverness.

This type of arrangement, with central marquee answers (an 11-13-11 with two crossing 12's!), can often mean that the corners of the puzzle suffer. Not today. I absolutely love the NE corner, with the aforementioned BRUCE LEE next to BUGBEARS and SNEER AT. Reminds me of the way BRUCE LEE used to SNEER AT opponents before beating the living *@#$@#& out of them.

Once in a while, I tremble at Brad's byline, because I know there will be an entry or two that I don't know, or a piece of trivia that I just can't get without figuring out every cross. But today I really enjoyed working to pull out the pirate LAFITTE from my cobwebs, and actually being able to work out the beautiful LUCK BE A LADY from the clue. Sometimes the puzzle gets you, but today, I got the puzzle. Neat feeling.

There are few bits that I didn't care for, OREM and OTB always make me shrug, for example. But other that than, Brad keeps the grid amazingly clean. I wonder if people will gripe about FTLBS, but for me, I really liked it. Granted, I'm an engineer by education and it was a very common sight when I was practicing. And no one would ever write it out as "foot pounds" (we engineers like our efficiency). A rare example where I like the abbreviation much better than the full answer in a crossword grid.

Finally, [Group living at zero latitude?]. Beautiful. I knew something fishy was going on, what with the question mark, but what a clever repurposing of "latitude," nothing to do with geographic position but everything to do with level of strictness. Bravo!

★ A beautiful puzzle, chock full of great entries and great clues. It's tough for me not to give out a POW automatically when I see the Wilberson byline. There is a touch of lesser stuff, but when it allows for such snazzy entries as (earworm alert) JUKEBOX HERO, T-BONE STEAKS, and HAIR METAL I barely shrug at the stuff like ODER and CBER.

Brad ain't kidding when it comes to stacked 11's. Look what trouble they force in the NW and SE corners: six three-letter words just to start. In a themeless, more than twelve(-ish) three-letter words starts to become noticeable, and you'll almost always need a couple here and there to make a grid work.

Then there's the fact that you have all those parallel down crossings to deal with in a stack of 11's. It's easier than dealing with a triple stack of 15's, but typically triple-stacked 15's are the singular focus of a themeless. Check out today's vertical stacks (on the left and right sides), just waiting to throw a monkey wrench into things as they connect up to the stacks of 11's. But Wilberson tames them, bringing us some good BATHSHEBA and EZRA POUND... with HOMBRE running through the former!

There's a ton of other good entries, but in the interest of space, let me point out just some of the clues that sizzle. "It once had many satellites in orbit" innocently makes you think about planets and astronomy. But no, it's talking about the Soviet Socialist Republics — THAT kind of satellite. And "Dieter's beef" doesn't refer to a dieter, but a person from Germany's olden term for its government (or perhaps Dieter, a common-ish(?) name in Germany). What a way to rescue the otherwise boring ACH!

It's that type of attention to detail, to enhancing the solving experience, that makes this pair such a force. DOS could easily have been a broad "Cuts" or something, but they take care to design the tricky "Lock combinations?" And they mix in some interesting trivia with the clue for BISHOP; I found it fun to learn that the fianchetto is a chess opening. Extremely well done, I'll be studying this one further.

Another fun solve from two of the themeless masters. This one played extremely hard for me, more like a Saturday, given the opaque cluing. A real brain-buster of a workout. I think it's more typical to see WYCH ELM and NICOLAI Ghiaurov on a Saturday, as they're both difficult pieces of trivia.

I really enjoy misdirectional or wordplay type cluing, so FOREVER STAMP was both my favorite entry and clue in the puzzle. It had me thinking about public utilities, then apartment rent caps, and the real answer took forever to make itself known. Great stuff.

Being on the TWITTERVERSE (follow me at @JeffChenWrites if you don't mind inappropriate/insane/inane observations) I loved the entry, but it would have been great to get a less direct clue. (Perhaps TWITTERVERSE isn't well-known amongst different generations to do that, though.) And it's a pretty cool feat to have EXPEDIA right next door, as well as an up-to-date clue for SEPIA involving Instagram. I liked the modern vibe.

Finally, I've been thinking more and more about Ian Livengood's comment regarding seeding a themeless with tiny words (three and four letter entries) that have easy letter patterns, and seeing what you can get for the long entries after that. I really enjoyed today's puzzle, but as a constructor, it's difficult to overlook entries like ERI, OFT, SYL, THA, NAE. Tyler Hinman, a former ACPT champ and excellent constructor, has said there's no such thing as an excellent themeless with a few ugly entries. I wouldn't quite go that far, but I think he has a point. Anyway, just one guy's musings. Enjoyable Friday.

