David Steinberg author page

REDUCING FRACTIONS is exactly the revealer I wanted! I'm so glad David pointed that out because it strongly pulls the concept together. I couldn't remember that term for the life of me, but now I can casually toss it around as I continue faking being a genius around my kids.

Neat progression, from 4/8 to 2/4 to 1/2. That sure was hard to see during my solve, though, and without a revealer, I missed the consistent steps until well after I finished.

Part of that was I was convinced the last one was 1/9, as in TOP (of the) NINTH, but TOP HALF does fit the clue. It's a shame that this themer didn't sing nearly as much as HALF-CAF. The layout is so constrained that it didn't take me long to search out and evaluate any other possibilities. I might have preferred HALF TIME and ON BEHALF (of), but not being able to include the (of) makes ON BEHALF half strange.

Interesting clue for VOODOO. I was only vaguely aware that it was a religion, and I had no idea it had Catholic influences.

Although SEAS is much more common in crossword grids than VOODOO, I found it almost as fun because of the delightful clue. "Naval gazing," indeed. And FORMAL's clue was hardly formal, misdirecting to a coin toss in [Calling for tails, maybe]. These touches were a big help as I pushed through my frustration.

I love the concept, and this would have gotten my POW! if some sort of REDUCING FRACTIONS revealer had been in play. Perhaps split it 8 / 9 in two nearby slots? That opens up a can of worms in grid construction, but it sure would have packed a huge punch.

SHAVED ICE over WHAT A TREAT, I'll take that any day! While I am adventurous in my ingredient choices — ube mochi and picosito lemon chili are two recent discoveries — I'd top it off with a CRAB CLAW only with great hesitation. As for the clue, [Carnival refreshment flavored with syrup]? Will Shortz and David, we're all going to Taiwan soon so you can shave away the old-school notions about SHAVED ICE.

If you didn't follow the FIDE World CHESS Championship, SPEED on over to check out the amazing battles, including a heart-breaking game 8. Magnus Carlsen, arguably the GOAT, declined to defend his 10-year title reign, so the two closest contenders slugged it out in one of the greatest back-and-forths since the CHESS boxing match between Dina Belankaya and Andrea Botez. Talk about WOWIE ZOWIE!

I like PICKLEs. I like to have a BALL. Yet PICKLEBALL doesn't appeal to me. I enjoy the actual game itself, but every time I've made it out to clubs, old dudes mansplained strategy to me. While I enjoyed being considered the young gun and listened politely, did I gloat when I beat them all?

Nah, but I said a few HOW NICEs to myself.

So many goodies throughout the puzzle. I was ALL SMILES.

This one would have hit me RIGHT BETWEEN THE / EYES, if my anal nature didn't force me to spend hours wondering if my NOSE was really between my eyes. The bridge of my nose, yes. Is the bulbous part between my eyes, or below them? Would you say that your lips are also between your eyes?

That's enough lip, Jeff!

Elegant touch to always have the I?I pattern spanning words of a phrase. My initial reaction / personal opinion is that INITIAL REACTION or PERSONAL OPINION would have been unimpressive, since there are hundreds of possibilities for INI buried within a single word.

SKATED ON THIN ICE hardly skates on thin ice — it's much tougher to find INI spanning words, which makes it more interesting.

AUDIO INPUT is a fantastic discovery. Such an unusual string of vowels, and the phrase works well. My brother-in-law will say THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! at the exclusion of his home state's OHIO IS FOR LOVERS motto, but Topher won't get so irate that he'll have to take OPIOIDS.

LIE IN STATE took me forever to piece together. It's PIE IN THE SKY to wonder what else could have been here, especially if you broke crossword symmetry, but once you let out that GENIE IN A BOTTLE, THE DIE IS CAST.

A lot of tough entries slowed me down, lending more of a Tuesday or Wednesday feel to the solve — I'm with David on this! I wondered if my newb solver friends down the street will trip on the IBERIAN / RHEA crossing. Good thing they're French and their daughter loves the Greek myths!

How many distinct entries can you make using the starting trigram of CAR? At least twelve, as it turns out! David provides them all in a ROUNDABOUT ROUTE. For example, 5-Down can produce CAR(PETS), CAR(ETS), and CAR(DING), depending on which exit you take.

The paths confused me — wouldn't you pick up all the letters as you go, like CAR(DING) should follow the path of CAR+P+E+DING as you drive around the black square?

