Jacob Stulberg author page

I could almost see Jim Horne smirking over the phone as we discussed this one. My thought process went something like:

• X(ER) THAN Y phrases, okay.
• But wait! A clever revealer, ITS ALL RELATIVE.
• Jacob has come up with some brilliant themes. I'm sure I'm missing some extra layer. I can't be overthinking this!

(snickering)

• RELATIVE … is that playing on a double meaning? RELATIVEs must be in the phrases!
• Let's see … maybe your LIGHTER uncle, the stereotypical HOLIER THAN THOU great-grandma—
• What are you laughing about?

(oh, a joke I heard earlier this week)

• Wait! LARGER THAN LIFE—surely LIFE is related to RELATIVE.
• AIR, THOU, and LIFE … is that the holy trinity?

(holy something, all right)

The revealer is a great phrase, but I might have instead preferred a fourth themer that fit the pattern, perhaps FASTER THAN LIGHT, OLDER THAN DIRT, WORSE THAN USELESS, etc.

I enjoyed the mid-length bonuses, PAD THAI one of my lunch favorites, and MAHATMA solid too. It would have been nice to get a little more, though, especially given how Jacob's gridwork has historically been. Take out the black square between INCH and EXIT, or there might be possibilities for long downs at 3-Down or 11-Down.

Solid Monday offering, if teasingly Stulbergian. Perhaps his extra layer ... was that there was no extra layer! Out-clevered yet again.

I used to be such a fan of MAD MAGAZINE. It'd be the first thing I picked up at the library when I was younger, and even in college, I'd go to local bookstores and chuckle at the political spoofs instead of doing my poli sci reading. It was so irreverent, so playful, so much pure entertainment.

I don't remember AL JAFFEE nearly as much as Sergio Aragones, but I was able to claw out a few memories — he's the guy behind the iconic fold-in! Art imitating art.

Neat that he wrote gags about all these things that came true. I wish the predictions had been amazing, though, like "The Simpsons" predicting Trump's presidential win. Foreseeing SNOWBOARDING or a THREE BLADE RAZOR isn't nearly as jaw-dropping.

AL JAFFEE OF MAD MAGAZINE felt like an oddly-connected revealer. Why not use the two of them as separate entries? They both stand nicely on their own.

Loved the clue for THE SMURFS — such a perfect repurposing of "blues ensemble." JOB INTERVIEW also shined with its punny [Hire calling?]. Great way to make your longest bonus fill shine even more.

As I expect from Jacob, solid gridwork, but I wished the entire solve had been kookier, side-splitting, more devilish — more like MAD MAGAZINE. There were so many dry clues for dry entries that the entire thing bogged down. It's so important for any Sunday puzzle to contain at least half a dozen wicked-sharp or smile-inducing clues to keep a solver's interest through the experience. For a Sunday puzzle built around the craziness of MAD MAGAZINE, it's that much more critical.

Neat find, that there are so many words that can fit in between FOR and SAKE. There's another one that I use much more than PETE'S, CHRIST'S, GOD'S, and HEAVEN'S. It starts with F.

I enjoyed the clever FORSAKE -> FOR ___ SAKE revealer. I did wonder if PETE referred to St. Peter, which might have made for some heavenly consistency, but the origins are unknown.

I'm usually a big fan of Jacob's gridwork, but today's product felt a touch on the old side. There's nothing wrong with skewing older, as with THEDA Bara, since she was a big star in her day. It's more old-school crossword glue that bugs me. EPEE appears all the time, for instance, and to -IST and pluralize it doesn't feel great. Work in Brian ENO in, CYTE … it's not that much, but when the themers all have an old-timey feel already, it emphasizes that tone.

I did enjoy some PHOTOGENIC RHINOCEROS bonuses, though. Add in TWEEZE and a couple of Js, and that all helps.

And I did admire the consistency of finding all phrases using possessives — I wouldn't have thought that possible. Although, I sure would have appreciated a few upgrades to the themers to make them feel less stodgy. Maybe GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN or HEAVENS YES!

Heavens yes, even this anal analyst wouldn't care that that last one doesn't contain an apostrophe, because the phrase is so colorful!

A few months ago, Will Shortz mentioned that he had too many "hidden words" themes on file. Ever since then, I've noticed just how many have cropped up (in the NYT as well as other venues). Tried and true, no doubt! So my first reaction to today's GALF—that's FLAG "raised"—was a shrug.

However, there are a few aspects that make today's stand out. Although it is the same string of letters repeated over and over, GALF is unusual. Even if they had been circled, I still wouldn't have figured out the theme until hitting the revealer.

There's a surprising tightness, too. I was sure there would be a dozen phrases containing GALF, but CENTRIFUGAL FORCE was the only one not included. At 16 letters, it's too long to fit into a standard 15x15 grid, anyway. I have a feeling Jacob found it and then swore at Crucivera, the cruel god of crosswords.

I would have gone with LEGAL FORMS or LEGAL FIELD, which sound more familiar to my ear than LEGAL FORCE, but the Goog don't lie. LEGAL FORCE is no doubt legal.

Best yet, great find in DINING AL FRESCO! GALF going across three words is cool.

It's tough to encounter something odd like AMAIN right off the bat in a Monday puzzle. You run the risk of a solver scratching their head (or worse) and deciding to do something else. Along with EFFS AGORA and even ROIL, the solving experience isn't friendly for newbs.

The A-MAIN problem is that at 14 letters, RAISING THE FLAG has to pinch toward the middle, placed in row 12 instead of row 13. Making the grid 15x14 (squatter than the usual 15x15) would help a ton, allowing RAISING THE FLAG to go back to row 13, allowing for better spacing of themers.

