Damon J. Gulczynski author page

This would have been aptly timed with the heyday of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, back in 2003. I particularly loved the outrage in certain reviews. People take punctuation so seriously!

[*All for one] contains excellent crosswordplay. Not only does "All for one" mean something drastically different than [All, for one], but LAUNDRY DETERGENT is a fine grid entry.

[*Final say] works because adding a comma wildly skews its meaning. However, COURSE EXAM is something I'd grade poorly if it showed up in another crossword.

Will Shortz rarely allows one-word themers. ANNOYANCES as a theme entry is an annoyance.

I enjoyed the clue for COMMA, chuckling at "Let's eat people!", as Jill and I have a related running joke. Our kids constantly poke at anything new and twist up their faces, asking, "What is this?" Our answer is always a stoic Soylent Green.

Thin theme, but TO BE FAIR, Damon worked in a lot of great bonus material — CANTALOUPE, TRICKERY, DIRTY RAT, THAT'S ODD, TWEEDLEDUM helped keep up my interest.

Three incredible marquee entries, each having a certain indescribable JE NE SAIS QUOI. Maybe I'm biased because I can pretend to speak some French, BUT THAT'S JUST ME.

And WILL YOU BE QUIET is on a continual loop in my head as I sift through emails like, "too damn clever, Jeff."

Also, my kids are obsessed with "Encanto" but don't know what "off-key" or "volume" means. The clue for ALONE TIME made me laughcry.

They get what's coming to them? I know this one! It should be "people who annoy me"! Sadly, no. Happily, the PAYEES wordplay is fantastic.

Similarly, navel-gazers literally finding LINT made me snicker. Until my son pulled a green fuzz monster out of his belly-button this morning, that is.

I got hung up on what seems to be the UK spelling of PILAF, and the Australian Electoral Commission has denounced Damon as a drongo for using AEC without referring to them, but the amazing headline entries today easily overcame all of that.

I'm plus/minus on this one.

These jokes write themselves!

Brilliant seed concept: an OPTIMIST looking forward, crossing a PESSIMIST aptly pointed down. And to have HALF FULL crossing HALF EMPTY, with perfect symmetrical crossings? Screw the PESSIMIST; that's crossword gold! The great goddess Cruciferous is kind and benevolent!

Ah, but those ancient gods love drama.

WAR and PEACE aren't differences of opinion in the same way as HALF FULL and HALF EMPTY. Nor is FEAST and FAMINE.

RAIN or SHINE had potential. A better clue, referring to a weather prediction for a picnic, would have made the pairing shine. (Or rain, depending on your perspective.)

What other pairs would have worked better? People looking at the BEST of times and the WORST of times. Thinking with a POSITIVE vs. a NEGATIVE attitude. These aren't as fantastic as HALF FULL and HALF EMPTY, but they'd do the trick.

Excellent gridwork, given the constraints. Filling around crossing themers is tricky, and five pairs of them can be a nightmare. Damon has put in years of hard work developing expertise and it shows, with a mostly clean grid and even some bonuses. WINE LIST a standout, and TREFOIL HOOPLA aren't half bad either. (I'm not saying they're only half good, I swear!).

The solving flow is a negative since the center strangles the puzzle into more than half a dozen chunks. It's a reasonable trade-off, though, as poor feng shui is much better than poor fill.

Fantastic seed notion and matching pairs — HALF FULL / HALF EMPTY epitomizes the differences between OPTIMIST and PESSIMIST so perfectly that I didn't care about the HALF duplication. If the other examples had been stronger, this would have breezed to a POW!

EASY PEASY! Get it? Because the theme phrases have E Z P Z letters?

Wait. They're just P Z phrases. Okay ... the E part of EASY PEASY refers to the fact that all the phrases contain Es.

No. That's not it. Unless … it's PAULA ZEHN and POLISH ZLETY?

Well, it could be.

I'd be lucky to get ASEA as my grade today.

This might be a situation where newer solvers gloss over the theme, not even noticing the P* Z* initials, much less the fact that the revealer is supposed to connect them. While a smog of confusion pours out of my brain.

Some neat finds, not easy with the Z constraint. PETTING ZOO is a squee-worthy answer. I never played Zelda, but PRINCESS ZELDA works. Great thought to clue it to Fitzgerald, too, so more people have a fair chance at figuring it out. I couldn't place PAULA ZAHN's face, but hers is a familiar-sounding name, even to this non-news-watcher.

POLISH ZLOTY. Being a finance guy, this registered as a term, but I'm curious how many people would list this if you ran a "Family Feud" survey of 100 people, asking them to name world currencies. I'd set the over/under at 0.5.

There aren't many P* Z* phrases, but I'd have leaned much more toward something like PARKING ZONE.

A couple of not-super-newb-friendly spots in the grid, too. When you already have the ZLOTY, including the RIAL could feel excessive. The CFL (Canadian Football League) is fair game, but the CILIA crossing might give solvers pause. Even OVID crossing ZELDA could trip up Monday solvers.

Five themers, including a middle 13, is far from an EASY PEASY construction, especially when you have to integrate four Zs. Thankfully, some strong mid-length fill to help offset the rough patches. I enjoyed ACACIA, SCYTHE, AZTECS, SNOOZE, EL PASO, GEISHA.

The infamous tic-tac-toe themeless layout. I'll tell you all about it after I uncurl from a post-traumatic fetal position.

Okay, I'm back. The "tic-tac-toe" name comes from the positions of the themer intersections — 9 (!) of them. It's not that hard to get six 15-letter answers to weave together, but to get six great ones is a different story. Extremely well done in this regard, BECAUSE ITS THERE a sizzler, along with five other solid marquees.

Once you lock in your skeleton, the question becomes, how do you work in more long entries? There has to be more juice above and beyond the six entries, so you need a couple of 8-10 letter entries. It's so difficult to do, though, since any place you stick a long entry, it's going to intersect two of the marquee grid-spanners. It might also have to stack with one of them, like SCRUB NURSE below SHIVER ME TIMBERS.