Then I figured, this American DING-a-ling should stop CAR+P+ING, given that we're still stuck in the stone ages with ridiculous four-way stops.

Neat how David applied symmetry, two CARs appearing forward, and two backward as RAC. That further accentuated the ROUNDABOUT nature of the theme.

Cool that several entries had to appear in the grid as regular words. The PETS in CAR(PETS) shows up as STEP, while in the upper right corner, both TONS in CAR(TONS) and OMED in CAR(OMED) innocuously show up as SNOT and DEMO. Elegant touch to have nothing (except RAC) give away the game.

It's so difficult gridding around four-part themers, and when they're short, that means that your fill must be long — to stay under the 78-word minimum, something has to be long. Brilliant fill, so much SANTA HAT, ANGELINA's clever etymology clue, DERELICT, SUNK COSTS … David was not at all SITting ONE OUT. AMBROSIA to my ears.

Not picking up all the letters around the ROUNDABOUTs still bugs me. Still, there is something insidery about how CAR(DING) cuts the corner, just like some annoying drivers do around our lone neighborhood ROUNDABOUT. Don't get me started on the guy who drives straight over it in his SUV — CAR(OMED) is right!

When POOP EMOJI plopped down three years ago, I was grossed out. Breakfast test! My morning oatmeal bowl already looks like brown sludge. Thankfully, I recently watched the delightful Junior Bake Off, where one challenge was creating a POOP EMOJI cake. If you need a serious laugh, drop everything and watch the mess of "Nailed It"-esque results.

Great timing for HANK "Hammerin' Hank" AARON to get a crossword at bat. Fantastic wordplay, leading solvers to believe that you might hammer a nail in with a bat. (I've done that. Not proud of it.)

Huge number of clever clues all throughout the grid. Such a nice assortment of fun facts — how odd that TUBA is literally "trumpet" — all the way to the wickedest of wordplay. [Part in the middle?] freshens up the humdrum entry we see all the time, HAIR. Er, ALTO.

Even better were the clues that elevated already excellent long entries like UBER DRIVER and PROM NIGHT. One who'll take you for a ride during a big matter of concern for senior management … I feel for my brother, whose high school senior is deep into parental rebellion.

Well-crafted grid, with such care taken to ensure the HATHA and ILHAN crosses are super-simple. Same goes for HANK AARON, for that matter.

Curious why ARE WE DONE shows up so often in crosswords (across all venues)? Note the plethora of common letters, plus the perfect alternation of consonant-vowel, which is incredibly useful in constructing. I doubt the crossworld is done with it.

Such a fantastic quantity and quality of brilliant clues. If there hadn't been an impressive debut earlier this week, this one would have gotten serious POW! attention, even given the ultra-high standard I hold for David.

★ You know what they say: the family that crosses words together never says cross words to get her!

Well, they should.

I loved seeing the three pics here: son, mother, and father, each contributing to the creation. I'll remember this one for that aspect alone.

Some great finds, too, especially those involving a space change. NO REG(R)ETS split into BERGERON and BERETS is excellent. And what a winner in DE(P)OSITION forking into PLUMPED / PLUM POSITION!

I didn't notice the Notepad until well after finishing, but I'm glad I did. I assumed that the circled letters had to be random because getting them to spell something out while adhering to the theme constraint and crossword symmetry would be near impossible. The key word is "near!" Spelling out SEPARATE separated this one from the pack.

All that, plus mid-length fill! Seven-letter slots often work best with boring entries like CHAPTER, so BIG NEWS, BODY ART, DETOXES, KASHMIR, MASCARA, PROGENY, TRILOGY add so much spice.

Entertaining discoveries all tied together with a solid meta-answer, put together by a family all contributing their parts? I could hardly ask for more.

Happy KIFNCGECA's Day!

(We've animated the changed central letters to save you the work of figuring out the secret message, if it wasn't already obvious.)

Did you notice that the nine special squares are in the exact middle of both their Across and Down entries — and that the new letters form new, valid words in both directions? It's not simply UNLIKEABLE to UNLIVABLE but also WOKEN to WOVEN.

I didn't heart this puzzle as much as David's last one, because the before-to-after changes weren't as awe-inspiring. While it is a feat to find two different words that involve (some other letter) changing to V, it's not nearly as fascinating as SPIDERMAN to EPIDERMAL.

Given David's coding skills, I'd love to see what he could have done if he'd stricken the requirement to have the Down answers also morph. Finding long Across answers that involve a spacing change would have had me in a pitter-patter.