Overall though, I appreciate the effort to elevate the theme above and beyond the usual "hidden words."

Look at all those shaded squares! They're so orderly — made me eager to find out what was going on. Neat concept, with different types of forks literally forking into two directions. A salad fork forking into a GREEN or a GREEK salad — perfect!

All this forking talk reminds me of "The Good Place" and the brilliant Megan Amram! If you haven't seen it, holy shirt, why not?

I'm not one for proper table settings, but it was interesting to learn that there are such things as a dessert fork, a fish fork, a cocktail fork, a fruit fork.

(Heck, the concept of a salad fork is forking foreign to me too.)

At first, I thought that classifying a shark as a fish was complete bullshirt. Apparently not! Not a mammal; not even close.

With these diagonal-entry puzzles, I usually expect the worst — they're so hard to fill cleanly. They're even harder when you have connected themers, which mean that there are serious constraints within close proximity.

Pleasantly surprised to get not that much crossword glue. Jacob is such a pro. Not a fan of EEE or BENE, but to escape with just those and ETHNO is incredibly strong work, considering the five pairs of themers. There must have been dozens of iterations.

I don't always feel on Jacob's wavelength, what with his higher-class notions sometimes going over this Three-Stooges-lover's head — forks are made for poking, not for eating! But I always appreciate seeing his byline.

Beautifully tidy, orderly puzzle. What do you look for when you're at the AIRPORT? Which TERMINAL you're leaving from, the GATE number, ROW number, and SEAT assignment — this sequence contains everything you need, laid out in perfect order. Ready for takeoff, captain!

BATTERY TERMINAL isn't going to win any awards for snazziness — it's often the clue for the common crossword entry ANODE — but it's decent. Thankfully, the other themers were strong, at least for this Bay Area native. The GOLDEN GATE logo on the Warriors' jerseys, woop woop!

I appreciate that Jacob didn't try to do too much with the grid. Since he needed five themers, it's a solid decision to work in two pieces of long fill — the excellent WINE COOLER (anyone else think of Bruce Willis singing that Seagram's song?) and the amusingly-named LIMP BIZKIT (rock group). After that, he kept his focus solely on making the grid super-smooth.

Uncomplicated Monday themes ought to have uncomplicated Monday grids, and this does the trick nicely. My my my my!

A couple of great clues, too. You have to be careful for a Monday puzzle, making sure that clues aren't so clever as to go over too many newbs' heads. But an ELBOW being something up one's sleeve? Yes! A great piece of trivia in TYLER referred to as "His Accidency"? That's the way to do it.

Tidy. Ordered. And a little interesting. Can't ask much more from a Monday puzzle. Well executed; up for POW! consideration.

Something new at XWord Info this week: "Jim and Jeff, at the Puzzles"! I was a huge fan of Siskel and Ebert's back and forth — often disagreeing, but always done respectfully. Jim and I will alternate days, of who goes first and who does the rebuttal.

Such perfect SPREADing of the four CHEESEs today. I loved that Jacob:

1. used four four-letter cheeses, for perfect consistency
2. spread them so regularly — exactly every other letter
3. aligned them either to the beginning or the ending of the theme phrase.

Near perfect, I say! My only hesitation was in BLEU — you can ask most anyone for FETA and EDAM and BRIE without confusion. Ask for BLEU at the front of your grocery store, and who knows what you'll get! Besides the stink-eye.

But ultimately, that's a small complaint. So I dug the elegance of these finds.

I wasn't exactly sure who BURL IVES was, so I might have chosen BERLINER instead. BURL IVES is undoubtedly crossworthy though, so it's simply a matter of preference.

Along with Stulbergian craftsmanship — fun bonuses in GET BUSY, AL ROKER, STOOD ASIDE, and TAKES A BOW with very little grid glue (HOO and maybe EWERS) — this was in my POW! running.

Jacob employs PASSIVE RESISTANCE today, changing famous lines from passive to active voice. Writers get told to avoid the passive voice all the time (see what I did there?), because it draws the reader in so much more effectively.

But there's something interesting and catchy about the passive voice at times. MISTAKES WERE MADE is so telling in its implications. Who made the mistakes? Unclear! Probably not me though! NO BATTERIES INCLUDED? Don't blame us!

I was a bit mystified by THAT DOES NOT AMUSE US. Apparently I'm still a hack writer, because I couldn't tell which of the two (base phrase or resulting phrase) was passive voice. Maybe neither?

(Apparently Queen Victoria was hard to amuse? Or people didn't amuse her? Is that last sentence the active voice, or the passive voice? Dang it, now I'm all confused.)

It's a creative theme concept. My attention wasn't held by so many stilted-sounding themers, though.

Wait.

So many stilted-sounding themers didn't hold my attention?

Bah!

The entire point is to ridicule how funny the active voice sounds in these cases, by coming up with horribly awkward themers. Not a lot of fun to uncover those themers, but there was something amusing about looking back at them a second time — they sound so terrible!

Aside from the tricky ESA / MT OSSA (not MTOSSA or MT ESSA! Esa that it?) / ADOBO region, a well-constructed grid. I'm glad Jacob worked his mid-length slots hard, CAJOLES FAT LADY GENOESE PROFANE kind of things acting as pick-me-ups throughout my solve.

ROADBLOCKS today, black squares breaking up "road" synonyms. Wow, was NUEVO LEON tough to figure out! And although I'd seen SHANGRI LA in crosswords before, how bizarre it looked as SHANGRILA (rhyming with "Anguilla").

The latter I loved, at least after finally piecing it together. Easily recognizable phrase, and it's so juicy. That's the way to execute on a theme like this.