Even if you manage to work your way to that point, the hardest part is yet to come. Filling around two intersecting long answers is tricky. Doing that around 9 intersections puts you smack dab in construction hell, forcing you to make trade-off after trade-off, some even affecting previous sections, causing total restarts. I like Damon's result, how he spread out his dabs of glue and head-scratchers, YSER isolated in the lower right, arbitrary EXMET in the east, toughies SABAN in the north and ASHLAR in the NE.

The one area that nearly got me was unfortunately the starting corner. ENC and EDT are minor offenders. Toss in VOCE and that's a tough way to kick off someone's solving experience.

All in all, though, an exemplary tic-tac-toe themeless. They don't get much better than this.

Now, this is the way to use long feature entries to your advantage! THEMS THE BREAKS, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, JUST AS I THOUGHT, such colorful, colloquial phrases. Love ‘em all.

(Although, I gotta ding ACCIDENTS HAPPEN for personal reasons since my kids say it even after they do something on purpose. THEMS THE (literal) BREAKS, too.)

Working with three long feature entries is rarely easy, but Damon makes it look almost effortless. Smart quasi-segmentation, breaking up his grid into six chunks while allowing enough entries and exits to each region.

Check out how well he equalized the subsections, too. If someone showed me this grid skeleton for review, I might pause briefly at the NW / SE corners since they're biggish, with two long entries running through them, but I'd say it should be fine. And while AGGRO ETD, MRES, MST, UPCS isn't outstanding smoothness, it's all both solvable and passable.

I wasn't sure how I pulled out OZYMANDIAS. More accurately, OZYMAN … D? something. Still, it made me feel smart, even if I didn't actually know who that was. I mean, of course, I knew it was … a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. I totally didn't copy that straight out of Wikipedia.

When I added BAT FLIPS to our list years ago, I scored it at 60, meaning it's an outstanding entry. Shortly after, I mentioned it to my wife, who gave me the side-eye and asked if it was some lewd gesture, like flipping the bird.

I reduced it to our nominal score of 50.

These days, Will Shortz can be pickier than ever with themelesses; the acceptance rate is about 5%. I can see why he picked this one, chock full of not just solid entries but colorful, long ones. Even if you're a heathen who doesn't know that an OZYMANDIAS is obviously a place for Ozzy Osbourne to give speeches, there's a ton of HEAD TRIP, ACID TEST, EMPTY SUITS to delight. A definite POW! contender.

Kicking things off with a great 1-Across can set the tone for the entire puzzle. SO, I WAS LIKE … YEAH! I love these casual phrases, especially when they have punctuation you have to fill in on your own. Delightful.

I also enjoy when a clue/entry gets you thinking about one direction, only to craftily mislead you for another one. PURPLE HAZE is a great song, and "Classic rock hit …" got me thinking about music. Crossing it is 48-Down, [Pop label]. ARISTA? EMI? SUBPOP? D'oh! That's "pop," as in soda = PEPSI. That's an A+ a-ha moment.

The puzzle did have a bit of an old-timey feel to it. I can't remember the last time I used a CD ROM DRIVE, and it's not exactly a cherished relic on my shelves. My brother shamefully used to watch "Designing Women" at every opportunity, so I vaguely knew DELTA BURKE. Not sure if she's still worthy of being featured in a crossword.

FINE, I HAD A HUGE CRUSH ON DIXIE CARTER. NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT! JUST LOOK AT THAT HAIR!

OKAY, OKAY, IT WAS ANNIE POTTS! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

MEDGAR EVERS is another story. There's no doubt that this important figure in the civil rights movement has earned his place in wherever he should want to appear. Hard to imagine how much fortitude and bravery he needed to do what he did.

One clue I should explain: ESSAY as "attempt." The dictionary defines it as: "formal: an attempt or effort, as in a misjudged essay." I doubt I'll be attempting this usage anytime soon, as I'd get some of those withering Annie Potts looks in return.

I've said too much.

If you construct long enough, you'll keep having that déjà vu feeling all over again. About ten years ago, I went through a process similar to Damon's:

1. At a bar, after a hard day. Make it a double, please. Hey. HEY! HEYYYYYYY!
2. Down the double, rush home.
3. Search *RUM*RUM* (where the * indicates "any string of letters, any length"). Exactly one (usable) result? HARUM SCARUM? It's absolute perfection when you find a great phrase, and zero other possibilities. That's the epitome of elegance.
4. Search *RYE*RYE*. Exactly one phrase again, and it's a beaut — HEAR YE HEAR YE. The goddess Crucivera is benevolent! These are some Odin-eye-sacrificing type of results, that they are.
5. Search *GIN*GIN*. Hmm. A dozen or so results, many good but nothing fantastic. Still, SLINGING INK (slang for writing) and HANGING IN THERE are nice.
6. Search for one last alcohol that will work. Searching. Searching. Searching.
   {Five months later...)
7. Argue with self. ALE is the only other frickin' possibility. But No One tells a bartender to double an ALE. Swear at Crucivera and forsake her. Screech and duck from the gluey blob bullets she angrily fires at me. Abandon idea and move on.

Looking at this with fresh eyes, I still have the same concern about ALE (and if you nix PORT, you have to nix ALE too, yeah?). It's unusable in this concept. Going down to four total themers — employing something like LOGGING INDUSTRY to balance out MAKE MINE A DOUBLE — would have been thin, but at least passable.

Overall though, the excellent gridwork make this a doubly-friendly Monday offering. Worthy bonuses in NO SIREE BOB, LAKE GENEVA, along with some SVELTE, DELUXE, ATM FEE, LAWFUL, even fun HDTVS atop AEIOU. With barely any DSL OPEL glue, it's top-notch craftsmanship, as I'd expect from a pro like Damon. That's especially appreciated, given how tough it is to work with five longish themers.

I can just see all the "Hitchhiker" pagans out there scratching their collective heads. WTF does THE MEANING OF LIFE have to do with the number 42? Basically, this supercomputer chugs along for decades to figure out the meaning of life, and it finally calculates the answer as "42." It's an amusing gag. Not as life-changingly funny as some make it out to be, though.