As David mentioned though, gridding around 9x2 intersecting themers — few of which were flexible to change — is no mean feat. Kudos for even incorporating SRI LANKA, PEN LIGHT, VENDETTA with an interesting piece of trivia about vengeance. And make no mistake, AVOGADRO is my number one pick!

(Well, number 6.022 * 10²³, anyway.)

★ Eye-opening finds. I love these space-addition/deletion/shifting discoveries, GOLD INGOT and HOLDING ON sharing that long string of middle letters. Haters tend to say that these themes feel computer-generated, but this one requires a ton of human sifting. It's easy to write code to come up with pairs of entries differing only in their first/last letters. It's much, much harder to identify which of the thousands of finds are interesting.

There are tricks to cutting down possible pairs. You can eliminate terminal Ss, for instance, since things like CISTERN and SISTERS aren't impressive. You can require a space deletion or a space addition or a space shifting, but that will still allow a bunch of bland add-a-preposition phrases through. Then there's the issue of false negatives, i.e., the possibilities you miss by tightening the constraints too much.

There's a lot of artistry in organizing searches like this one. I had the good fortune to do a backyard hangout with David and Jim Horne last month, and I could happily chat for hours about an interesting problem like this.

Neat idea to incorporate the finds into rebus squares, too. Something was clearly odd about GA?AP, so breaking open GA(SC)AP made for a satisfying a-ha.

Great clues throughout, too. Kicking off the puzzle with [Where students might kick their feet up] — as in karate kicks in a DOJO — told me that I'd be in for some fun. It continued all the way to the end, where [Outdated charging device?] baffled me, even with the telltale question mark. Describing a LANCE as a "charging device" in a joust such a terrible pun that I groaned with delight.

It's so hard to come up with novel Thursday ideas, and this one scratched the itch I've been having for months now. Maybe it'll play hard for some solvers, since so much is going on, but the solve felt so worth the effort.

Apparently, I've spent too much time running Monte Carlo analysis for my fantasy basketball team because I dropped in NBA ALL-STAR immediately. No crosses needed. With all the crosswords I have on my mind, it's no surprise that my fantasy basketball team's forte is blocks.

I overlooked the mini-theme until well after finishing. I kept staring at EIGHTY-EIGHT. What a random number to use. Sure, it corresponds to Mercury's orbit around the sun, but it still seemed like an odd choice to occupy valuable real estate. Then it dawned on me that NIGHTY-NIGHT looked similar … such a fun mini-theme!

Speaking of mini-themes, years ago, I experimented with a GORDON GEKKO / GREED IS GOOD mini-theme … until I realized that Gekko doesn't say exactly that in the original movie. He does in the sequel, so perhaps that's what the clue is referring to?

Some excellent cluing — some that might need explanation, though. TIGHTEN is [Turn right, say]? Think about "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey" for screws. Tricksy!

[Common complex rule] might be easier to grok, in that it's referring to an apartment complex. I immediately jumped to complex statistical rules applying to assessments of fantasy basketball draft pick values, but perhaps that's just me.

Brilliant HOUSE RED clue. Although I've seen variations on cab alternatives before, it still misdirected enough from HOUSE RED. And HERBS used "in a pinch," like a pinch of dried rosemary, that's delicious!

I have an incredibly high bar for David, especially since he's near the top of my POW! list, so there weren't quite as many fresh or snazzy marquee entries as I hoped for. The brilliance of the cluing sure helped make up for that, though.

★ I've solved about 3,500 NYT crosswords over the past ten years. That's either impressive or sad — probably a bit of both. What is definitely impressive: a theme I've never quite seen before. It so rarely happens that I had to sit back and marvel at today's.

Puzzleheads are familiar with "letter bank" brainteasers, those where you must form long words using a small set of letters (the "bank"). We've seen plenty of crosswords like this, and the fun NYT "Spelling Bee" feature also depends on the letter bank principle.

There are also plenty of "words within entries that describe the entry" puzzles. Heck, there's even a term for this puzzle type, called "kangaroo words." I'd never have thought to combine these two genres, though. Luci and David did a masterful job of doing just that, in an interesting and elegant way.

POLITICS AS USUAL formed out of the letter bank of US CAPITOL? That's perfect! Each of the four examples works so well, the resultant phrase described, or at least hinted strongly at, by the letter bank phrase.