The former (actually NUEVO LEON, nuevo = new) didn't leave me with a very good feel, wondering if perhaps I got a square wrong somewhere, even after double-checking all the crosses a few times. I like learning something from a crossword, but not when it interferes with the high I get from finishing an early-week puzzle speedily and with confidence. I threw a flag for interference today.

Why not break up AVENUE into *AVEN and UEYS? Maybe SAFE HAVEN?

Not a huge fan of SLAVE in puzzles, either. I realize some people will scoff at me for being too sensitive about this sort of thing, but when there are plenty of ??AVE options, why not choose something that's more neutral, less likely to cheese off a subset of solvers?

Okay, maybe there wasn't as much flexibility as usual, since the long down, FLASH LAMP, made the construction tougher. But while I appreciate long downs for their ability to snazz up a puzzle, something like FLASH LAMP doesn't do much for me.

(STRING TIE is better — it still feels a bit old-timey, given the Colonel Sanders clue, but it's not as odd.)

I'd almost rather have broken up FLASH LAMP at the second L. There was already a reasonable amount of juice in TOURIST and CEVICHE, that I'd have preferred living with just those. Breaking up the long downs might have also allowed a smoothing of ELKIN / ILYA, which both felt like they were pushing the boundaries of a Tuesday. Not sure I'd expect a newer solver to be able to get that square right.

A solid idea, but not my ideal execution.

Triplet of long entries anchoring this one, SEX AND VIOLENCE solid (if a bit gritty), ENTREPRENEURS nice for this entrepreneur, and METABOLIC RATE doing its job. None of them resonated super strongly for me though, even ENTREPRENEURS a bit on the boring side since it's a word I hear every day. METABOLIC RATE also felt like a dictionary term, rather than the more fun "metabolism" that might lend itself to more clever cluing.

Jacob expanded to a 16-wide, which often presents challenges in a themeless — biggest issue is staying under the 72-word maximum. Note how he had to leave himself pretty big corners to work with.

Those NW/SE corners are especially daunting. Typically, constructors would make a region like this smaller, placing a black square somewhere in the ISAACS region. Given how big a swath the NW is, it's no surprise to get some A STAR, weird plural NAPAS, and neutral AT AN ANGLE.

Different set of problems in the opposite corner. MAL and ILE are much more ignorable than ASTAR, but that ARECA PALM / CORA cross might be a killer. I'd say unfair, especially given that the CORA clue, referring to The Last of the Mohicans, makes it feel like COTA, COHA, COGA, etc. could be possible.

Jacob continued to make his life hard in the other two corners. Often, constructors might place a black square at the Q of BANQUET, making it so much easier to turn the corner without trouble. BLUING isn't something I've heard of, but it does appear to be a real thing. REROOT, on the other hand, felt more egregious.

What I enjoyed most about the puzzle was a handful of great clues:

• A good plot is ARABLE when it's a plot of land, not a book plot!
• Keeping with the literary misdirection, a RECIPE can sure be stirring.
• A DEALER can give you a hand, all right — a blackjack hand!

A couple of strong entries like GLACIAL DRIFT and CURED HAM helped keep me entertained, but it didn't have the same Stulbergian literary / high culture feel that I've come to love.

MT EREBUS parsed as MTE REBUS, giving a nice rationale for why M T E are squished into a square. I've long wondered why we use the term "rebus" to describe "multiple letters jammed into a square" — I'm used to "rebus" describing a picture — but it's just one of those insidery crossword things.

I knew what MT EREBUS was! Honest! What, you don't believe me? I must insist that I … okay, fine. Never heard of it. Glad to learn what it was — southernmost active volcano, that's a cool fact — but boy, was it hard to parse a weird MTEREBUS string when EREBUS sounded so unfamiliar.

Some great theme phrases, FORT SUMTER, FARM TEAM, WISDOM TEETH, ASSAM TEA, WILLIAM TELL, TIM TEBOW all beautiful. I would have liked one more pair of themers like this — just three rebus squares felt a bit miserly — but where would you stick another? I suppose Jacob could have made the revealer (MTE)REBUS with another MTE square, but that would have been plain old mean!

Generally clean gridwork, just some minor CTA, RAHS, RRS type stuff. Not easy to do when you have to work around crossing pairs of themers. But I did feel that the grid was choked-off, with so many narrow passageways. Would have been great to get more of an open feel to the puzzle, with a couple more pieces of bonus long fill. Perhaps by taking out the black square between FDA and FORE, or GMC and ASP?

This would no doubt have introduced some more crossword glue into the fill, but oddly enough, that might have made for a more pleasurable solving experience in places. For instance, I got horribly stuck in the north section, unable to determine what [Anterior] could be. Short answers like FORE and FRAT can be tough to clue in challenging ways, so in Thursday puzzles, they often end up being frustratingly and opaquely difficult, without much of an a-ha moment to reward all your head-banging. (Didn't help that I held onto WRAP party for the longest time; sigh.)

Clever concept to parse MT EREBUS into MTE REBUS. I wonder if it'll be too crossword-insidery for some solvers, though.

Nice idea here, a THREE RING CIRCUS visually represented, featuring a GLASS EATER, WIREWALKER, and FIRE DANCER in literal rings.

So tough to fill around those rings of letters, as they put a ton of constraints around the surrounding areas. Anytime you have "triple-checked" letters — ones that must work with acrosses, downs, plus one more constraint — you're bound to need some crossword glue to hold everything together.

Jacob does well to place a few black squares in the centers of the rings, which helps immensely in facilitating fill. I doubt this grid would have even been possible (unless you used an entire bottle of crossword glue) without at least one black square in the center of each ring.

The more black squares in the centers of rings, the better. Notice how much cleaner the top ring was than the bottom ones? Yes, FSTAR is not good (random letter + STAR = constructor's crutch), and SELAH is tough, but those are the kinds of compromises common to triple-checked letter puzzles.