(ducking the onslaught of hate mail)

JACKIE ROBINSON's number 42 has been retired by all MLB teams. Great inclusion for this puzzle.

PRESIDENT CLINTON was POTUS 42. I liked how 42 was indirectly referenced in the clue. Made you have to think for half a second.

I wonder how many people will write me today with confused emails asking what the theme was. Check out 42-Across: THEME. Get it? Three themers that all reference the number 42?

"But why is the meaning of life 42, Jeff?"

GAH I JUST EXPLAINED IT WEREN'T YOU LISTENING oh never mind.

This is a rare case where the concept might have been better as a Sunday grid. I say this so infrequently that I can't remember the last time it happened. But it'd be easy to make some sort of grid art, forming a 4 2 out of black squares. It wouldn't have had perfect symmetry, but that'd have been fine.

That would have opened up the possibility for other 42-related things. The 42^nd element? The 42^nd US state? Some neat mathematical property of the number 42? I'm sure there are dozens of cleverly indirect relations to 42, too.

Fantastic clue for DANTE. Maybe I should start writing about the underworld so that people would call me one hell of a writer too.

The clue for ITHACA confused me. It's ... Gorges? Apparently it has a lot of gorges. Maybe it's a snooty New York thing.

Fun idea to riff on the number 42. I wish there had been at least one other themer, and that the clues had more explicitly referenced 42 (so people would STOP ASKING ME WHAT THE THEME IS PLEASE STOP), but an entertaining idea.

ADDED NOTE: Constructor extraordinare Matt Gaffney astutely observed that it would have been perfect to run this puzzle exactly six weeks ago. I'll let you figure that one out.

I'll have a goat parsing wordplay any day!

Er, a go at.

Damon so innocently takes out four spaces in his clues, Often -> Of ten a highlight. I was all set to point out the "mistake" to Will — I caught a pre-production error a couple of weeks ago, just my second in five years — when I realized that something fishy was going on.

Thankfully, I didn't make a goof of that email!

Er, go of.

Notable -> not able was another not able themer.

Darn it, notable!

Not()able was my favorite of the four since the meaning almost flipped. Not quite, but it gave me a serious pause, thinking that not only was this clue incorrect, but it was wrong in the worst of ways. Great moment of realization.

FROM WHERE I STAND was the weakest tome — @#$!! — to me, since it's not a juicy phrase I'd use in a themeless or as fill. But it worked fine, if sounding like legalese.

It's tough to work with a central 9-letter themer. A bit too much crossword glue for my taste, leaving the grid with a sere-ness. Thankfully, Damon did a nice job of spreading it out. But I bet adding some black cheater squares — perhaps at the S of STET, E of BSIDE, or Y of OPRY — would have left the puzzle feeling more elegantly crafted.

This is a matter of philosophy. There's a camp of constructors who eschew cheater squares, preferring a more streamlined look to their grids. I don't agree with this outlook, but it does have validity. Well, there is the fact that Patrick Berry, considered by many as the best constructor on earth, is squarely in the cheater square camp. Cheat-ers, cheat-ers!

Overall though, clever idea to insert the parsing changes into the clues, rather than into the entries, where they're usually seen. Made for a solid a-ha moment.

Day 5 of LAUGH AT MYSELF (LAM-poon) week! I was worried when evaluating this week's themelesses, since, without a theme to anchor a puzzle, technical merit comes much more into play. Gonna have to work to keep out my usual grump!

I loved a handful of clues today, and that's often all I need for a positive solving experience. The PAVLOV clue was particularly awesome — with the P start, I was sure the [Big name in conditioning] had to be PRELL or PANTENE. (Never mind that the former isn't six letters, and PANTENE is … (using fingers on second hand) … seven.) It's PAVLOV and his dog conditioning experiments.

I wonder if he ever shampooed his dogs?

People still rent movies? Hello NYT, welcome to the 21^st century! Ha, it's Petty Jeff (PJ) who was the fool. ITUNES is a big player in movie rentals.

SKUNK also was clued in an entertaining way, slang term for shutting an opponent out.

A handful of colorful phrases, too. A POLICE CAR called a black-and-white. Relationship ending in SPLITSVILLE. Yelling at an ump ARE YOU BLIND? And best of all, the BEER BELLY ironically filled by six-packs — ha! Memorable stuff, there.

SNO GRO OPTO … PJ, shut your trap! Yeah, there's more crossword glue than you like, but didn't you enjoy all those clever clues. BEER BELLY, remember?

(grumble grumble, fine, you have a point)

And tell you what, that PAVLOV clue is something you'll take away and remember. Giving solvers a single great memory makes an entire puzzle worthwhile.

★ Can't remember when I've loved so many feature entries so much. These flat-out delighted me:

• HODGEPODGE
• ENDLESS LOOP (programming term)
• I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR!
• HIGH FALUTIN
• GET UP AND GO
• GO HALFSIES
• WHY I OUGHTA

Every one of the seven 9+ letter entries wasn't just great — they were amazing. I don't think I've ever felt like that with a themeless. Just I SAID GOOD DAY SIR would have almost been enough, but to get seven ultra-colorful headliners in one puzzle? Whoa!

I had a long internal debate, part of me needing to give this one the POW! based on the snazz factor alone. So many memorable entries!

But I have this annoying constructor yin to my delighted solver's yang. I've learned to stomp it down to ignore the minor stuff like ENTR. And SOREHEAD … is that something people actually call each other?

But a single ADOZE makes that dark side tremble mightily.

Then MONAD?

And SPUMED?

HULK SMASH!

Note how each of those three uglies exhibits the alternative vowel-consonant pattern, so helpful to constructors. It's not a surprise that entries like this tend to make it into crosswords.

I know, I know, some of this was necessary to make all the goodness happen. SPUMED / MONAD is in a big region highly constrained by GO HALFSIES / ENDLESS LOOP. Maybe a cheater square at the S of SPUMED would have helped. But corner black squares can be unsightly.

