Joe Krozel author page

Word ladder, from ROLL to CALL to VOTE. That's a fun concept, linking these words in an interesting way.

This might have been better as a straight-up word ladder (like in a Penny Press word games magazine), not as a crossword puzzle. Word ladders have been done to death in crosswords, so you have to do something amazing to make them stand out.

I get that Will simply wants to make Thursday puzzles harder than Wednesday puzzles. But it was SO much work to uncover the unclued steps of the word ladder, and for such little payoff.

I would have given up halfway through if I didn't feel obsessed with completing the puzzle every day.

I did appreciate Joe's efforts to try to snazz up the solving experience, working in great bonuses like ROYAL BLOOD, AERIAL PHOTO, CHOKE COLLAR, LOVERS LEAP — that's great stuff! But it wasn't enough to get past 1.) all the crossword glue necessary to hold all those short themers together, or 2.) the mismatch between how hard it was to fill in the rungs of the ladder and how little of an a-ha moment there was.

★ My POW! pick might come as a surprise to some. I enjoyed this one as a constructor, but surprisingly as a solver, too.

I had low expectations once I saw the huge OPEN floor PLAN of the grid, knowing that I'd have to slog through some glue or weirdness. Pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had! It's unusual to get snazzy entries in a grid like this, so DRUM ROLL, ACQUIRED / TASTES, and GAZELLES all in a single quadrant made me smile right off the bat.

DIVE BAR too? And HARANGUE? IV DRIP, MPEG FILE, even Ronda ROUSEY, CUSSER, WEASELED = fun stuff. That's way more pizzazz than I expected. A lot of entertainment and sizzle helped balance out the necessary evils.

I would restart a grid if I had to use BSTARS (or any other _STARS entry), but for one like this, that price seemed reasonable. UNNAILED was the only other one that stuck out as contrived, one of the UN- or RE- or -ER type entries I see all the time in ultra-low-word-count puzzles.

GREAVE was an oddball. But to get only one of these esoteric trivia answers was great.

This type of ultra-low-word-count is not my favorite themeless genre. But I think this one is close to best in class, and that warrants recognition.

Love the visual, a PINATA filled with CANDY. So cool how the black squares also form the string that hangs the PINATA from the ceiling! Beautiful concept.

I didn't understand the notepad at first, but then it became clear that C and Y weren't present in the rest of the grid. Huh.

Why include this extra layer, instead of leaving it be simply with CANDY in the PINATA, I wondered? I suppose there ought to be some extra way of figuring out what's in the PINATA, since CANDY doesn't have any crossing answers. But this felt like an inelegant way to do it. Would have been incredible to increase the center of the PINATA to three rows, for instance, filling it with NERDS, ROLOS, PEZ, etc. Maybe not possible, but fun to think about.

(I love discussing puzzles with Jim — fascinating to hear him explain why he found the C AND Y gimmick so satisfying! Puzzles are subjective, no doubt.)

The grid art applies so many constraints that Joe was forced to fill themeless-esque big swaths of white space. Nice work in the NW, EQUITABLE / MULTIPLEX / TOTEM POLE making for a strong triple-stack. I TEN (I-10) isn't great, nor is INS, but those aren't that bad.

The only section I thought suffered was the south, with RKO, KTEL, OEDS (plural?). Again, none of these are terrible, but all three clumped up shines a spotlight on them. Not a surprise though, given that PINATA constrains it on the right and AMBER ALE on the left, making for a construction challenge in that biggish section.

GO JUMP IN THE LAKE, ULTIMATE FRISBEE (although it's technically just called Ultimate now), TRIVIA GAMES, GET GOING (although a minor dupe in GO / GOING) = great stuff to keep solvers entertained. Overall, a reasonable balance between snazziness and cleanliness.

Fantastic concept, great visual. If CANDY had been hinted at in a way I found to be more clever, and this ran on a Tuesday or Wednesday with adjusted clues (anyone else feel frustrated with the incredibly difficult cluing for all those short words?), it would have been an easy POW! pick for me.

★ For my money, Joe Krozel is one of the most innovative, interesting constructors out there. Some of my friends have grumbled that pushing the envelope doesn't always lead to great solving experiences, and I can see their point. But I felt that today's puzzle not only broke (pun intended) new ground, but it was an immense pleasure to solve.

Several constructor friends and I have brainstormed concepts with a grid separated in two, but none of us have ever thought of this cool idea. Joe found three solid phrases relating to a separated grid — and separated those phrases! Not only that, but each piece of each broken phrase makes a fine word in itself. BUSTED APART = BUS / TED + APART, BANANA SPLIT = BAN / ANA + SPLIT, BROKEN IN TWO = BRO / KEN + IN TWO. Just genius.