There's even something for dedicated puzzle junkies who might pooh-pooh any sort of letter bank theme: the letter bank phrases use no duplicated letters. It won't matter to 99% of the solving population, but check out how US CAPITOL doesn't duplicate any letters within itself. Neither does UNEARTHS, or any of the others. It would have been fine to do so, but that would have made it much easier to find usable examples. The fact that Luci and David unearthed four great examples while under a tough constraint makes it even more impressive.

And an exemplary grid, to boot? It's everything I want from a four-themer grid — a couple of long bonuses (SOLO ARTIST, TABLE LINEN), some solid mid-length material (IM ON IT, ALL SET), and short fill that JB Smoove would approve. Not only is there little glue (SLO), but I enjoyed the tie-ins of PIG/RAT in consecutive downs, and PLUS/MINUS in the same region.

An all-around delight from these two Stanford products.

★ Did you notice the big slash in the middle of the puzzle? What a fantastic way to make PERSONAL / PRONOUNS shine! I love the topical concept, lots of folks discussing whether inclusion of SHE/HER, HE/HIM, THEY/THEM should be standard practice in email signature lines.

It's no surprise that the grid is outstanding, given David's top-notch skills. The huge diagonal of black squares creates all sorts of construction difficulty since it doesn't separate themers as much as you'd usually want.

No problem for the master gridsman; a wealth of bonuses in the fill, with minimal glue needed. When you can achieve MAI TAI, OK THEN, BROUHAHA, LEMON TEA, TRI-TIP, THE WHO, FB POSTS, CHAI LATTE for the price of minor EDS and MSRP — all while working around the big slash in the middle — that's outstanding. Such smart black square placement, breaking up the white spaces just enough to facilitate grid-filling, but not restricting solving flow.

Such a fun set of themers, too. THEY is a tough one to hide, and BUT HEY does the job admirably. HIMALAYANS isn't as strong, since it doesn't disguise HIM well, BUT HEY, what are you gonna do. (HI MOM would have been great, but it is awfully short.)

Topical puzzle presented in a non-preachy way, impressive visual presentation, A+ craftsmanship. Easy POW! pick.

Sometimes I look back upon my early crossword solving/constructing days, when the crossworld was filled with wonder. Thankfully I still take great enjoyment in puzzles, but my obsession with crossword construction has pulled back the wizard's curtain (speaking of TOTO). A decade ago, I might have been awed by the find of CALIFORNIA mixed-up inside AFRICAN LION. Magical! How the frick could someone have possibly figured that out?

(Pushing glasses up nose) Actually, it's fairly simple:

1. Consider each entry in your word list that's longer than 10 letters.
2. Consider each string of 10 letters within that entry.
3. Do a frequency analysis of said 10-letter string. Does it have exactly 1 of C L F O R N and exactly 2 of A I?
4. If so — and the 10-letter string is different than CALIFORNIA, to avoid false positives — write to an output file.

WILL YOU JUST SIT DOWN ALREADY, SMART ASS, AND ENJOY THE MAGIC SHOW!

Ahem. There was one other entry that met the query criteria besides AFRICAN LION(S): TROPICAL RAINFOREST(S). I like that one better since it doesn't invoke a proper noun, which possibly muddies the theme, given that the US states are locations—

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!

But ... I haven't even begun to discuss the technical merits of this grid construction--

STOOOOOOOP!!!

Ahem. Maybe I should stop my analysis of ridiciminutia here?

YOU THINK?!

Some neat finds, and the clues helped to pull everything together. I don't know that I'd have figured out that CALIFORNIA was within AFRICAN LION without "Golden State" in the clue, for example.

★

I've always wanted to do a CAMOUFLAGE crossword, but I've never figured out an interesting way to execute it. This is it! At first glance, I thought I missed everything. Indeed, I did — just a s with real CAMOUFLAGEd creatures! It was so much fun to scan through the grid a few times before finally locating CHAMELEON, OCTOPUS, LEAF INSECT, and LEOPARD.

The middle two were especially eye-popping, David managing to hide those in such a clever way. I'd never have thought of trying for LEAF INSECT — it seems impossible to insert those into a grid stealthily. LEA / FIN / SECT, I love it!

I did wonder if it was odd to break up those four creatures with black squares, but the overall effect overshadowed that qualm in a major way. It's an incredibly neat effect, one part "Where's Waldo" and another part "Magic Eye."