Terrific clue for PARABOLA, although non-math types might not have appreciated its brilliance. PARABOLAs have a focus, i.e., the point where blah blah blah I don't remember exactly, but it's a great misdirect using the word "focus."

When I step back and look at the big picture, this puzzle contains so much greatness that it deserves a POW! It's a shame that just a few short entries sadly held me back.

(sounds of struggle) DIE, YIN! BWA HA HA HA YOU STUPID FLAW-POINTING-OUTER PEDANT, I'M GIVING OUT TWO POW!S THIS WEEK!

(Gotta keep all you readers on your toes every once in a while!)

Think fast! Er, THINK QUICKLY — Damon ends seven phrases with letter homophones spelling out Q U I C K L Y. I've seen many letter homophone puzzles before, but I can't remember this exact take. Enjoyable concept.

I put Damon in rarefied air these days, one of the few constructors with the skills to construct solid puzzles across the full range, from easy early-weekers to tough themelesses. Many people can develop the skills necessary to construct one type of puzzle but aren't able to successfully stretch themselves like Damon.

However, this Tuesday puzzle wasn't as smooth as I'd like. Any time you have to call upon ABOU early in the week is not so good. I don't mind some ALS / SYS or ERN, but toss in some toughies like YOST and LASSE, and the puzzle left me with an overall sense of esoterica.

Of course, it's super tough to work with eight (!) themers in a 15x15 puzzle. Even tougher when you have to work with the X and Q in NETFLIX QUEUE. And it's no surprise some of the quirkier answers like YOST crop up in between themers (MARY KAY / BUT WHY). Overall, I think it's a reasonable result given the very high theme density.

I wanted to give this one the POW! I enjoyed piecing together the letters, a delightful idea. If only THINK QUICKLY had been as snazzy a phrase as THINK FAST, or QUICK THINKING, I probably would have swept the grid glue under the rug and declared this the POW!

Also, with just Q U I C K in QUICK THINKING, the grid would probably have been a lot smoother.

Overall, a strong idea executed almost to POW! territory. But not quite.

POSTERIZE! I've done that a few times in my day, my defender's face all crinkled up in agony. (Okay fine, on an 8-foot hoop.)

Oh … it means [Display, as an image, using only a small number of different tones] too?

Huh. Fully agreed with Damon. I suppose it's a niche term that will get lost on non-bball fans, but still, I think it's an awesome piece of slang to learn. Hopefully, it will expand to other spheres of life. That annoying driver, not moving when the light turns green because he's staring at his cell phone, and the cops nab him for breaking Washington's distracted driving law?

POSTERIZEd!

Okay, maybe not.

Choosing to ignore that cluing decision, I loved how the puzzle kicked off. Combining POSTERIZE with ESCAPE POD and WHATS MORE made for a great triple.

TATTOOIST running through it, though … it's a "tattoo artist," isn't it? I have a tat, but I'm not sure I'd ever say I went to a TATTOOIST to get it.

Aside from TATTOOIST, I liked Damon's usage of his long slots. EXCUSE YOU is colorful. ARMY BRAT clued as a kid with a "moving" life story, IT'S A WRAP, the awesome brand name CHEEZ WHIZ, ARISTOTLE, etc. = more than enough to keep up my interest.

I don't mind an esoteric name/thing here and there, especially in a Saturday puzzle. Ron SANTO ... I'm expected to know non-Hall-of-Fame baseball players? Thankfully, Damon made all the crossings fair and easy, so SANTO didn't hinder my correct solve. But staring at SANTO, wondering if that could truly be right, wasn't a good feeling.

ADDED NOTE: apparently many of my readers are baseball fans! Ron SANTO was elected to the HOF in 2012 so that one is on me. Not the first or last time I'll be wrong! Thanks all for letting me know.

And the NE corner … huh. I learned what an ARHAT was through crosswords, but I do think it's fair game. Just because it's from a culture not yours doesn't mean it's bad!

TARAS Bulba I also learned from crosswords. That consonant-vowel alternation is so useful to constructors.

STETS, too. I'm not sure my editor at HarperCollins would know what STETS means. (His line editor definitely does, though.)

Each of ARHAT / TARAS / STETS is pretty minor to me. Altogether though, and I might have asked for a redo of that corner.

It's too bad — a sore spot on an otherwise pretty darn good puzzle.

Love me a good parsing puzzle. Roman of Hollywood isn't a "Roman," but an R. O. man = RYAN O'NEAL. Great consistency, Damon finding "person" terms readily hideable within regular words: ROman, LEgal, MAlady, REgent. Tight set, too — I'd be remiss in saying that the only other possibility I could find (besides SAlad) was REmiss.

*rimshot*

INITIALLY initially didn't click with me. Yes, the first two initials are at the start of the first word, thus doubly "initial." Thinking about it for a while, it does feel like there's cleverness that should have produced a stronger a-ha moment for me. Not sure why it's still feeling like a stretch — perhaps it's a bit too punny for my taste?

Good gridwork. The obvious glue is stuff that gets listed on editors' spec sheets, i.e. abbrs. (RETD), tough foreign words (A TOI), entries that might feel esoteric (NENE). The one that interests me most today is A LOAD. It feels bad to me, but how is it different than A LOT or A TON, which both feel fine? Perhaps it's because I usually hear A LOT or A TON by themselves, but A LOAD always comes with "of"? Hmm.

AGE TEN was another that made me pause. It is a milestone age, turning double digits. But I don't like the idea of paving the way for AGE FIVE (when most kids start school) or AGE TWO ("terrible" time for tots) or other arbitrariness.

APERY is another odd-sounding word — if you have to convince yourself that yeah, it's probably fine because it's in the dictionary, it's probably not. But the fantastic clue rescued it for me. Love the clever repurposing of the word "Impressionism."

All in all, a neat idea. I think I would have given it the POW! if 1) the INITIALLY revealer had hit me more strongly (subjective call), or if 2) the people had all been drawn from the same walk of life, tightening up the theme set even further. Lots of people whose initials are MA, for example.