Will has rejected every one of my attempts to use this "up-down" style of symmetry, saying that it just looks odd, and I can usually see his point. But Joe uses a set of heavy black lines that evokes left-right symmetry, maintaining a pleasing visual effect.

And the fill! With some trick puzzles, fill necessarily shows strain to make the trick work. Joe does so well, giving us some excellent IKEBANA, TRANSISTOR RADIO, RAGTIME, THE NORM, SANGRIA, etc., flowing all the way down the right side. Okay, UNTAME isn't very good, but all the great entries overwhelmed that one for me.

The left side isn't quite as snazzy, but it does have a nice TAXICAB, PLANETS, NITWITS, ARMHOLE, without much crossword glue holding it together — just an UNA and a TELE made for a silky solve.

It's not often that I'm green with envy, wishing that it had been my name on the byline, but that was the case today. If I did a Crossword of the Month like Matt Gaffney, this one would be sure to be on it. Loved it.

★ I'm a sucker for visual puzzles, and simply having a MUMMY buried within a pyramid of black squares might have gotten this puzzle the POW! alone. What a brilliant image!

I had the luck to go to Egypt a few years ago before things started getting unsafe, and that made this puzzle even more enjoyable. Descending into those claustrophobic pyramids during 120-degree weather was harrowing, but what a once-in-a-lifetime experience. All those stories about lost tombs and building projects of massive scale … wow. Just, wow.

As if that wasn't enough, Tim and Joe give us some more pyramid graphics in other back square patterns, plus some fun theme material. PYRAMID SCHEME, TOMB RAIDER, PHARAOH ANT are more indirect than TUT, but they gave me enough to feel like the puzzle wasn't just a pretty picture.

And bonus fill to boot, with a themeless-esque open feel! I loved uncovering RARE GAS, MEGAWATTS, LAST GASP, even RASTAMAN (are you singing Bob Marley's RASTAMAN Vibration now too?), and TEA BAGS that come with strings attached.

Not all the fill was great, but that's to be expected with such wide-openness. TWO HEARTS felt partial-ish, and crossing TWICE was inelegant. I doubt many people will like seeing ANIS, but that's the only real glob of crossword glue, and I found it worth the price of LITHUANIA / LAST GASP. Tim and Joe could have cleaned up that region by putting a black square at the T or G of LAST GASP, but I like their decision here.

It also would have been nice to get less random-ish placement of the M U M M Y letters, but I can't think of a better way to do it (maybe have those letters be part of theme answers? or have them regularly spaced somehow?).

I imagine TOMB RAIDERs slipping diagonally into the pyramid from the T of MAD AT or first A of AMANA, just like I crept through chutes into the real pyramids. Totally tickled by this puzzle; a perfect example of the astounding creativity crosswords can exhibit.

Note anything unusual about all those unchecked letters around the perimeter? Not surprisingly, this puzzle is a pangram! At first, I wasn't sure why so many single letters were strewn around the perimeter, but the concept finally dawned on me, helping me to fill in the M of MENOTTI and the J of JAR. Neat idea to make it seem like there are 26 unchecked squares, while secretly tying them together.

All those black squares around the perimeter cut down the average word length of the puzzle. Usually this statistic is not something I care about, but here, it means that there are very few entries of 8+ letters — the ones I usually look forward to cracking the most. Some of these feature entries were great — OPEN PRIMARIES, RAISING THE BAR, AS A LAST RESORT I really liked — but others like FAILING STUDENTS and QUEENS OF ENGLAND didn't seem as in-the-language. The latter seems more like a Jeopardy! category rather than a phrase people say.

And even this investment manager doesn't get super excited by ROLL OVER AN IRA. Yes, it can be a wise action within retirement planning, but it's not an aspect that tickles me. (Yes, there are many aspects of money management that do tickle me. Weird, I know.) And PROCEDURE MANUAL reminds me too much of long orientation days at a new job. It actually has a lot of potential to be saved with a great wordplay clue, but the straightforward [How-to guide at an office] doesn't do a lot for me.

There are a bunch of 7-letter entries which do add a little spice, like EYE TEST. Others like EMERITA and GEMINIS are pretty good too.

I always appreciate how Joe pushes the envelope with almost every new construction. He's a natural selection for this theme week, and this idea is pretty cool. I would have liked some indication of the idea — PANGRAM or THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG or something — but there's already a lot of constraint put on the grid. Already with some LENOS, SAY SOS, MOANER kind of stuff, I wouldn't want to force much more.