Another beauty from two of the themeless masters, Byron and Brad, with a neat mini-theme: BW answers in the corners, perfect for Brad Wilber and Byron Walden. They one-up themselves today, using not just triple-stacked 10's in the NW/SE corners, but quadruple-stacked 9's in the NE/SW. You think triple-stacking long answers is hard, try quad-stacking them (I've tried but haven't come up with anything clean enough to submit). Look how beautiful all the crossings in the NE are, with nary an uggo running through the quad. Wow!

And let's take a look at the cluing. I like nothing better than a tricky wordplay clue, so "Early riser?" for BOY WONDER hits my sweet spot. Initially I cycled through images of the early bird and morning people, and it wasn't until I uncovered WONDER that I realized the clue meant a kid who shines early in life. That's WONDER-ful (unlike that pun).

For those of you still wondering about "Nearly set?" for CLUSTERED, don't worry, as it took me a long time to figure out what was going on. "Nearly" isn't talking about "almost", but "nearby". Nearly set = placed in close proximity. Clever, huh? Almost too clever for me. But I got it! (after eight hours and much hair pulled out)

I wasn't a big fan of UNMATED, which yes, is "a word" (imagine me making ridiculous air quote gestures), but not something I would ever run across. Thankfully it gives me a chance to show off my mad air quote skills. HANSA was also a bit of a head-scratcher, but feels more legit to me; something out of European history. But with such an ambitious grid, I'm just picking nits to give a balanced viewpoint.

Overall, a tough but very enjoyable workout, a beautiful grid with some fantastic clues.

Good workout today from one of the themeless masters. Some fantastic answers packed in the grid today, VELVET ELVIS being one of my favorite entries in recent memory. I'm constantly impressed by how many new and fresh entries Brad consistently incorporates into his puzzles.

Novel layout today, with a minor ding for the grid being somewhat segmented (easily separable along the SW to NE diagonal). Generally speaking, a puzzle shouldn't be able to be split in half by the addition of a pair of black squares, because it leads to a less integrated feeling for the solver. In this case, I felt like I was solving two separate mini-puzzles. It's a minor issue, though.

The NE corner was almost impossible for me, finally getting LBJ RANCH with a hail Mary, a flurry of typing in random letter sequences at the eleventh hour. LBJ RANCH is one of my favorite answers in the entire grid, especially given that wacky LBJR sequence to start it, but that corner also contains JILTEE, my least favorite entry. JILTEE is most definitely a word, but not one I imagine many people would use in real life. The fact that LBJ RANCH starts with four consecutive consonants makes that corner's construction very difficult. Brad did well to save it, but as always, almost every audacious piece of fill comes with a trade-off.

Finally, some great clues. A beautiful one for BEER CAN; nice misdirection toward a bar tab when the clue actually refers to the BEER CAN's opener tab. I also really appreciated the clue for TORME, which brought me laughs as I pictured Mel Torme singing to a fat-lipped Kramer. I think good crosswords ought to both entertain and uplift, and that clue certainly did both for me.

Now if someone would just work FEATS OF STRENGTH and AIRING OF GRIEVANCES into a crossword. Sadly, they're probably not gridworthy. Nor is SPONGEWORTHY. Sigh.

A sustained professional duo, working together to produce exponentially more than the sum of its parts, is a rare and beautiful thing. Kerry Walsh and Misty May-Treanor's non-verbal communication on the sand volleyball court. Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell trading killer leads at the bridge table. Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan working a heist-of-the-century angle. All of them are on notice, because Wilberson is on the rise.

It's infrequent that two experts can work so well together, producing quality of this level over an extended stretch of time (this is their fifth NYT collaboration and they have more together in the LAT) without a clash of egos. The grid is well-constructed, with little dreck, and contains so many of the types of phrases that either shine or teach a solver something new. I had to wrestle with the unfamiliar TREEGUARDS but enjoyed reading up on something I walk past all the time (the iron fencing around a tree planted on a city sidewalk).

The SW corner was a little difficult for me due to TREEGUARDS and CARO, but ultimately fair. It's amazing that this is the only hiccup considering the difficulty of this particular construction. Often times the marquee answers are pushed to the perimeter, which helps to isolate them and make construction easier (generally more segmented = easier construction). Doug and Brad extend WARSAW PACT, SAGE GREEN, STEADICAM, RETIREMENT, WEEDEATER, and WORRISOME into the center of the grid, raising the degree of interconnect and thus the level of difficulty. Not all those answers are sparkly, but brilliant clues like "Avocado relative" (not the fruit but the color) add to the solving experience.