Would have been POY! (year) status if everyone had been the first to do something in their field … thus triply INITIAL!

Some grids scream to be run on a Saturday, especially ones that feature a ton of entries that solvers might label as "you need to know trivia to do crosswords." HOWDAH, ZLOTYS, ALNICO, and CZOLGOSZ = Saturday!

While that preconceived notion gives crosswords a bad name, I like a puzzle in this vein once in a while, as long as it feels fair. I'd seen McKinley's assassin, Leon CZOLGOSZ in a previous crossword — CZOLGOSZ crossing GNARS sure made me gnar when I got that square wrong! — but I thought Damon did a nice job keeping all the crossings gettable. Some might argue that ZLOTYS is a tough unit of currency, but I think educated solvers ought to at least have heard the word.

And darn it, that clue for ZLOTYS was so awesome! The Polish currency clued with a devious [Pole vault …] = fantastic!

Some great feature entries, CAN I GET A WITNESS and SOCIAL DARWINISM terms that most everyone can recognize and appreciate. Colorful, snazzy, and not requiring niche knowledge. If SOCIAL DARWINISM had gotten a cheekier clue — the misdirect toward a laissez-faire national policy didn't totally work for me — they would have been perfect feature entries.

KING JAMES refers to LeBron's awesome nickname. I would have liked the clue to hint that it was a nickname, though — maybe something like [His Airness : Chicago :: ___ : Cleveland]? I'm sure sports-haters / people still suffering from SAT-anxiety would have hated that ...

With just a couple of INI, DTS, ETAT, I thought Damon did technically well with his grid. Sure, maybe you could argue that the CZOLGOSZ / ZLOTYS crossing was rough, but there's also an argument that one ought to know important historical figures like CSOLGOSZ.

Bah, CZOLGOSZ!

Along with some great MC ESCHER and RUN DMC drawing from different walks of life, I enjoyed the diversity that Damon brought to his grid. I prefer clever wordplay to "trivia," but the latter wasn't so heavy as to turn me off of this one.

★ I'm a sucker for math and physics puzzles done well, and this one was right on my wavelength. I've seen this concept before — POINT, LINE, PLANE, SPACE forming a sequence, but it still eluded me during my solve, giving me a solid a-ha moment. Great job of picking theme phrases that were both snazzy and helped obfuscate the concept — PICKUP LINE and SNAKES ON A PLANE were such fun entries, plus they both hid the math meaning of LINE and PLANE. And what a perfect revealer in ANOTHER DIMENSION!

Damon went wide, with a 16x15 grid, to accommodate the revealer. Wide grids can get tricky, as you don't want to risk losing solvers' attention with the bigger, potentially sloggier grid, so it's even more important than usual to incorporate strong, colorful entries.

Damon started off well, with THAT'S NOT THE POINT a great theme phrase, not often seen in crosswords due to its 16-letter length. Then he tossed in some WIND POWER, PAPAL BULL, IP ADDRESS, even AKRON OHIO as LBJ's birthplace. That's a lot of great material to enjoy, even for (you poor pitiable) non-math types.

A couple of compromises to make it all work, in the form of IRR, STET, OONA, ERE, AERO. Given how much I enjoyed the theme and the bonus fill, I didn't mind all that … with the exception of AERO. Usually AERO wouldn't bother me much, but crossing it with LOG ON, where AERI / LOG IN work (almost) as well = no bueno! I hate finishing a crossword with an error if it feels like the error wasn't 100% my fault. Such a feeling of dissatisfaction.

But overall, solid math theme + juicy themers + a lot of bonus fill + not much crossword glue = one delighted solver.

Eleven-letter answers can be so problematic in themelesses. They aren't nearly as awkward as 12s, 13s, or 14s, but they're not nearly as friendly as 10s or 9s. Their relative rarity makes today's featured 11s feel that much more fresh and sparkly — PABLO NERUDA, TELEKINESIS, OVER THE HUMP, ITS NO BIGGIE, HOVERBOARDS = fantastic stuff.

Why are 11s tricky? Well, when you place an 11 in row three, as with PABLO NERUDA, it automatically creates six three-letter words (in the NW and SE). That's not a problem in itself, but too many three-letter words can make a themeless feel choppy, so you generally want to hold them to about 12 or fewer.

With today's grid, I kept on feeling like I was starting and stopping with all those short answers, so it was no surprise to count ‘em up to find a whopping 17 three-letter entries. Much appreciated that they were almost all fine (DMC the only dab of crossword glue), but hitting so many of them broke up my solving flow. Look how squished the four corners appear, too, not as wide open-feeling as I like in themelesses.

GENDER BINARY was an interesting feature entry. I wasn't aware of the term, but I did appreciate learning about this either/or bias that many cultures harbor. It didn't give me the same elation as JOLLY RANCHER, so I didn't enjoy it as much. (Although I appreciated it more after Damon pointed out the connection between it and PABLO NERUDA!) But it's good to learn something new from a crossword, just as long as the crossword doesn't come across as teachy.

Excellent use of long slots overall, with just GARY HART leaving me wondering if he's lost his crossworthiness. And with very little crossword glue — just DMC, POLIS, NATL — it's a solidly executed puzzle.

Damon used this grid pattern earlier this year to great effect, so I was eager to see what he would do with it this time. I like how this pattern let him spread so many great long entries all throughout the grid, intersecting MEDIA FRENZY with DEAD RINGER with I KNOW, RIGHT? with HALF CRAZED with GRACIOUS ME with THE RITZ with ALL THAT JAZZ. It's like the snazziness never stopped!

With 14 long slots and 4 mid-lengthers, I'd be happy to see a total of 12 or so converted into assets. Things like ADVERSARY and NEUMANN aren't eye-openers, but most all the rest is fantastic. Very well done there.

The grid leans toward the end of the spectrum of having a ton of great fill at the cost of quite a bit of crossword glue. (The opposite end is Patrick Berry, whose puzzles are squeaky clean, magically assembled, but sometimes lacking in pizzazz.) I hit IDEM early, then ARN, DR T (a terrible entry considering the forgettability of the movie), STET, NUS, CRO, ENOLA, AVEO. Too much for my taste.