It's rare to see a Joe Krozel that's derivative of something else. I appreciate how he strives to always do something different. Today, we get a wide-open grid at an astonishingly low number word count: 56. There have only been a few of these bad boys in the history of the NYT crossword, done by a very small number of constructors … dominated by Joe Krozel.

I like the mini-theme, a clock face displaying ONE THIRTY. It wasn't as much of a COME HERE RIGHT NOW YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS feat, but it was pretty cool to recognize a minute and an hour hand formed out of black squares.

This grid layout requires Joe to work in a triple-stack, and the three grid-spanners aren't bad. None wowed me, but ECONOMIC DECLINE tickled my finance interests. Like with most triple-stacks, there were some compromises in the crossing answers — it's unfortunate to kick off the puzzle with the odd RESP abbreviation, and CDI is pretty random. I also would have liked more sizzling answers somewhere in that half of the grid, as ANATOLIANS, SALAMANCA and AURICLE didn't do that much for me.

I was more impressed by the lower right. It is a more isolated section thus relatively easier to fill, but it is also a huge swath of white. I really appreciated the color of THE MAGI, I CAN RELATE, DOME CAR, and even AS STATED ain't bad. I'll take an esoteric STROPHE for all that good stuff any day. Plus, with only ANA and DYER being the most minor of blemishes, that section stood out.

Since there have been a handful of these ultra-low word count puzzles now, their impact isn't as great for me. I still do get a small wow factor, but I think that will diminish as we see more. Now, if we see an ultra-low word count puzzle chock full of stellar material and very little glue …

Here's one where I appreciated the puzzle much more after corresponding with the author. I like how Joe always pushes the envelope, virtually none of his puzzles using a standard crossword theme. After I solved this one, I didn't get the point of having STALAGMITE and STALACTITE being Schrodingers — there's only one correct answer, right?

Bingo! This puzzle is Joe's way of tripping up those solvers, making them see a Schrodinger when there really isn't one. An optical illusion, if you will. I like the concept.

The choices on Schrodinger entries … I really enjoyed CUT/GUT for [Undermine, as a government program] and GAPS / CAPS for [Features of some front teeth]. Those work so well, because either entry perfectly answers the clue. And GAPS is the obvious answer ... or so you think!

MOIL/TOIL isn't as good to me. They both fit the [Work hard] definition perfectly, but TOIL is so much more commonly used that MOIL didn't even occur to me. I plunked in TOIL and didn't look back — the trickery was totally lost on me, and I have a feeling I won't be the only one.

And while ISTS/ISMS both work as a [Plural suffix with organ], it's a shame that a feature entry of the puzzle would depend on it being defined as a suffix. I'd much rather a different Schrodinger pair be used; two normal words as with GAPS / CAPS. It would probably call for the lower left corner to be redone more simply, with shorter words, but I'd prefer that trade-off. Sorry, TORI AMOS!

A lot of strong entries like PAPER THIN, DIRT STAINS, ADMIT ONE — appreciated in a theme-light puzzle. But again, I would have liked a less wide-open puzzle, one where the puzzle didn't kick off with the type of ADELES, MISSAY and MCCI entries. That upper left corner tends to set impressions that are hard to overcome. It is pretty neat that Joe managed to execute this in a very low word count (70), but that often causes trade-offs involving gluey fill.

I appreciate the innovation Joe has been bringing to Sunday puzzles. Today's title was spot-on perfect — ABRIDGED should be read as A-BRIDGED, i.e. the phrases are bridged by connecting As.

Neat how Joe found so many "X a Y" phrases that are both in the language and are linkable. RUN A LIGHT A FIRE A SHOT was especially colorful, each one of the three "to-do list tasks" strong phrases in their own right.

The only one I paused at was MAKE A CATCH, as its clue felt off. [Play baseball] is so generic; something like [Field a fly] would have been better (although, see Will's very valid point below — super difficult to clue this phrase!). The bigger issue is that I debated for a long time whether or not MAKE A CATCH is actually in-the-language or not. "The outfielder is going to make the catch!" feels fine. "The outfielder is going to make a catch!" … not so much.

Loved the start of the puzzle, two clever clues kicking off the upper left corner. [Group of companies] had me thinking about big business and corporate takeovers, but it meant military companies in the MARINE CORPS. And [Pod part, perhaps] threw me off, entering OKRA. Clever, a "pod" being a group of ORCAs.

