Eric Rollfing author page

Veteran solvers have "hidden word" radar, and mine was pinging. ITS hard to explain, but when you see something like ITS spanning across two words over and over, ITS hard to ignore. I was pleasantly surprised that it was much more than an ITS ME or ITS WHERE ITS AT theme. KEEP IT (literally between) U (and) S is a strong rationale for the embedded UITS letters.

It's easy to search for the *UITS* string, and there are many possibilities. The plethora of choices takes away some of the impact — it's much more impressive to work with a series of letters that feels near impossible to embed in phrases — but Eric did an excellent job picking colorful themers. QUIT STALLING is one we hadn't already added to our word list.

I breezed through the grid, hardly any speed bumps. With only four themers, that's exactly what I expect. Even after a second look, I couldn't find a single short entry to fault. Top-notch smoothness.

As Eric mentioned, when you have two 12-letter themers in the middle of your grid, placing them in rows 6 and 10 is often advantageous since the breathing space between every pair of themers usually allows for more long Downs. When your middle themers are squinched together like today, long Downs often have to go through three themers, and that extra level of inflexibility can be troublesome.

Eric's layout worked well, though, even allowing for a couple of mid-length bonuses in FAJITA, DURANT, and CENSURE. Along with the refreshing MINT LEAF and MOON ROOF feature, that's a reasonable amount of pizzazz.

Although BETWEEN YOU AND ME and BETWEEN US have been used over and over, the twist of UITS made for a fun a-ha.

When Tess was three, my wife wanted to try serving dessert on the dinner plate, saying that nutritionists had advocated for letting kids make smart choices. They'll eat a balanced diet on their own accord!

After a week of Tess eating the round sugar cookie and then saying she was done, we put a stop to it. Well, well, nutritionists, what do you have to say about that WELL-ROUNDED DIET?

Talk about IN DENIAL.

Such an amusing concept, funny to imagine a literalist like Drax the Destroyer following the directive to eat healthier by ingesting only round foods. He'd have quite a different physique eating only FROOT LOOPS and such.

My French friends file a grievance against CHEESE WHEEL included in this theme. It's hard to argue against the onslaught of research studies showing harmful effects of dairy, but there are some benefits. Much more so than with FROOT LOOPS, for instance.

WELL-ROUNDED construction. HEAVENS NO, IN DENIAL, and TWINKIE shine, and it's not every day that a Monday crossword has longer vocab like BETRAYAL and RANCHING. Strong use of mid-length slots in PEORIA, and GROW UP, too.

Any five-themer crossword can and should contain at least two great bonuses and clean short fill, and this is a great example. In a debut, too!

WELL-ROUNDED DIET doesn't get nearly as many news hits as "well-balanced diet," but that's of course a much different crossword concept. Although I hitched for a long time as I tried to balance BALANCED into only seven squares, thinking about Drax eating his way through crème eggs, frozen pizzas, and glazed donuts made my Monday.