The LEV / AVEO cross felt iffy, too. A bygone car is bad enough, but LEN, LEY, LEO, LEK, LEB, all seemed plausible. LEO felt like it had to be right, and AOEO looked *sort of* plausible, given all the odd car model names out there. I had a tough time believing LEV / AVEO because I've seen LEV mostly as an Israeli name.

Sometimes I wonder if my life as a constructor has corrupted my ability to enjoy puzzles, especially themelesses. I loved sussing out I KNOW, RIGHT, and felt like overall, there was so much color everywhere in the grid. Yet my stupid constructor's brain couldn't get past all those dabs of crossword glue to give this one the POW!

Stupid brain.

The wide-open grid provided me a nice wow factor. Giant center, giant NW and SE, along with two grid-spanning entries? Yes, please! Grid patterns in themed puzzles rarely make me sit up straight and take notice, so I enjoy when a themeless grid is eye-popping.

Some great entries, too. AMERICAN PHAROAH hasn't made many reappearances since his 2015 Triple Crown win. Surprising on one hand, as the odd spelling is notable. I wonder how many crossword constructors are horse racing fans, though.

I didn't know much (anything, really) about TSAR ALEXANDER II, but what a cool nickname.

I HAD NO IDEA was fun too, although I had no idea there was such a thing as the GIG ECONOMY. I read the WSJ regularly, but perhaps this term just hasn't trickled down to this old-school finance wonk. And it does make sense; an economy based around one-time gigs.

I also didn't understand LATE EDITION. The late edition of the newspaper, okay. What makes it quaint? I researched this for hours (okay, three minutes) to figure out what clever wordplay was eluding me, but I failed. Best guess is that "quaint" implies that these days, not many newspapers run a late edition?

A couple of compromises to make the wide-open sections work, i.e. IS SO / SLO / APPT in the big SE, and BIGA (Big A?) / BS'S in the big NW. No terrible trade-offs, but not amazingly elegant, either.

I appreciated how many interesting long feature entries Damon managed to work in, and from so many walks of life. It's too bad a few of them didn't have much of an impact--or had a confusing one--for me.

I admire Damon's use of 14-letter entries. So tough to build around, since they automatically force placement of black squares, reducing flexibility right off the bat. I hadn't heard of CHARM OFFENSIVE before, but it was easily grokkable and a fun term to learn. FRANZ FERDINAND wasn't as interesting to me — he's no doubt crossworthy as a fuse for WWI — but it's tough to clue him in a clever way.

This puzzle isn't as segmented as it could be, but there are three sub-regions that are only connected by two answers apiece. Notice that once you drop in HAHA FUNNY and CHARM OFFENSIVE, you can work on the upper right region independently of the rest of the puzzle. It's a great boon for the constructor, but it's not great flow for the solver.

Still, having just two entries connecting a section is better than having only one. And it does allow Damon to do so well with that upper right. It's a huge swath of white space, daunting to fill. To weave in ZOOKEEPER, HAYMAKER and RAM HOME is excellent work.

I wish a few black squares had been moved to open up that corner, connecting it much more strongly to the rest of the puzzle — something like blackening in the ED of PLAYED and making the square after PIZZERIA white. But doing so would likely have weakened the corner's fill.

Never easy.

I liked how Damon kept his crossword glue to a minimum, just an ILO, ECU, OLEO and perhaps UNSAY. I was loving the puzzle, feeling like it might win my POW! what with all its great ZEN GARDEN sort of sizzling entries. But then I hit NANU NANU. Even as a "Mork and Mindy" fan in my youth, it feels dated to use as s feature entry. And HA HA FUNNY felt like it ought to be FUNNY HA HA, as per the old SNL sketch. Throw in a NEEDLER, I LOVE LA (a common constructor's crutch, given its friendly consonant/vowel alternation) and it didn't quite hit my threshold for a POW!-level themeless.

Still, generally well done and an entertaining solve.

Sometimes people ask me why certain themelesses run on Fridays and some on Saturdays. You can make a puzzle as hard or easy as you want by tweaking the cluing, right? That's mostly true, but there are some puzzles that just scream SUPER HARD VOCABULARY, I BELONG ON A SATURDAY! Today was one of them.

I like learning a thing or two from my crosswords, especially when the thing is a catchy as FLEXITARIAN. What a snazzy term! And it's something that solvers can suss out, even if it's unfamiliar. Fantastic choice to seed a themeless puzzle.

I'm a Carl Sagan fan — love "Cosmos" — but PALE BLUE DOT was new to me. As a former NASA intern, I'm embarrassed that I didn't know it until now. Ahem. Again, I like learning a thing or two from a puzzle. And although this one wasn't as easy to grok as FLEXITARIAN, it still makes sense (the Earth as a faint blue dot in the universe).

I wouldn't expect educated solvers to know details about Miss HAVISHAM (from "Great Expectations"), but the name ought to at least be familiar-sounding.

ANTENATAL … okay, NATAL should be figure-out-able, meaning "related to birth." And the ANTE- prefix means "before." But what an odd term compared to the much more well-known "pre-natal." Jill (my wife, a doctor), says it's not uncommon, but it's a bit odd in lay usage.

COLPORTEUR … whoa. It is a word in the dictionary. And it amusingly sounds like Cole Porter (no relation, unfortunately). Sure was tough to piece together though, requiring each and every crossing.

Overall, I think the puzzle was fair. The only crossing that gave me pause was COLPORTEUR / PALE BLUE DOT. GALE? HALE? MALE? The P seemed highly likely though.

Well, there was the CHARY (what the…!?) crossing ACE, which had a tough clue. [Crush] was right; the crossing nearly crushed me.

I think the best puzzles are the ones that 1.) teach me a thing or two (FLEXITARIAN!), and 2.) which give me a huge feeling of accomplishment, knowing that I beat it with 100% certainty. This one felt heavier on the former, lighter on the latter.