On that MARINE CORPS note, I also appreciated Joe adding to the solving experience by giving us some big corners, with such snappy entries like TV ANTENNA and KARATE KICKS. Getting down to 138 words is awfully difficult to do cleanly — I didn't care for seeing two plural names so close to each other (MARCS and KARENS) — but that's a very small price that I'm willing to accept in order to get those big corners. And there are enough KARENS in the world; not like it was a plural EZIOS or something.

I would have liked the clues amped up in difficulty, as for most of the themers I was able to drop them in without a single crossing answer. But overall, I enjoyed seeing something completely different in my Sunday puzzle.

Cool discovery, that the four SEASONS are all of length = 6.

Any time you run themers diagonally, the surrounding fill becomes much more difficult to execute on. And Joe chose a layout that made it even more difficult, using a big open corner for each season. Makes for a nice visual effect but also for quite a challenge.

I appreciated that he managed to work in a couple of nice entries. This is a tough task when a grid doesn't have many entries longer than seven letters, because it's usually the 8+ letter entries which stand out. GUN BELT, WILDCAT, RAIL CAR, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T all ENLIVEN the puzzle though.

I expected to see some glue holding the grid together, so no surprise to get the usual ITT, A TRIP, ENE, etc. suspects. I couldn't decide if getting both EEEE and IIII was too much, or it was the mark of a constructor boldly choosing entries that will be lightning rods for discussion. EEEE I have trouble buying, but there is something pretty interesting about sundials actually using IIII.

And LADINO. Wow, what a toughie! Even though I knew [Go pfft] could not be TIE, and [Judeo-Spanish] was likely not LATINO, I saw no other possibility. Nice to add the term LADINO into my vocabulary.

Overall, I would have liked some extra element, like the SEASONS forming a smooth circle to reflect the slow passing of time, or something snazzier like Vivaldi's famous composition, THE FOUR SEASONS, to tie it together. But a nice workout nonetheless.

Joe is one of a very small handful of constructors who seriously pushes boundaries. Like many of his other experiments, the direction of today's puzzle will awe some and cause eye-rolling in others.

It's hard enough to construct an entertaining 64-word puzzle. Getting down to so few words often comes with compromises, like excessive gluey bits that detract from the solving experience. Often, I use "cheater squares," i.e. extra black squares which don't affect a puzzle's word count, in order to smooth things out.

Joe goes the opposite way today, using a near-record-low number of black squares. There have only been four NYT puzzles using fewer blocks, three of them written by … Joe Krozel. They all come with a big visual impact, a how-the-heck-is-that-possible kind of first impression. I mean, look at all the white space!

All of Joe's efforts in this arena use four pairs of intersecting double-stacked 15s. Joe mentioned to me that you get a lot of flexibility when you only have to worry about letter pairs (as opposed to letter triplets, in triple-stacks), and that's why he relies on this basic skeleton.

I was impressed at how nice the grid-spanners were. There's a danger that a constructor will be happy that they just got the dang grid filled, period. But Joe features such great stuff as STINK STANK STUNK!, AUTOMATIC WEAPON, and STUCK TO ONES RIBS. CONFERENCE TABLE feels a bit off without "room" in the middle of the phrases, but it's still a reasonable answer.

Sure, there are compromises in the shorter entries. It's impossible not to notice. (I guessed wrong on the FIORE / KINER crossing, and that was very unsatisfying.) I wouldn't want a construction like this every week, or even once a month, but every once in a while, I really enjoy the amazement of seeing a constructor pull off something I'm not sure I could do. I'm really curious to see the next step in this evolution — can a similar feat be pulled off with less than the maximum number of gluey entries I usually like in a themeless (around 5)? My money's on Joe.

Great revealer, YOU GO YOUR WAY … ENIM OG LLI DNA. Er, AND ILL GO MINE. We've seen plenty of BACKWARD-style puzzles, enough that I cringe at the thought of having to fix up all the answers so that our database of entries is kept clean, but I can't remember a revealer I've liked so much. Spot on.

Nice touch on ESSE and MOM and ATTA across the center too. Perfect for symmetry, as the center row could arguably be included in either the top or the bottom half. Best to make those entries so they could fit with either.

And what an impressively clean construction. This sort of stunt puzzle can be awfully tough — without autofill as a tool to tell you if a section can be theoretically filled or not, the construction requires more of a letter-by-letter approach. I was surprised that I couldn't find much of anything to point out as glue.

Perhaps some may grouse at LBOS, especially crossing OBIE, but I think it's not only fair game but desirable. LBOS (leveraged buyouts) aren't as huge today as during the late 20^th century buyout boom, but I find it to be important enough that educated solvers really ought to know it.