AND a ton of bonuses worked in throughout? When you have to build around short fragments, that's usually near impossible. GOES STAG, LACOSTE, TIE CLIP, DOORMAT — that all speaks to the PRO SHOP David runs. Such careful, polished gridwork.

AND a hat tip to DADS changing diapers? With a young son going through potty training, this dad (doing a lot of dirty work) appreciated it.

This notion makes all my dozens of CAMOUFLAGE ideas run to shamefully hide in the woodwork.

★ The mighty orb, fit for a king or queen with its regal aura. What Atlas held high! The onus of Sisyphus! Lo, the lunar rotundity!

I'm apparently obsessed with balls.

It's rare for a Sunday puzzle to hold my attention all the way through. This one did. The theme wasn't stellar, but there were enough visuals — the four spheres in thin outlines, and the giant one quasi-outlined by black squares — to pique my interest.

David did a standout grid job, giving us quality fill, packed with a huge quantity of bonuses. It's almost impossible to execute on a Sunday 140-word puzzle without some ENS ESSE FHA NCO OBI RTE USS, but note how minor and ignorable most of those things are. I doubt most solvers would even remember encountering them.

And the bonuses — these are just my top ten (!):

1. APPARATED (sorry, Muggles — this is HP's equivalent of teleporting)
2. TASMANIA
3. POTLATCH
4. QUANTICO
5. BRAVADO
6. DEFCON
7. KAZOOS
8. CAT TOYS
9. KIRSCH
10. REGIFTS

Okay, I have to mention one more. How brilliant is [It charges to do some cleaning]? Everyone charges to do some cleaning, even my enterprising four-year-old. But wait — "charges," as in plugs in to the wall! Delightful.

Creating a magical Sunday grid isn't magic. It's a matter of not trying to do anything lower than 140 words, being careful about spreading out your themers, and then spending dozens of hours testing, resetting, repeating, exploring nearly every branch of your decision tree. Once you get to David's level of experience, it comes much faster, but I imagine this one still took an eternity.

The themers felt more like they were worming — right, down, left, down — more than rolling, but what can you do. When you have little features like having the first themer be GET THE BALL ROLLING, it's easy to brush away the quibbles.

Entertaining solve, N'EST CE PAS?

I shuddered when encountering what seemed like an esoteric pot term with a bizarre middle string of letters, _AUIWO___. Even being in Seattle, where the clouds are now 45% pot smoke and rising, terms like Indica, O.G. Kush, Khola go over my head. And WTF might Fat Banana be? Don't want to know. Thank goodness MAUI WOWIE was gettable; such an amusing rhyming name.

Note the black squares in the middle of the puzzle. They could easily have been a straight diagonal (covering the I of CALI and N of NEAR). Pro tip: kinking it into a zig-zag opens up room for a couple more mid-length slots, which David used so wisely. CHI-TOWN and TAN LINE add a lot to this standard 72-word themeless layout.

As with most all of David's themelesses, excellent execution. Not much wastage in the long slots, with a couple of stellar entry/clue pairs — LIMO RIDE as a [Long car trip?] was my favorite.

For most any other constructor, AGITA and AMPAS would be passable. Not so much for David, given his outstanding body of themeless work.

A lot to love, and it could easily have been someone else's POW! The tone didn't resonate with me, though, given the frat boy feeling I got from the ALPHA MALE, CHUG A LUG, MAUI WOWIE, even PRIME RIB. Not to mention, FRAT clued as [___ boy].

We add to Bruce's tally of grid art — specifically his grid art involving rare, diagonal symmetry. Scan through his full listing; see if you can pick out the birds, the goldfish, and the butterflies. Make sure to check out his first, my favorite of the bunch.

I appreciate how Bruce and David tried to make the most of the mini-theme, linking in their 15-letter marquees. BATS IN THE BELFRY works, although I did wonder if that can be an offensive term to people with mental health issues. For that reason, I liked SPREAD ONE'S WINGS better, but it would have been better to have a more bats-specific themer.

Hmm. Some ideas:

• How about ECHOLOCATION, a phenomenon people closely associate with bats? (Of course, the grid would need an overhaul to accommodate a shorter marquee themer.)
• Make it Halloween-themed, with VAMPIRE BAT and BRAM STOKER.
• "Things with bats" could be a fun way to obliquely flesh out the theme. BASEBALL GAME and TRANSYLVANIA?