The SW: ANC, NAGIN, DEGS, EFS, ERTE. The SE: KER, ESSES, SWE, LATH, ASSAI. Yikes. And yikes. One set alone would have been too much for a single puzzle. (I'm personally fine with ASSAI, but I'm not sure non-musicians would agree.)

I might have tried to reposition those bottom two rings, such that it was possible to get more black squares in their centers.

It would have been nice to get something more familiar than a GLASS EATER — perhaps a lion tamer or trapeze artist or a contortionist — but those last two are so long that it would have made things even harder.

I loved the thought behind the puzzle, but not the execution.

Rebus today, VEGETABLE SHORTENING interpreted as "cramming the theme vegetables into two-letter chunks." I'm a huge "Seinfeld" fan, so OKRA inside COSM(O K)(RA)MER was fun. Neat how it breaks OKRA across two words, too — I usually think across-word-breaks are more interesting than within-word finds, but I did like SYMP(TO)(MA)(TO)LOGY. Neat discovery!

Before I get flooded with mail, yes, I also noticed that there was a huge flaw, that TOMATO is a fruit, not a vegetable. I was just about to write Frank (Longo, one of Will's fact checkers) when I learned that they're considered "culinary vegetables." It still doesn't sit right for me, but it's not technically 100% incorrect. Enough wiggle room to let this one by. Perhaps.

Nice construction, mostly Stulbergian execution (a lot of interesting long fill and not many short gluey bits). I especially liked how he ran some long answers through the rebus squares, TRENCH(CO)AT and NO PROB(LE)MO my favorites. Typically, rebus squares are executed with short crossing answers like LEA(RN), as this constrains the grid much less than something like TO(OK) IT EASY taking up so much real estate.

I didn't like was the BRANDON / MIDI crossing. I don't mind a lot of proper names in a puzzle, but when they're toughies like NIGEL, HAAS, RABBITT, allowing for the possible error of BRANNON seems underhanded. I even watched some 90210 (I'll never admit that if pressed) and still got that square wrong. Maybe a more direct clue where MIDI and MINI weren't both valid.

Fun solve, although the gimmick didn't have the staying power to keep my attention through a 21x grid. I'm a bit rebused out these days, but a 15x grid would have kept me entertained, given the apt revealer lending a strong reason for the rebus squares. Too bad VEGETABLE SHORTENING wouldn't fit in a 15x!

Fun visual, a fishing line represented by a string of Is, ending with a J, which looks like a fish hook. I grokked the idea quickly since I had had the pleasure of working on another J = hook puzzle, but I still enjoyed that imagery. (Thanks goes to Will and Joel for spacing out these two puzzles, so the hook (ha ha) still felt fresh!)

DON'T TAKE THE BAIT helped flesh out the theme, along with several types of fish that can double as a non-fish related word. I've highlighted them below to help them stand out — short answers tend to get lost in the shuffle.

Jacob does such a nice job with grid execution, as always; hardly a short, gluey entry to be seen. TSO is about all I could pick out, and I like General TSO's chicken. (I know, some Asian I am.) DISCI felt strange, but some dictionaries do list it as plural for "discus." "Discuses" does seem better to me, but both feel awkward. Maybe everyone should insure that there's only one discus in any one place at a time. Problem solved!

I appreciated the few long extras in LABRADOR, LIBELED / EXTORT (got something planned, eh, Jacob?), and even GLIMPSE is fun. LEGALIST was unfamiliar to me, but it appears to be dictionary-legit.

I would have liked a few more long bonuses that would have helped the grid shine, but it is tough to work around all those short themers plus the two 15-letter ones. Perhaps just a touch more crossword glue in exchange for another pair of good entries? I'd be curious to test out whether you could remove the block between APEX and ROBE to get a pair of great long bonus entries.

All in all, an amusing, well-crafted puzzle. It was a little too much of a one-liner (pun intended) to get my POW!, but an enjoyable solve.

Given my education and work as a mechanical engineer, I place a high value on efficiency. One implication is that I write incredibly small, so as to save on paper and ink. People make fun of me for that, but WHO'S LAUGHNG NOW THAT I'M ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE WHO CAN EASILY SQUISH BOTH CHICKEN AND ROAD INTO A SINGLE CROSSWORD SQUARE BWA HA HA!

Ahem. Jacob gives us a fun rebus twist, the CHICKEN "crossing" a ROAD in four rebus squares. Some strong theme phrases, CHICKEN OF THE SEA, NO SPRING CHICKEN, and ROAD RUNNER my favorites (jet-propelled pogo stick, anyone?). I also enjoyed the succinct revealer — WHY? — in the middle of the puzzle, leaving the solver to piece together the gist of the theme.

As with most all Stulberg grids, some great bonuses: POLO BALL, BAR EXAM, TRIFECTA, PEN PALS. And as with most all Stulberg grids, nice and smooth. When the only detectable crossword glue is MSGS — and that's a common enough abbreviation — you've produced a top-shelf product. (For me, EST and ESL are so minor as to be ignorable.)

How does he accomplish this? One big reason is that Jacob wisely sticks to a 78-word grid. When you have this much theme packed in — four pairs of crossing answers plus a short revealer — making the grid low-word-count and wide-open is just begging for trouble.

A little bit of magic is that the grid doesn't seem like a 78-word puzzle. Normally, 78-worders feel heavy with three- and four-letter entries, and they feature few long bonuses. But Jacob gave us so many slots of 7+ letters that I got a lift everywhere I looked — a little BAR EXAM here, some MANNERS there, PEN PALS at the bottom, etc. Great work.