I often suggest to constructors that less is more. Many of them can't get their head around that idea. Why not put as much themage in as possible, right? I appreciate Joe's thoughtful approach toward fairness, but I felt like BACKWARD gave away the game too early and easily. I would have given this the Puzzle of the Week based on the awesome revealer alone, but the double BACKWARD took away from the a-ha moment for me.

Still, a very impressive construction on a tough set of constraints; clean as a whistle.

Cool pattern! Totally brought me back to a Krozel from a few years ago, his famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) LIES puzzle. I was just starting to do the NYT puzzle at the time, and seeing the crazy LIES within the grid (and the clues!) helped hook me into the NYT puzzle and its Thursday trickery.

This one relies on anagramming the T H U S letters formed in black squares:

• CABANAS = HUTS
• SEAL = SHUT
• REAR = TUSH
• ERGO = THUS

Not as memorable a gimmick as the LIES puzzle, but I appreciate the new direction, the attempt to do something different.

Super, super hard grid to fill. I like the touch of no black squares outside of the four "letters," but that sure makes for a rough go. Not only is a triple-stack of 15s required, but another triple-stack of near-15s. I know some solvers will get frustrated with the number of gluey bits; that's to be expected. It's the price to pay for a wacky trick puzzle like this, especially considering that the four "themers" (CABANAS, SEAL, REAR, ERGO) further constrain the puzzle.

Loved so many of the clues:

• [Action of a flipper] had nothing to do with pinball. (A "flipper" is slang for someone who buys houses on the cheap and flips them for profit.)
• The "tag" in [Baseball tag] refers to a tagline. Baseball, America's NATIONAL PASTIME. (It really should be rock climbing, but I'd settle for curling.)
• [Your highness?] made me laugh. "Highness" is a strange way to express ALTITUDE, but it works with a little humor and imagination.
• Perfect that IMDB chooses to rate SPINAL TAP up to 11.

Just as with the LIES puzzles, I imagine some people will love this one as some will hate it. But one thing is hard to doubt — it will be remembered.

I love how often Joe Krozel introduces themes that have never been seen before. I'm not sure I'd ever think of creating a puzzle where every across entry is an entry in a common acronym.

I'm not sure how I'd even start putting the grid together, for that matter. Knowing how hard it is to achieve this sort of "all acrosses share a feature which the downs do not" task, I was wowed by the feat.

Here are some of the (perhaps) lesser known acronyms:

• HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior (the Great Lakes)
• VAT: value-added tax
• BPOE: Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
• GI: general issue
• NSF: National Science Foundation
• ERA: earned run average

It's too bad about having a bit of oddness around GRIG and LUANA since the rest of the puzzle is so smooth, but both of these entries is inferable from the crosses. And overall, I found it incredibly impressive that Joe could put this concept together.

★ Loved this concept. Word ladders got overdone a while back, so Will doesn't run them very frequently. And when he does, they usually require an additional layer of clevereness. This one hit that sweet spot for me, kooky sentences formed by word ladder chains. LOUD LOUT LOST LAST CAST? Yes, please! The ideas I generally like best and remember are those I would have never dreamed up, and this is one.

Not all of them read so smoothly. HUGE LUGE LUGS LOGS is amusing. But tacking on the LOTS at the end makes it feel wonky. And WILT WILL FILL FUEL FULL is gold, but it doesn't adhere to the tight word ladder constraint. Switching those last two words to make WILT WILL FILL FULL FUEL wrenches it in my ear. Still, the difficulty of making any reasonable-sounding word ladder sentence is so high that I reveled in uncovering each one.

And what a smooth solving experience. My solve was assisted by the fact that I could piece together the word ladders by comparing four-letter chunks, but the general cleanliness also helped. I really only hitched around the TUNG OIL section, and that was mostly because of the very difficult cluing. ["Was ist ___?"] is admirable in its attempt to do something new in cluing LOS, but hotchy-motchy! that made that area tough. I'd much more appreciate it if it hadn't been next door to that TUNG OIL oddball.

The cleanliness is especially impressive considering Joe made this a 136-word puzzle, giving us a whole lot of 5 and 6s, which often make for sections tough to fill (and crack into). I wouldn't have minded if Joe had gone up to 138 or 140 words, making that TUNG OIL section more interesting, but I do like working my mental muscle.