Still, a great mental workout, one that belonged on a Saturday.

★ SO MANY great entries! Damon starts with 14 long slots (8+ letters), and converts most into sizzling material. Love GO-GO BOOTS, and in my previous career, the ACTs OF GOD clauses in legal contracts were always good for a laugh. HOT DATES, SMEAR TACTIC, SPY STORY ... everywhere I looked, great material packed in tight.

My daughter has a weird fascination with HELLO KITTY. Sigh, so much pink. Still, a great entry.

SETTLE IN and TOTAL BASES didn't do much for me (I'm plus/minus on baseball), but Damon's slugging percentage (or whatever metaphor you baseball fans like to use) in converting long slots to great entries is very high.

Excellent use of mid-length entries, too. I grew up idolizing THE FONZ, a virtual MESSIAH to me. AFROPOP too? OMIGOSH! Constructors tend to overlook the potential of these mid-length slots, but Damon does so well with them.

GRAMMAR NAZI … I chuckled at this one in the end, but I uncovered the NAZI end of it first. Never pleasant to see NAZI in a crossword. GRAMMAR NAZI sure is a colorful term, though.

There was something non-themeless feeling to this puzzle, and it took me a while to figure out what. During my solve, I felt like I stopped and started dozens of times. Took me a while to figure out that the number of three-letter words was most of the root cause.

Now, most people won't care how many three-letter words there are in a themeless. But so many shorties leads to so much starting and stopping. Typically, themelesses don't have more than 12 three-letter entries, for good reason.

And entering ERG, then DAN, RIA, TEA, OHS, across the middle … that row of shorties takes away from the themeless feel to the layout.

But overall, a fairly smooth solve (aside from what Damon mentioned plus TE AMO, ERG, and OFT) and a huge number of great entries gave me a very nice solving experience.

★ I love it when a crossword surprises me! I got to XS AND OS pretty quickly and having already figured out that X MY GRITS was (KISS) MY GRITS (I watched WAY too much "Alice" as a kid), I shrugged. X representing KISS, O for HUG, got it. Been done before.

Then I stared at THREE X ___ for the longest time, wondering what song could start with THREE KISS. Great, great, great a-ha moment to realize that the Xs all represented different things: THREE (TIMES) A LADY, (KISS) MY GRITS, and (TEN) SPEED. Same with the Os! TURNED FULL HUG made no sense but TURNED FULL (CIRCLE), (ZERO) SUM GAME, BEAR(HUG)S did.

Very cool that Damon found so many different things that X and O commonly represent.

Did you notice that all the Xs are confined to the left side of the grid? And the Os on the right? Elegant touch. And it wasn't lost on me that Damon avoided extraneous Os. That may not seem very difficult, but O is such a common letter that it's hard to avoid. These two elegant touches helped elevate this puzzle in my eyes even further.

Normally when a theme tickles me this much, I don't bother talking about the fill. But Damon does so well to spread around his crossword glue, keeping it to just minor ENE UNE ESTD ATL shorties.

All O (around), a superb puzzle.

Damon plays on SALAD DAYS (a term from Shakespeare), using four men with last names doubling as types of salads. SID CAESAR I knew off the top. TOM GREEN vaguely stirred a memory (he's the guy that used to star in "The Tom Green Show," not surprisingly).

ORSON BEAN apparently has done a huge body of work both in film and TV.

I probably should know LEE J COBB, as he's had many major movie roles. More importantly, he comes up not infrequently in crosswords as LEE J — not a lot of options when you need a four-letter entry ending in J!

Interesting choice to cram the themers together toward the middle of the puzzle — usually the first and last themers go into rows 3 and 13 to maximize spacing. But sometimes, squeezing pairs together can make the construction easier. Today, it's like Damon only has to work with three (albeit long) themers.

It does allow for a novel grid layout, including a lot of 6-letter entries. DENALI, AW GEEZ, PAYPAL, I GUESS, PAELLA are not only great words/phrases but since most crosswords don't feature many 6-letter entries, these feel nice and fresh.

I wasn't so thrilled about some of the shorter fill, though. I probably wouldn't have minded that central RVER / SERE / ONT section if there hadn't been more AGT, ESAS, NEC, USD gluey bits elsewhere. Tough, working around a central 9-letter theme answer.

EWERS and EPEE don't bother me much, as they're real-life things, but I have heard grumbles about these. (My wife, who's much, much smarter than me, dislikes EWERS, as she knows the word only from crosswords.)

Puzzles featuring proper names — especially full names — can feel like a trivia contest. So to get some AMATI, BLY, DEY, MACAU, NGAIO in addition to the themers felt like a lot of names in one puzzle.

But all in all, some nice thematic finds, covering a range of salads. And quite a lot of great bonus fill — some great 7s in MANSMAN, MIC DROP, MOOCHER, HOLY ARK — albeit, with prices to pay for them.

I enjoy rare letters in a themeless, and Damon incorporated the Js, X, Zs so well. I particularly liked how he worked in what rare letters he could while prioritizing smooth and lively fill over a pangram (or another mostly-constructor-focused goal). As a solver, I appreciated that.

I had seen JAZZ HANDS a long time ago, but it still had a nice impact for me. And although JANE EYRE, ACHILLES, and JOHN HENRY are all proper names — generally I try to avoid proper names that either solvers will know (and love!) or not know (and probably hate, because it feels like they're being forced to learn!) — I feel like all educated NYT solvers ought to know these three. Yes, JOHN HENRY too!

Also appreciated Damon's care with his short fill. An AGRI here, an EDT there, that's solid and very smooth work.

So much good stuff made me think of this for the POW!, but I did have qualms. I had such a rough time with TRIOLET. Struggled with ELVER, and the FAUVES compounded the problem. Those might produce some probably-fair-but-unsatisfactory crossings for some solvers.

Then I remembered that I also struggled with PERONI. And HOTSPUR. Luckily, I love ancient mysteries, so the lost colony of ROANOKE came back without much prodding, but I could see that being lumped in as well.