I'm still not a fan of rebuses that require so much to be crammed in a single box — four or five letters is my preferred max, otherwise most (normal) people can't fill in the answers properly. But I liked the idea behind this one, along with the Stulbergian execution.

Neat mini-theme — did you catch the giant E made of INANE words? I've highlighted them below. Fun to parse INANE as IN AN E, accurately describing the shape.

Top-bottom symmetry is rare. Will has rejected one of mine where I've used up-down symmetry, saying that it just looks odd. (I tend to agree, looking back on it.) I like the novel image today's presents, but my left-right eyes want me to turn my head 90 degrees so that symmetry will be more pleasing.

At first, I wondered why Jacob didn't use regular crossword symmetry — or even left-right — by shifting the giant E one space over to the right. But that would have forced him to use a symmetrical answer to SENSELESS, requiring a Y???Y???Y pattern. I couldn't find anything that would work with all those pesky Ys.

Stupid crossword gods!

As much as I like the INANE IN AN E notion, I felt like EMPTY and SAPPY didn't quite hit home. Yes, both are in the thesaurus for INANE, but it would have felt much more powerful to me if somehow Jacob could have used ABSURD, ASININE, DAFT, STUPID, etc. (I didn't mind SENSELESS as much as Jacob did.)

Stupid English language, not conforming to what crossword constructors want!

I can see why Will ran this as a "themeless," as it would have felt like a very thin theme on a Wednesday or Thursday. And there were some nice bonuses like MADE TO LAST and ON THE SLY.

Themelesses are rarely done with left-right (or up-down) symmetry because normal symmetry allows for so many more long grid entries in general — the typical themeless uses a set of triple-stacked long answers in each corner, which left-right (or up-down) symmetry does not allow.

Jacob does well to get in four grid-spanning entries, but none of them did much for me. Along with some minor LPS, SRS, LTRS, ETDS, ETAS holding it all together, it didn't give me the same impact as a typical themeless.

Tough, when you have to work with that inflexible giant E formed in the center of the grid.

Wish the a-ha moment had been stronger, but I do like the creative thinking here.

STAND UP GUYS getting their due, GENT, DUDE, and FELLA "standing up" within theme phrases. Interesting phrases — GENT inside NET NEGATIVE was fun, as well as FELLA within RADICAL LEFT (although the latter is a mite too charged for my taste).

ILE DU DIABLE … what the devil?! Jacob tends to use a lot of high culture terms in his puzzles, which I generally like and admire. This one went over my head, though. Devil's Island, yes. But even after five years of high school French, remembering that it should be DU and not DE was rough, not to mention piecing together DIABLE (no surprise that I didn't do well in AP French). I like the name after studying it for a while, but it threw me for a loop during my solve.

I don't like being thrown during a Tuesday solve. But it's good for me every once in a while.

I did like BORGIAS; not hard to dig out of memory. Crazy how powerful the House of Borgia was during the Renaissance. That's the kind of interesting class-up-the-joint entry I've come to expect and like from Jacob.

A couple of small blips in the fill, unexpected out of one of Jacob's puzzles, especially since there are only four total themers. I wouldn't have minded IN BAD, TKT, OLEO, the oddball LAIN, B AND B (rarely seen in non-ampersand form outside crosswords), CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) if there had been five themers. But with four, I expect a smoother result, especially if there's not a lot of bonus longer fill. (Given that Jacob has won a ton of my POWs, the bar is very high for him.)

On that note, I would have liked a fifth themer — hiding BRO would have been fine with me. It a sufficient amount of theme with just three guys hidden, but I think it would have been more satisfying to have a fourth. (Not surprisingly, I really like barbershop quartets.)

Great clue in [Southernmost U.S. state]. I embarrassingly plunked in FLORID and then corrected it to GEORGI before completely confusing myself. (Which is worse, my geography or my French? Both.) I'm committing that neat trivia to memory.

Politicians' CHECKERED PAST(s) riffed on today, four instances of P-A-S-T circling a checkerboard pattern. I always sit up a little straighter when I see something new in a grid's black squares, so I enjoyed the fun first impression here.

Nice that Jacob put his P at the top in the NW corner, the right in the NE corner, the bottom in the SE corner, and at the left in the SW corner. Sort of looks … cyclical? Don't know what the right word is, but the constant progression is pleasing to this constructor's sensibilities.

I did feel like the puzzle was theme-thin. Once I uncovered CHECKERED PAST, I was able to fill in the P-A-S-Ts, and then that was it. It sure would have been nice to have maybe just one CHECKERED P-A-S-T and a few other literal interpretations of political-related phrases. SLINGING MUD comes to mind, as does ATTACK AD or SUPER PAC? Not sure, but some more variety would have been good.

Given the theme thinness, I appreciated Jacob's effort to give me more bonuses to keep my attention. Such nice entries in THE COMETS, TELEPORT, A LA MODE, and the really long STEEPLECHASES and TOP O THE MORNING. The latter two did make me wonder if they were themers, given the lack of other themers in the grid, but I shrugged that off quickly.

Great clue for TOUPEES: only some are "top secrets," some others quite obvious to everyone. (cough TRUMP cough.) As a founding member of the Triple Bs (the Bad Bald Boys, whatchagonnado?), Sam and Doug and I say the truth shall set you free!

Overall, I liked the trade-off of getting a lot of nice bonuses for minor prices of OFA, HET, AEROS, but it would have been nice to get more meat to the theme.

Love that OVER THE MOON and UNDER THE SUN mini-theme! So appropriately placed within the grid, too.