I also would have liked more clever clues, as many of them felt misdirectional in a not super fun method. [Darn, e.g.] for OATH felt too tricksy to me. (["Darn," e.g.] is what it was going for.) [Arrangement of hosing?] gets points for effort, but it didn't stick the landing, as the clue sounds pretty forced. A final clue I'll point out is [Majority group], which made no sense to me. I was all set to deride it when Jim pointed out the "Age of Majority" is a very real thing. Darn! (The oath, not the mending.)

Overall though, absolutely loved the theme. Great stuff.

Neat pattern! A visual treat to drink in this sort of wide-open grid, the likes of which I've never seen before. I love that Joe takes advantage of underused mirror symmetry to do something cool, running a set of full triple-stacks through two other sets. Eye-popping.

This new type of development is something I'm willing to bend the rules for. Typically, my themeless solve becomes troubled by the presence of five(ish) or more gluey bits. Feels inelegant; too rocky for my taste. So usually I'd give a puzzle the stink-eye if it contained AS SIN / ONT / EPI / ABOO / NSTAR / ASA / SES / ERNS, and especially the oddball IN ICE. (If only Han Solo had been frozen in ice, not carbonite!) Although I did notice the preponderance of glue globs, the huge asset of such a cool visual impact outweighs the liabilities for me.

Still not understanding the great clue [Natural thing to feel] for ONEG? I was equally ired that only people with O NEG blood types feel natural! I mean, how blood-ist can you be! Oh. It's ONE G, as in the force of gravity? Well, that's a bit more natural.

I do wish there hadn't been quite as many esoteric names. DIDI CONN and REYNOSA … huh. And as much as I like seeing CHEN in the grid, I had no idea who this TC CHEN fellow was. Felt familiar, but that's just because all us Asians look alike.

And there was the RESTS ON ONES LAURELS. Er, SOARS. OARS, dang it! A quick Googling shows only about 1,000 hits (with RESTS ON ONES OARS in quotes). Not a great sign.

Overall, a neat new development with a high wow factor. Would easily have been my Puzzle of the Week if the liabilities had been cut roughly in half.

ADDED NOTE: Matt Gaffney pointed out T.C. Chen's record collapse in the 1985 US Open. After reading more about him, and seeing some clips of how good-natured he is, I decided I like him.

Plus, he probably is related to me.

★ I really dug both the idea and the execution. Joe takes in-the-language phrases like MISSING PERSON and finds a word (or phrase) it could be missing from. SU______IC was baffling at first, but finally uncovering MISSING PERSON gave me a great a-ha moment. WITT = Wish I'd Thought of This.

I appreciated Joe's selection of themers, all in-the-language. There were a few obvious ones like DELETED SCENE and ABANDONED SHIP, but I had to do some serious thinking to figure out what DROPPED ???? was. At first I tried DROPPED (the) BALL and felt outrage that Joe could let such an inexact phrase go through! Then I just felt silly when I realized it was DROPPED CALL. Great stuff (Joe's choices, not my idiocy).

The grid is so nice, too. I worried upon seeing the eighth theme entry running down the center of the grid. This sort of interlock is visually impressive but often produces compromises. Aside from BOP IN (which I think I actually like after an initial wince), the center is clean, just a CURST (I think I also like this too, upon further consideration) and an ETO. Strong work.

Joe does spend more black squares in that center section though, because of said interlock. Those two smooth curves help frame that difficult central area, making it easier to fill cleanly. Spending black squares like means that the rest of the puzzle must contain more white space, upping the level of filling difficulty (20 8-letter fill words = unheard of!). Check out the four themeless-esque corners. They're all pretty good, even featuring such nice entries as APP STORE and PANDEMIC, but each one does have a bit of THE TOP, LENOS, ERTES, INTL glue.

Not one of these globs is a NO NO NO! type infraction of course, but that all-important NW corner did set not the greatest tone for me. THE TOP feels partial-ish, with ETAS and HEMI making me worry what was to come. Thankfully, my fears were unfounded.

A neat concept + strong execution = a really enjoyable Sunday solve. Might have been one of my all-time favorites if each of the fill-in-the-blanks had been as mystifying and then hugely rewarding as SU(PERSON)IC.

Nice mini-theme; really enjoyed it. I'm beginning to reconsider my position on mini-themes — before I've said that I like them once in a while, but I've been more and more appreciating the extra juice they give, goosing up my solving enjoyment. This one was a little kooky in that the B -> B♭ -> Bb6 progression is slightly marred in my eyes because a flat symbol is not equivalent to a lowercase "b," but I admire the audacious approach. A triple stack of this nature is no small feat.