Should I have known all of these entries? Maybe. The FAUVES turn out to be a very influential group in art. And I've used ELVER in one of my puzzles! So as a whole, maybe this handful shouldn't have bugged me.

I'm starting to rethink my construction philosophy, which has been to avoid gluey bits at nearly all costs, even if that means including more than just one "weird" answer. Enough crossword friends have shared with me the experience of a single crazy-looking answer drastically lowering their enjoyment of a puzzle. I don't think that's fair at all, but it's hard to tell people what they should feel.

Anyway, overall a very solid puzzle; loved those rare letters. Glad I learned some new things, albeit with some grumbling over the quantity of said things.

Two-letter wordplay, with initials reinterpreted as whole words. The results amused me as a whole, LA DODGERS the best of the bunch. Funny to think about a singer who goes straight from sol to ti, avoiding the dreaded LA. Great choice to kick off the puzzle theme. IT SUPPORT (information technology) is a great phrase in itself, and I liked the idea of Stephen King getting a little help with his famous book, "It." And ID CARDS was another good one, making me think about Louis CK joking around about Freudian concepts.

PA ANNOUNCEMENTS felt stilted as a phrase — "overhead announcements" hits my ear better — but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to make a grid work.

Speaking of making a grid work, seven-letter themers are often awkward, as it's tough to make them stand out naturally as part of the theme. Damon does a nice job — note that there are no other seven-letter (or longer) entries in the across direction. This helps, but I still lost ID CARDS and PO BOXES in the background, especially since they're entries you might see as fill in other crosswords.

I wonder if putting them across the middle, separated by a black square, would have helped? That means PA ANNOUNCEMENTS might have to become PA SYSTEMS or something, with another themer needed to match it. Never easy!

Damon did a great job of making his grid smooth. Just an INTRA and TRI (although I've done some triathlons, and TRI is commonly used for the event); that's beautiful execution on short fill.

I would have actually been fine with a bit more glue if it meant a little more long fill. I did like MOTLEY, DEAD ON, MESS UP, PHENOM, but IN THE ZONE and RADIOHEAD are such great entries. Maybe moving the black square between URLS and IPA over to the left, to create another set of eight-letter slots? That would also have opened up the upper left and lower right corners, both of which are slightly choked off from the rest of the puzzle.

Overall though, some fun results, if not as groundbreaking as I like Thursday puzzles to be.

A ton of great stuff packed in! Big, interconnected skeletons can be tough to work with, but Damon did well. WELL SHUT MY MOUTH to JESSE JAMES to CHEESE PIZZA to THAT'S A BIG IF to JUST DESERTS (yes, that's the correct spelling!) to SCAM ARTIST to YOU LOOK FAMILIAR — that's seven long answers locked together, each one of them strong to fantastic. THAT'S A BIG IF was my favorite, so it was great to see it smack dab in the middle.

And there was more, a nice surprise given that interconnected skeletons can quickly become inflexible. NOSE JOBS, FOG LAMPS, KARAOKE SO SUE ME, HOT TUBS, even the bizarre-looking BOOMMICS (BOOM MIKES?). And being a kid of the late 20^th century, getting NEW COKE crossing MCRIB was really fun. All these great entries spread throughout the puzzle made it feel like the grid was jam-packed with goodies.

Interconnected skeletons are notoriously difficult to keep smooth, since so much of the puzzle has to be built around various long answers locked into place. I think Damon did a nice job keeping the crossword glue to just minor stuff. EVILEST is the most evil to me — I once choked down EVILER into order to get a puzzle to work, and still feel ill about it — and ACE TEN feels a little arbitrary, but some ELEM SRS OZS (abbrs.), ARA (esoteric name), OSH (partial) aren't bad at all.

Some solvers balk at ENO, but I think he's perfectly fine. I don't buy the argument that ENO should be avoided, since he appears much more in crosswords than in real life — my feeling is that if you're crossworthy, you're crossworthy.

And for years, LARAM (such a beautiful vowel consonant alternation!) was frowned upon, because the Rams had moved to St. Louis. They're back, baby! (I just changed my scores on the XWord Info Word List to reflect this.)

Even though there's a little more crossword glue than I like to see in a themeless, there was so much great material that I usually would have given this one the POW! But there's one coming up that I liked even better.

I really like "what do these things have in common" puzzles when they provide for a satisfying click. BENCH WARMER and a DEAD BATTERY are both vivid, in-the-language phrases, but how could they both be part of the same theme? When they're NON-STARTERs! Very clever.

I didn't care as much for LAST LAP and MAIN COURSE. They are NONSTARTERs of course, but so are every other lap, as well as soup, salad, dessert, etc. They don't have the "dang, that's spot-on!" feeling I got from BENCH WARMER and DEAD BATTERY.

So much to like about Damon's grid. His last themeless had too much crossword glue for my personal taste — I try to stop enumerating at about 4 or 5 instances — but this one had the smoothness I seek out of a Monday. Very minor ENC, ATMO, TAI, ENS, all of which are easily gettable and common enough in real life to hardly even notice.

ILANA was a mystery to me, but that's not surprising since I don't have a lot of time to watch TV these days. She certainly seems crossworthy, given the critical praise and popularity of "Broad City." As a constructor, I welcome her friendly vowel-consonant alternation to the crossworld with open arms!

And all the bonuses were much appreciated. Just two long entries in OK CORRAL and PIE CHART, but both are excellent. The real standout quality was how well Damon used his seven-letter slots. ART DECO, PAGE BOY, LAPTOPS = LUCKY ME! So much goodness elegantly worked in.

I know I'll get questions about the LAST LAP / LAPTOPS duplication. Yes, two LAPs is usually a no-no, and it feels inelegant, but it didn't really bother me during my solve. I personally would have redone the LAPTOPS area because of this, but I don't actually care that much about these types of issues. The two instances have different etymologies (I think?), and there's no hard and fast rule about this sort of thing.

Overall, strong execution with so many great bonuses. If all the themers had been as spot-on as BENCH WARMER and DEAD BATTERY, it'd be an easy POW! selection for me.