Brainstorming for a more clever mini-theme aside, I enjoyed so much of Bruce and David's grid. It's tough to squeeze juice out of seven-letter slots, too often needing things like CAMERAS and AT A TROT to hold a grid together. LEFT JAB is a great start. ALLOW ME, CAR LOAN, WENT PRO, MR GREEN, all high-quality assets.

Editors tend to favor multi-word entries since they're more colorful on the whole, but check out the beauty of LISSOME / ESPANOL / FURRIER. Not words you see every day, and so satisfying. ANODYNE is in the same mold.

My only nit was the DR DREW / ELROND crossing. I'm a big fan of both, but it's a tough ask, requiring all educated solvers to know one or the other. So many other letters could look reasonable: DR CREW, ELRONG, DR TREW, ELRONF.

Overall, a highly enjoyable solve. If the headline themers had elated me — they felt worthy of a bronze medal performance instead of a gold — it'd have been an easy POW! pick.

Awesome-looking grid! I don't remember seeing anything like it — so rare for me to say that. Reminded me of a "Space Invaders" alien.

I usually don't like grid segmentation, this one being cut into three mini-puzzles of the NW, the NE, and the rest. But in service of a stunning aesthetic, I let things slide.

That middle is daunting. So many long across answers, and so many long down answers running through them. It seems impossible to fill upon first glance. Upon second and third glances, too.

I didn't care for LOBAR or DELE, but that's all the crossword glue there was? Wow!

I wasn't sure what DISTRESSED DENIM was, but it made sense. Solid entry to anchor that megastack, all those common letters so constructor-friendly, especially the Ss. Will once commented that entries like STRESS TESTS are a bit cheap since they're not that interesting in themselves plus they have too many common letters. DISTRESSED DENIM appeals to me much more.

Big fan of the lower stack, too. TELEPORTING! ROAST PORK! LEMONADE STAND! Although, I questioned whether Lucy's stand was, in fact, a LEMONADE STAND. She sold psychiatric advice, not lemonade, yeah?

Great to get even more in the upper corners, LEFT JAB, VANUATU, MAI TAIS — call me a FANBOY indeed. Squee!

As a constructor, I was floored by this achievement. As a solver, I was a bit underwhelmed by entries like COME BEFORE and HORACE GREELEY. So overall, this fell just out of POW! contention. But it got some consideration.

Beautiful parallelogram in the middle, featuring five longish stair stacked answers. I loved WINE FLASK, SUGAR RUSH, SUSHI RICE, all delicious. MOSAIC LAW took me two missteps — KOSHER LAW and then JUDAIC LAW, but MOSAIC LAW is inferable. Remember that dude, Moses?

DISS TRACK was my least favorite of the five, only vaguely having heard of it before. But it seems to be solidly in the language, so that's simply personal preference. Glad that it was easily understandable — you're DISSing someone on a record TRACK.

Running I JUST MIGHT and I LUCKED OUT through the center was the icing on the cake. What an impressive middle of the grid!

I appreciate David's effort to zazz up the grid with more long slots, AFC NORTH and MEGALOMANIA providing more juice. RAVE CULTURE didn't do much for me though, as it felt too specialized a term at first; a bit arbitrary. Some research showed that I was wrong yet again. It's definitely a thing — and a popular thing at that!

Opening up the top and bottom of the grid to include these extra long entries did exact a price, though. There was enough ERE NOW, AGUE, NIIHAU, that the puzzle fell out of POW! consideration. It's a shame, as that center five-stack had such a wow factor.

I wonder what would have happened if David had broken up VERA WANG and AFC NORTH, which might have allowed him to smooth out some oddballs, and maybe even juice up his NW / SE corners more as well.

★ David is so good at so many areas in crossword construction. Today, he flexes his mid-length muscles, showing how densely he can pack the goodies in. Check out this list of great 7s:

• AC MILAN
• APPLE ID
• BEAR HUG
• CAT POSE
• CHIMERA
• CINEMAX
• COLD ONE
• DATA SET
• DR HOUSE
• KIBBLES
• NOXZEMA
• OH, ITS ON!
• PINE NUT
• ROAD HOG
• THE ABCS
• USB PORT

Sixteen excellent 7s, all in one themeless? Unheard of! Along with very little crossword glue, it's a masterful creation. It is so tricky to balance color and cleanliness in this style of grid, and David didn't have to make hardly any trade-offs. (OERSTED is pretty tricky, even for this physics nerd.)

POW!