Speaking of no small feats, there's a reason why mirror symmetry is rare in themelesses. Why? Because a basic tenet of many themelesses is to use four separate stacks of 8's, 9's, or 10's, one pushed into each corner. This isn't possible using mirror symmetry — four sets of stacked 7's yes, but anything higher, no — so a constructor must break new ground. Takes a bold person to venture into largely unknown territory.

Some beautiful clues, too. [They might catch some rays] has nothing to do with UV rays — it's referring to manta rays. DOG EAR has a brilliant clue, playing on the "turn over a new leaf" idiom. PRINCES succeed to the throne, not succeed in life goals (although some do both, I suppose). Even the little AVE shines; States Ave. getting its capital letter camouflaged at the beginning of the clue. A lot of cleverness imbued into the cluing today.

Interesting point Will brings up. I lean toward the test-solver who frowny-faced at the LETTER quasi-dupe. On one hand, Will is the editor and gets to make the rules. On the other, the quasi-dupe feels inelegant to me. I realize that's a completely subjective assessment based on my own biases, but it is what it is. Not a broken law by any means; perhaps more of a hitch.

Same goes for the number of three-letter words. I did feel like the solve was slightly choppy, and I'm guessing this was partially due to these little guys. Most of them are fine, but the effect en masse took a little away for me. Similarly, I tend to notice when the crossword glue count gets over about five. Here, the combination of ENOL, ALL BY, A TALE, IN HER, LOLAS, ESA, etc. felt like too much.

So, some compromises, perhaps too many for me, but overall I appreciate Joe's neverending quest to do something different. There's very few people who push the envelope as much as he does.

★ Joe continues to impress me with his experimentation in constructing. If you haven't noticed, he's recently given me commentary on his older puzzles, which I've found fascinating. Joe falls on one end of the spectrum, using all the software at his disposal to execute on his very creative puzzles, and I've picked up some neat tips by reading through and learning more about his approach.

I hear grumbling every now and then about constructors relying too heavily on software, but why wouldn't you use all the tools at your disposal? Sure, you need to exercise care as you lay out and fill a puzzle to make sure it's clean and snappily filled, but computers make that so much easier. Trying out dozens or even hundreds of grid arrangements is invaluable. And if software enables new developments and directions, I'm all for it.

My experience today started out mixed. I like triple- and quad-stacks, as they're a visually stunning sight. But we've had so many of them that I apply normal criteria to them these days: snazziness plus cleanliness. So when I ran into a smattering of ETH, ITT, the old-timey ALDO / POLA next to each other, HOTL / ANGE, I was a little disappointed, truth be told.

But when I finally hit that WAITING entry, I paused, thinking that there was no way someone could spell out a word in Morse code through the black squares. Impossible! I grinned as I checked the Morse code chart and saw DOT DASH DASH in row four corresponded to W. Joe pulled off something new, different, and cool yet again.

Granted, some people will point out that this is more a puzzle for constructors than solvers. And I wish that the word WAITING had instead been MORSE CODE or even something meta like DOT DASH, but that does seem impossible. I imagine that very few words would fit into a crossword grid like WAITING did. A CHALLENGE TO YOU ALL: is there anything even remotely thematic to Morse code that one could form out of a symmetric grid?

I love seeing these puzzles that push the boundaries. If you have a chance, go back and read Joe's other Constructor's Notes. Even if you don't like some of the puzzles, I would find it difficult not to admire his pushing of the envelope.

Oh man, it's so cool that two of the quad-stack masters joined forces on this one! I love collaborating with other constructors, so I can only imagine the awesome back-and-forths MAS and Joe must have had. (Please tell me there were some tickle fights?) In particular, I enjoyed hearing about one constructor taking an unpaired quad-stack and matching it up with another's. A true peanut-butter and chocolate moment.

Quad-stacks by nature tend to require common letters (RSTLN E), so it's important to choose the entries with those letters that happen to be snappy. (At least so I'm told, since I've never successfully completed one quad-stack, much less two.) I loved getting AM I GLAD TO SEE YOU, an entry I would be happy to encounter in any themeless, much less a quad-stack. What with SACRIFICIAL LAMB on top of it, that bottom section was a mighty treat.

I liked the top one as well, although I didn't know ADELAIDE'S LAMENT so wasn't able to appreciate it as much. After looking it up (it's a Guys and Dolls song), I was happy to have listened to it. Catchy!