Jacob uses the max allowable words — 72 — in his grid. Although some constructors pooh-pooh this as not a big enough challenge (I fully own up to this), there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, my local Seattle friend Mike Hawkins mentioned that he and John Guzzetta have several themelesses accepted now, all by going up to 72 words and maximizing the long entries in the four corners (without resorting to crossword glue). Hard to argue with acceptances!

Beautiful triple-stack, OVER THE MOON / CAMERA READY / TIPS ONES HAT. Some ERE, RESOD, TRE holding it together, but those are three great entries. AGE OF REASON / BOWL A STRIKE / UNDER THE SUN are even stronger, especially considering there are no ugly gluey entries needed to hold it together! Standout work down in the lower right.

Since Jacob didn't have many long slots to begin with, he had to work hard at converting every one of them into great material. DC COMICS with a clue hinting at the Flash is great, and SEA SNAKE is fun too. MY PRETTY and ARMCHAIR (quarterback) are good too.

Add in some interesting mid-length material in HANS ARP, FLAGON, the JULIAN calendar, SUDOKU, and there was enough to keep me satisfied.

ODA MAE … I've considered this many times in my own puzzles, especially the oh-so-useful ODA. But this character from a pretty old movie doesn't seem completely crossworthy to me.

Overall, I liked this puzzle a lot. If there had been just a little bit more great material — closer to 15 assets rather than 10 — and/or fewer dabs of ERE-type crossword glue, it might have won my POW!

★ Sam "S Diddy" Donaldson told me a long time ago that he was over rebuses; that they were so far overdone that he couldn't take them anymore. I tend to agree with him, although when they have a little somethin' extra, I still really enjoy them. That was the case for me today, grinning at Jacob's neat FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA entry as an entire row of rebi.

I quickly figured out that there was a rebus element when SP(LA)SH didn't fit in, and that triggered my usual sad trombone feeling. But when a FA popped up, I perked up. Could it be related to FDR's super-cute dog, FALA?

What a neat moment when I got to the FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA finale. Maybe I'm just a sucker for holiday songs and feelings, but I enjoyed that discovery.

From a constructor's standpoint, it's tough to work around so many rebus squares, so I enjoyed the craftsmanship, Jacob giving us a super-smooth grid. I mean, only a bit of IND / RDS around that very tough lower right corner? Great work. And some EASY RIDER, REGULAR GUY, FAJITA, LAPLAND, GRAPPA bonuses, only needing some minor crossword glue (RRS, old-timey SOTS) to make it all happen? That's the type of master craftsmanship I've come to expect from Jacob.

And from a solver's standpoint, it's rare to get an entire long entry made out of rebus squares, so that was a cool surprise. Again, something so pleasing about having that ubiquitous Christmas carol line so tidily packed in.

I'm still not totally sure why most of the themers have exactly one FA and one LA — I liked the consistency of each themer having a FA and a LA, but felt like it might have been better if they had contained the FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA sequence in order or something? Or if the song went, "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, FA LA FA LA FA LA FA LA, FA LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA" that would have made more sense to me.

The puzzle gave me such a warm and fuzzy feeling, however, that I shrugged off my doubt. Off to find some gay apparel!

Even though my cooking skills are atrocious, it was fun to see THE JOY OF COOKING in the center of the puzzle. I even have a copy of it in my kitchen! (After 20+ years, I still haven't opened it.) Fun and JOYful to group it with three foods that are full of joie de vivre: TURKISH DELIGHT, ORANGE ZEST, and CORN RELISH.

An odd layout of themers, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do with a limited selection of themers in order to please the gods of crossword symmetry. Coming upon TURKISH first and having to jump all the way to DELIGHT felt inelegant — I wonder if it would have been better to shove ORANGE ZEST all the way to the left so that it would be the first themer solvers uncover (you'd also shove TURKISH all the way to the right, and DELIGHT to the left, to compensate).

I also had some qualms about the theme's consistency. ZEST and RELISH have alternate meanings, which makes for playfulness. TURKISH / DELIGHT however, seems different. I couldn't find a definitive reason for why the treat was given that name, but it seems like DELIGHT in this case just means DELIGHT. So it felt like it didn't have the same wordplay ORANGE ZEST and CORN RELISH exhibited.

As always, Jacob does well with his bonus entries, something interesting about the pairing of MOSAIC LAW and PENITENCE. FISH OILS is also good. Although I'm more neutral on SEND FORTH, REMOTELY, and ENERGETIC, getting a bunch of long entries in a grid does help make for a more interesting solve.

Great clue for REDEYE — reading [It might end with an early touchdown] during football season made this solver think about the six-point type of touchdown instead of the tarmac type. Love this type of wordplay, especially when it doesn't need a telltale question mark, and especially in an early-week puzzle. Adds great spice.

Even though I had some issues with the consistency of themers and the themer layout, Jacob executed his grid well, resulting in a smooth rest of my solve. Even after a second look, I could barely identify any crossword glue at all, an important factor for an early-week puzzle.

★ LONDON BRIDGE is FALLING DOWN today, with a neat visual and a great selection of themers. I've been dying to work SOCIAL LUBRICANT into a puzzle, so it was really fun to see. STAND ON ONES HEAD, LONG STEMMED, and WENT OVER THE EGDE are all nice too.

I like when a puzzle lulls me into thinking I know what's happening, and then it throws me for a loop. Working quickly through LON to DON, I figured this had to be a word ladder. What a pleasure to get SOCIAL LUBRICANT as a sizzling entry, and even more so when I realized the next trigram wasn't DOT or DEN or something.

And what an entertaining visual, LON DON BRI DGE actually looking like the bridge broke up, Tacoma-Narrows-style, and sections plummeted in sequence from right to left. Love it.