As a side note, I personally love SCHMUCK, which would bring my tally to 17. But Rich Norris at the LAT long ago warned me that he'd never allow this in a puzzle, as it's vulgar, like using PENIS or SCHLONG as fill. I did have hesitations, but it looks like the NYT has used it a couple of times now in regular stories. I'd be curious to hear if it does offend people.

Day 5 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For.

So neat that the first and last across answers had a little more for the solver, even after you figured them out. LEADER OF THE PACK? Of course, it should be the first answer in the grid!

And that baffling clue for 59-Across: [Things that contain 59-Across that contain 59-Across that …]. I went searching for where 59-Across was … only to find that it was the entry for which I was solving! What a neat way to self-reference a clue. Mind … BLOWN!

There's something so delightful about starting a puzzle in this way and then capping it off in a similar way. It's not quite a mini-theme, but I loved it.

I also appreciated how David wove a couple of snazzy long entries through his triple-stacks. Can't wait for the 2020 TOKYO GAMES, and to have the juicy EYE POPPERS run through the bottom stack is eye-popping.

Most of all, there was a clue that stood out. My kids like a shiny new toy and I bet they'd LOVE it if it happened to be a PUP. Themelesses have such potential for clever cluing, and the use of this innocuous little three-letter word was excellent.

Something so pleasing about this grid design. I couldn't put my finger on it during my solve, but I think it's a simple factor: most of the long slots are oriented horizontally. There's a reason why most crosswords feature their longest answers in the across direction — it's so much easier to read left to right, compared to up to down.

Easier said than done! Themelesses usually have an equal(ish) number of long entries across vs. down, because the "four corners" approach makes construction so much easier. I like what Trenton and David have done, stacking a long answer in each of rows 1-5. Makes for such a pleasing presentation.

I wondered though if that meant they'd had to make some compromises in their long slot selection. OONA CHAPLIN isn't a star in real life as much as she is in crosswords, and THANKS OBAMA is … what? Ah, a sarcastic meme blaming Obama for all ills. Feels a bit dated now that we have others to blame. Ahem.

PG THIRTEEN is another potentially polarizing one. I did enjoy the game of first putting in PGT and then erasing it, thinking that it was impossible for anything to start with that sequence. I've come to like these only-in-crosswords entries less and less, but I can see the appeal.

Favorite clue: [Really clicks with a partner, say?]. TAP DANCES are full of clicking, ha!

Least favorite: [Honey] for DOLL. Do people call their partner DOLL these days? If I called my wife "Doll," there would be ... repercussions.

A lot of strong feature entries, CHILL PILL, DETOX DIET, PEACE SIGN, HUSH PUPPY, TAP DANCES my favorites. And SKIP ASS! Er, SKI PASS. But given the super-high standard I hold these two to, I didn't feel this one was quite POW! material.

I shudder a bit when I see triple-stacks. These days, constructors have elevated this art form to the point where the stacks don't need a lot of crossword glue to hold them together, but there usually are blips, and often something that produces a needle-scratching-record effect.

Not today! So many 3- and 4-letter words running across each of the big stacks, and the offenders were so minor. There's an argument that EMS is suspect, especially when it's clued as the plural of M (what, no question mark on the end of the [Trio of mummies]?), but I think it's fine as Emergency Medical Services. SRTA, NCOS, KAN are easy to overlook, too.

A smooth solving experience — unexpected since the grid contains two triple-stacks, yet expected since this is a Steinberg joint.

I loved how David wove great long fill through the stacks. RAP SHEET and NIETZSCHE right next to each other? Yeah! And I'm wondering if David had a bad experience with ESCARGOT, given his placement of RETICENCE next to it. Along with TAP DANCER and RED BULL, these long crossers were outstanding, my favorite feature of the puzzle.

Don't get me wrong; I did enjoy the 15-letter entries, HIGH MAINTENANCE and ACCOUNTING ERROR in particular, given the latter's awesome "lose your balance" misdirect. I hesitated on THE CLAWS COME OUT though — seemed a bit like a dudebro yelling "catfight!"

And I suppose I'll eventually have to see Dora the Explorer. I've read a couple of books featuring her, but I had no idea what SWIPER NOSE WIPING meant. He pilfers boogers?

I crack myself up.

So much to enjoy in this well-crafted puzzle. With triple-stacks, it mostly all comes down to how well the solver connects to the long feature entries, and this one didn't quite resonate with my personal tastes. But the strong gridwork earned this puzzle a glance toward the POW!, anyway.