Inevitable to get some less-than-optimal crossing answers in a quad-stack. I did love seeing the longer ones like EXORCIST and SCARLET A (much, much better than the usual RED A we usually see in crosswords) and I DIG IT. But not may solvers will like a TENTER or an arbitrary TEN HOURS or SMOOT in their puzzle. I am very interested in the SMOOT-Hawley tariff's effect in intensifying the Great Depression, but we've already established that I'm strange.

It surprises me to hear every once in a while that a solver will enjoy the likes of ENCE or STER. I would prefer not to see those types of crossword glue, but some solvers breathe a sigh of relief because just one answer like this can help them grab a toehold in a puzzle. Go figure!

I appreciate MAS and Joe working hard to put together a puzzle which connects well in the center, something very important to keep it from feeling like two completely separate mini-puzzles. Not only are there plenty of connection points, but SNEER AT and GUESS SO make for some very nice junctions in the middle of the grid.

I wouldn't want every themeless to be a quad-stack because of their unique qualities (I'm looking at you, ENCE and STER), but I sure enjoy getting them every once in a while. A final note, my favorite answer in the puzzle? SLUG IT OUT. What a snappy phrase, and so impressive how it runs straight through that top stack.

Any time I see Joe Krozel's byline, I set aside extra time to solve (and go grab a beer). Perhaps more than any other constructor, Joe pushes the boundaries of puzzle construction, sometimes coming up with ideas I would never have imagined if I had employed a million monkeys typing at a million workstations. No, I've never employed monkeys to generate crosswords for me. Yes, those are all my banana peels.

A phonetic puzzle today, phrases that sound like Japanese words: WASABI, ARIGATO, SUDOKU, and KARAOKE. Light, playful theme, one which actually helped me in my solve today because the rest of the puzzle played like a themeless. In fact, look how much themeless-type material he packs in, thanks to his unusual grid design: OH BROTHER, MOM AND POP, PHARAOHS, and an incredible amount of 7-letter fill. Typically 15x15 xws don't have much long fill due to theme constraints (this is 16x15, FYI), but Joe's shorter than average theme entries allow for more goodness in the fill.

Typically it's desirable to make grids easy to get from one subsection to the next, because it can be a little tricky if there's only one way into a particular area. That happens in the NW and SE regions today, so it's a good thing that the phrases OH BROTHER and MOM AND POP are both lively and clued easily. Still though, it would be nice to have a secondary way in (or out) of those sections.

One aspect of Thursday puzzles that make them slightly easier to fill is that one can use words and phrases that probably wouldn't fly on a Monday. Note ALAMORT in the NW, kind of a head-scratcher with just a couple thousand Google hits. I'm sure there will be some French scholars clapping their hands out there, but how big is the overlap in the Venn diagram of French scholars and Greek scholars (ELEA)?

Enjoyable solve with some fun linguistic play.

I love to climb. Every week I do at least two good hard sessions at my local climbing gym, usually topping out at 5.11b-rated routes. I tend to avoid 5.11c or higher because I'll usually flail, exhaust myself, and fail, but one of my climbing partners usually goads me into getting onto a 5.11c or even 5.11d. "It'll be good for you," he says with an evil smile. And he's completely right. I barely ever make it fully up, I usually come down with heart pounding as if I were dying, and I always learn something, coming away better for the experience.

Let's evaluate the grid from a constructing perspective. There are only a couple dozen themeless puzzles with a lower count than today's 64-worder, and Joe does something most of these other ultra-low word count puzzles do: keeps the grid wide-open (mouse over some of those other puzzles to see how segmented they usually are). As a constructor, it's a daunting task to face those two gigantic corners in the NW and SE. Even a 6x5 corner of white space will cause problems, so just imagine what a challenge an 8x8 region represents. Kudos to Joe for having the guts to try it.

For the most part, he manages to get in reasonable entries without a ton of junk. Nothing besides LISTENS TO REASON and ORNAMENTAL TREES are a "wow!" type entry, but most do a workman-like job. In the NW, subpar answers like POTTIES, AT US, and REMISE hold the region together, which is what those big sections often require. In the SE, THERMOSET plays that "glue" role. That BARTOLI/THERMOSET crossing was a total guess for me (I could have sworn I worked with THERMASET materials back when I was a mechanical engineer) but after some thought, that's more my fault than the puzzle's. A recent Wimbledon winner should be fair game, so I'll file MARIAN BARTALI away for the future.

Aargh, it's MARION BARTOLI, consarnit!

It takes a great deal of practice and perseverance to be able to accurately solve something like this. Puzzles like these are useful in that they force many of us to stretch beyond our abilities and learn something, coming away better for the experience. I have a great deal of respect for Joe as a constructor and appreciate today's 5.11d+ workout.