Nice bonuses in RV PARK — excellent use of a six-letter slot — ACTING OUT, STATE SEAL, NY GIANTS, SHOWCASE, even ARABIC with its crazy clue (see Jim's note below). Great extras made the solve even more enjoyable.

There were a few questionable spots, ones that made me hesitate about giving this the POW! XKES is a toughie, basically random letters. Thankfully Jacob made all the crossings straightforward.

That SUZI / ZWEIG crossing … I guess it's fair, since what other letter could look more reasonable? I briefly considered SUKI / KWEIG, but that looked strange. I do like the Scrabbly Z, but oof, that caused me a moment of panic.

Were those two rough patches worth the price all the great extras? I did like all the bonuses, and given that Jacob had to work with five long themers, some signs of strain were to be expected. Going up to 76 words could have smoothed out those two crunchy spots — the end product is not as novice-friendly as I like to see in a Monday — but I'm okay with Jacob's decision.

I really enjoy getting something a little different on Mondays, and this fit the bill. Very entertaining.

OP-ED COLUMN interpreted as "entries hiding OPED within." Nice touch to have them going downward … in the COLUMNs of the grid! I particularly liked HOPE DIAMOND, which has all sorts of lore associated with it. EUROPE DAY was interesting too — I had no idea that it was a thing, but I'd bet it's quite a bit more well-known in ... well, Europe.

Very nice grid, with some wide-open corners in the upper right and lower left. That allows Jacob to work in some entries Monday solvers probably haven't seen much of. There wasn't anything super exciting other than HAYRIDES, but it's pretty neat to come across a little COURAGE and SPRINTS. APPROVED!

I also like how much care and attention Jacob put into his short fill. It's not easy to work with five themers, especially when you have a middle one of 11-letters splitting the grid in half. But Jacob keeps everything very smooth. DWI is about the only gluey bit I could find, but that's a common enough acronym. Driving while intoxicated / driving while impaired / driving under the influence are confusing to keep straight ... as demonstrated by my getting the acronyms wrong in my first draft of this blog post (thanks for the catch, Kevin Loughrey and Jon Markman!)

I did find the puzzle more of a stop and start than a usual Monday, but that was more due to tougher vocabulary and names. That's okay with me as long as all the crossings are fair. Shirley EATON is pretty hard, and ODESSA isn't something beginning solvers will likely know. These both are common(ish) in later-week crosswords due to their friendly letter patterns, but it's really important that every crossing is gettable when they're in a Monday puzzle. Jacob does well in this regard.

Some nice mid-length fill in NEWMAN! OH STOP, COP CAR, SEA DOG. It's all worked in so smoothly.

PIANO PEDAL didn't hit my ear very well (don't you just call it a pedal?), and SLOPE DOWN is one of those less-interesting add-a-preposition phrases, so I didn't care for them as much as the colorful HOPE DIAMOND. A well-crafted puzzle though, with the added bonus of having those OPEDs all being within downward COLUMNs.

★ Jacob's name is rising even higher in my list of constructors whose bylines I love seeing. He has a distinctly poetic voice, and it's again seen in spades with this poem (appropriately enough). So neat that each of the seven words of INTO EACH LIFE SOME RAIN MUST FALL is exactly four letters. There's something evocative and powerful about the sentence itself, and something so elegant about the four-letter consistency.

The grid is a 16x15, wider than normal, to accommodate the "hidden" poem and LONGFELLOW / FITZGERALD. I'm a huge jazz fan, but I wasn't aware that Ella Fitzgerald sang this tune. Beautiful; I'm glad to learn about it.

Many constructors would go over the 78-word limit when faced with a 16x15, reasoning that they should be allowed a proportionally higher limit. I like Jacob's choice to stay relatively low in word count, which lets him work in a ton of good fill like ALARM BELL, NOT REALLY, TEAR STAIN, RUMOR MILLS.

No doubt, with all the theme words stairstepping down the diagonal, plus LONGFELLOW and FITZGERALD, plus all the long bonus fill, there was bound to be some gluey fill. AOUT (pretty deep French), HOI (only one way to clue it), and ORU (do Oral Roberts students actually call it ORU?) are necessary to hold that dense middle together. But I like that Jacob kept everything minor, spreading out his GSA, RRS, AIRE short stuff throughout the grid.

One other nit: I wasn't a huge fan of "hiding" the poem's words within longer entries. EACH in PREACH is nice, as is MUST in MUSTER, but LIFE in LIFER isn't really disguising it at all. And making IN TOO and OF ALL necessary … I'd rather have seen each of the theme words simply as a normal entry in the grid.

Personal preference. Overall, this was another Stulberg winner for me. I'm not much of a poetry fan, but somehow Jacob inspires me to want to dig in.

★ With four POWs in the span of 12 months now, Jacob easily makes my top ten puzzlemakers list. I love his voice, with touches of art, history, the classics, academia, and a little pop culture, making for what I consider the quintessential NYT puzzle, perfect for the target audience. Today's puzzle hit the mark for me on the theme alone, and the fact that Jacob turned it into a mini-themed themeless made it very memorable for me.

I've been immersed in classical music for decades, and it never occurred to me that BACH was "hidden" in OFFENBACH. Not only that, but they're both German-born! Same goes for Alban BERG and SCHOENBERG, both Austrian-born. And to find a third example, VERDI and MONTEVERDI, both Italian-born, is just amazing. It's mind-blowing that the crossword symmetry works out perfectly!

And Jacob just kept on going with the brilliance, placing his black squares so that each of the "hidden" composers has his own Across clue. So cool to see VERDI at "18-Across." There really is no 18-Across of course, but here, Jacob slyly puts it to use. (If you're still missing it, look at the square with the "18" in it.)