My favorite aspect of this puzzle was the clever clues — a ton of them! My top three:

1. AD BLOCKER is already a great entry, but appropriating "spot remover" and using it obliquely was fantastic.
2. I had GASC?? filled in and was baffled. So innocent, that [Tank top] clue, without a telltale question mark. That's a (gas) tank top, ha!
3. Game in which I is I? What the … ah, I misread that. Game in which I (letter) is 1 (number). Love it!

I struggled to complete the puzzle, the last letter of RATED M taking me the longest time. That's M for … money? Murky? Mature? Right, I knew that!

That M was an appropriate way to end the puzzle, given the presence of BOOZE CRUISE, SEX TOY, WINE STORE, THRASH METAL. COME AT ME BRO; I'd say it's RATED M for sure!

A couple of other entries that didn't resonate with me in VEEDUB and THE ZAX. People call the VW a "veedub"? And I've read a ton of Dr. Seuss to my toddlers, but I couldn't dredge up THE ZAX, much less tell you that it's not just one creature, but two.

Dr. Seuss is seriously trippy.

A well-constructed puzzle filled with liveliness and color. It wasn't my favorite of David's creations though, as it felt a bit too frat bro-ey to me, what with all the booze and sex references. Nothing wrong with that, but not quite the type of escape that resonates best with me these days.

Those four giant corners — what an impressive visual impact! Such vast oceans of white, hardly any short toeholds to get solvers started.

I appreciate when themeless constructors innovate with new patterns of black squares. David gets huge props for his pushing of the envelope today.

Usually, the longest entries of a themeless are what's most important to me — that's where a majority of the color and pizzazz typically comes from. But I thought those big corners were today's standouts, even though they don't contain many long entries.

That SE! It is impossibly hard to fill a 5x7 chunk like this — especially with a long entry like DEAR SIR OR MADAM running through it — without resorting to a lot of gluey or neutral or weird entries.

Well, not impossibly hard, since David's done it here. It's the opposite of a HOT MESS, with the delightful CHIANTI, ODWALLA, BIOMASS, along with HOME ALONE also running through the entire thing. All that with just an ERE to pay? That's a feat of magic.

In the opposite corner, I had no idea what NOSH ADE was. Tiny little snacky fruit drinks?

Ah, NO SHADE. D'oh! Is that what the kids are saying these days?

OTHER WOMAN is a valid phrase, but it made me uncomfortable. Maybe I'm being too sensitive these days, but it seems plain old wrong that OTHER MAN isn't equal in usage.

Standout clue for SPY, beautiful repurposing of the phrase "invasive plant."

The clue for PATHOS confused me, though. More accurately, it seemed way too broad. ("Rhetoric class" refers to public speaking.) Might as well have said [Emotion]. Or [Word].

Overall, I felt like there wasn't quite enough spiciness in this puzzle to merit POW! consideration, but still, a squeaky-clean grid. That's a huge accomplishment given the grid pattern. Tip of the hat to David for doing something different.

Solid 72-word themeless. David did such a nice job of using his long slots — AIR QUOTES, POISON PEN, CORKAGE FEE, PRISON RIOT, SPRAY ON TAN, STRIP MALLS = great stuff!

(I wasn't wild about ED SHEERAN, as I'm not a fan of his music, but I can see how others would love seeing him in the grid.)

What stood out for me was the fantastic cluing, which has become more and more important in how I assess a themeless puzzle. AIR QUOTES is a great entry on its own, but what the heck is [Four-finger gestures?] Maybe it was something four times as offensive as a one-finger salute? Some crazy thing the kids are doing these days? No, two fingers per hand, making that smarmy gesture!

SEX QUIZ, similarly. Fantastic entry, and [Cosmopolitan feature] had me thinking about skylines at first, and then the cocktail drink next. Nope, it's Cosmo, the magazine!

And DOG EARS is a good use of a mid-length slot already, but its clue elevates it into the stratosphere. "Turns a corner" is a common phrase. Repurposing it into how DOG EARS are turned corners of pages is brilliant.

For a 72-word puzzle — the max allowed in a themeless — I want to see less of the PPS PTS RIEN SHMOO stuff, but it's passable. Given how much color and sizzle there was in the entries and (maybe more importantly?) the clues, I was able to overlook those.

I debated whether to give this one the POW! Could easily have. But in the end, I decided I gotta make David work even harder (especially when staying in relatively easy 72-word territory), now that he's near the top of the POW! list.