As if that weren't enough, the fill is strong. I expect a ton of strong material in any themeless, and I lower those expectations a bit when there's a mini-theme that constrains the grid. I didn't have to today, with so much goodness: FEMBOT (anyone else plunk in DR EVIL?), IN ORBIT, the crazy looking BENEDICT XVI, NOM DE GUERRE, LAERTES, I WANT IN, even SUCCOR, CLONING, and Chuck YEAGER.

There is a smattering of ATA, GORSE (huh?), and two somewhat esoteric rivers right next to each other (YSER + ARNO = a no-no), but it was all so minor to me. The amazing discoveries of "hidden" names, sneakily giving those names their own Across clue, and solid themeless-quality fill made it one of my favorite puzzles in recent memory — possibly of all time.

★ I haven't loved a Wednesday puzzle this much since one of Jacob's a few months ago. He has such a nice puzzle voice, flavored by poetry, world history, literature, and foreign languages. Today's reveal was so cool — finding out BARAK, ÉCLAIR, and BLITZ all meant LIGHTNING in foreign languages was one of those "I can't wait to share this with someone!" moments. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew about BLITZ ("blitzkrieg" meaning "lightning war") but the others were new.

I did wonder about EHUD BARAK. That's a tough name to piece together, especially crossing another proper name, Pablo NERUDA. With only 450K Google hits, some might argue that BARAK isn't worthy of being a feature entry. I can understand that perspective, but I think major world leaders should all be fair game. And given his necessity in making the theme work (can you think of anyone else famous with the name BARAK?), my conviction that it's fine is even stronger.

The BIRMINGHAM BLITZ wasn't familiar to me, but it's such a colorful name with an interesting WWII clue that I wanted to look it up. Given that this was just one of many bombing attacks during WWII, I don't think I would feature this entry in a themeless grid, but it works as part of today's theme.

There wasn't a lot of long fill today, but EXIT VISA and I SUPPOSE are bonuses. And Jacob pushes his 6-letter fill to do a lot of the work in making the grid colorful — AFL-CIO, BEAM UP with a Star Trek clue, Catherine of ARAGON, MOSHED all pepped up my solving experience.

I don't love seeing the DTS, which sounds pretty old-timey, but that's minor. Terrific execution on short fill.

Even if there had been less colorful long fill or a few more gluey bits, I still would have picked this one as the Puzzle of the Week. I love it when a crossword theme wows me.

PG-13 interpreted as "THIRTEEN instances of PG inside the grid." I've highlighted them below, as it took me forever to catch all of them. I particularly liked the stairstep of connected PGs in the upper right corner — cool little section. A similarly neat effect from the linked PGs in the upper left.

It may seem like not a big deal to incorporate a bigram into a puzzle 13 times, but the PG combination isn't a super common one. Take the center area, for example — you might wonder why Jacob didn't put a single instance in there. But with only short slots, how would you incorporate PG? Perhaps JPG or PGUP? Perhaps, but the J would be hard to work in, and PG UP isn't the greatest of entries. LPGA is out, since PGA has already been used. Not easy!

Given how hard that *PG* constraint is to work with, I did like quite a few of the "themers," like STOPGAP, TOP GEAR, CRAP GAMES and SWAMP GAS. Colorful choices.

A theme like this is so heavily constrained that it's tough to avoid gluey bits galore. I've come to appreciate more and more a good upper left corner, which sets the tone for my solving experience. Fun MAO clue [Leader with an -ISM], but getting two abbreviations in MASC and ANS was not ideal.

It's an unfortunate by-product of stacking SWAMPGAS and CAMPGROUND. Both are very nice answers in which to hide PG, but with the MPG further constraining it, that's a tough area to cleanly fill around. CMII (random Roman numeral) and MSGR and ISAO further make for feeling of a gluey pile-up.

Same issue in the lower right, with LIP GLOSS stacked under PG THIRTEEN forcing some compromises in the NSEC / LIC / REOIL corner.

So, an audacious theme idea, causing all sorts of filling problems. Very difficult to fill around so many instances of that PG bigram.

★ Loved this; themers that look like three repeated words but can be parsed in kooky ways. VIS A VIS VISA was readily apparent, as was ABE LABEL ABEL. But it took me a while to figure out what RIDERIDERIDE should become. What a fun division in RIDER I DERIDE. Similar hijinks in PIESPIESPIES, which I originally thought was the odd and repetitive PIE SPIES PIES. Not so! PI ESPIES PIES is brilliant.

Some strong clues too:

• [What "is" is] for VERB made me think of those crazy repeated word sentences like "James, while John had had ‘had', had had ‘had had'; ‘had had' had had a better effect on the teacher."
• I haven't needed a good EAR-lowering since I started shaving my head.
• The "Mark twain" is a measurement for DEPTH? Apparently so! Now, what should the Jeff chen measure? (Don't answer that.)

Now, I would have liked some more long fill in this puzzle. This is a tougher task than for a typical four-theme entry puzzle, because of the themers' 12-letter lengths. Normally, you'd be able to take out the black square between DOG and JIBE to make an eight-letter slot, but no dice today since that square is necessary to finish off VISAVISAVISA. Same goes with the black square between CLASSY and ADAM.

There's room to explore blowing up the black square between MARSHAL and DONS, but that does make for a bigger space to fill in the west and east. And shifting black squares around in the center is a real possibility, but that would likely mean redoing the entire puzzle.

Still, the grid does contain a little zip with PRAIRIE / DOG, MARSHAL, even a SPLAT and a SPUME. And it is nice and bereft of gluey bits (aside from IRAE, maybe PSA too) — what a 78-word puzzle ought to be.

A trait of a great puzzle is that it makes me want to think about it further. So much fun to wrestle with these themers; I'd love to find more.