Kevin Christian author page

Constructing a 72-word themeless is like performing a forward somersault in Olympic diving. It's a low difficulty level, but if you have perfect form and your landing is splash-free, you can still rack up an excellent total score.

On the technical side, Kevin did well to feature 16 long slots (8+ letters). A typical 72-word themeless has about 14, so this creates more potential for artistry. It does so at the cost of mid-length entries — note that there are only two 7-letter entries in the entire grid — but eight-letter slots have so much more potential for zing than sevens, which often COARSEN with neutral material.

Artistically, some long entries shine. Fans of "The Simpsons" might love having their favorite dive bar featured. JUNETEENTH debuted in the crossworld back when it became a national holiday two years ago, but it still makes for a memorable 1-Across. And music fans could post about POST MALONE or feel forever young about a throwback to ALPHAVILLE.

Perhaps some could ding URAL (crossing ARI) and FENS, but the Russian judge takes offense to the former and the Canadian the latter. Otherwise, hardly a splash upon entry into the water; super clean.

There's some unfulfilled potential in the ESTHETE, SETS EYES ON and SLEEPING IN slots — most add-a-preposition phrases don't shine, though MOOCHED OFF is more colorful than others — but overall, a solid WAYMO for Kevin to dip his toe into the Saturday waters.

Last night, I LACKED CONFIDENCE as I attempted to get my kids to eat something besides MAC AND CHEESE, so I put on some AC/DC. "Back in Black" pumped me up when I was a kid (for mathletic competitions, but whatever), so maybe it'd make for PEACHES AND CREAM all night long?

I should have TRACKED CHANGES in my list before Big Balls started playing.

Neat to include BACKGROUND CHECK; a sly nod to BACK IN BLACK fans. A shame that black-clad Batman hasn't done a BACK IN DC BLACK spoof album yet. He does a lot of dirty deeds. Dirt cheap.

I appreciated that SACRED COW led things off since CRACK / BACK / JACK would have felt too rhyme-y.

I failed at "Name That Theme" today, but in the best way possible. I couldn't see AC and DC while solving, and when I hit ACDC, I was thunderstruck. Great decision not to circle the letters (sorry, ACME!).

Consistency is usually a blessing, but I was distracted by always having AC in the first word, and DC split across the phrase. It turns out that it's impossible to do otherwise — what words are going to start with DC, except DC COMICS, DC UNITED, etc.? I'd almost rather have A C D C spread out, like in ARCHDUCHESS, but that either requires telltale circles or makes this a mid-week solve, since it'd be much harder to find those letters.

Acme and Kevin need to popularize an AC/KC band! Think of all the theme entries containing consecutive *ACKC* …

I'm GELID on having both COOL and COLD (and GELID in a Monday grid), but solid gridwork otherwise. I bet newb solvers won't get shot down in flames today.

Such a solid example of a "hidden words" theme. Kevin does it by the book, each AFRICAn country embedded within a colorful phrase, each country spanning at least two words of the phrase. I especially enjoyed the lengthier finds, KENYA in CHICKEN YAKITORI excellent. It was also neat to see AFRICA spotlighted, as crosswords often focus so much on North America and Europe.

Great gridwork, too. The northwest corner is so important in setting tone, and ARCANE / CAR WAX / NAIL ART is a fantastic way to start things off. Nearby, Kevin worked in UBERIZE, such an interesting business term, meaning "follow UBER's disruptive business model." Getting LOUIE crossing HUEY also gave me a smile, as I watched a ton of "Duck Tales" as a kid. Fine, as an adult!

I considered this one for the POW!, but it didn't do enough to distinguish itself from the "hidden words" pack. Two ways that it might have succeed:

1. Longer hidden words. MALI is too easy to work with — a minute of searching turned up FORMAL INTERVIEW, ANIMAL INSTINCT, THERMAL IMAGER. I'd have been more impressed with MANGO LASSI or AFGHAN ARMY.
2. Revealer using wordplay. AFRICA describes the theme fine, but if there had been something as basic as how REC CENTER = REC in the middle of phrases, that would have helped. I'd love to brainstorm more on this concept, perhaps going after LANDLOCKED African countries, to describe how the countries are "locked" inside phrases?

Hilarious clue for TWERKED. Will Shortz has to be strait-laced, working for the NYT, but he has a soft spot for bringing up the rear.

Well-made puzzle that might have even won the POW! in some weeks. With an extra layer, it would have been a shoo-in.

Such high marks for technical excellence! I usually find some aspects to nit-pick in both Acme and Kevin's layouts and gridwork, but not today. Themers positioned perfectly, even shifting ANKLE BOOT to the left to avoid an awkward letter pattern where BAGEL sits. (??G?K is terrible, so the shift avoids that problem.)

Almost every Monday puzzle should contain exactly what this one does: super-smooth short fill (minor UNE and odd A AND M aside), a few long bonuses (REDBIRDS, DOG SAT, NO CUTS!, and that's DOES LAPS, not DOE SLAPS), along with fine grid flow. I might have tried for a little less segmentation between the upper right corner and the diagonal swath, but that's more a wish list item, not a problem.

Sometimes constructors accuse me of holding them to too high a standard; five themers necessarily come with trade-offs. That might be the case with hard constraints — extra Xs or funny letter patterns — but in general, if you're not executing to today's standard, you have to work harder.

Well done, Acme and Kevin — I wonder if there's some interesting synergy here between your two construction styles?

So why no POW!? Because if I were the editor, I wouldn't have selected this one. Not because of any political sort of reason, but because I want puzzles to delight. Uplift. Create a temporary bubble of happiness in people's lives. While I can admire the technical merit, riffing on YOU'RE FIRED during a time of generational-record unemployment feels cruel.

I admire the clever hiding of CAN, AXE, SACK, and BOOT's meanings. Such a downer, though. I get that some folks will celebrate the irony of Trump's "firing," but that delight is more gas pouring onto our national dumpster fire.

Now look who's a downer! I'll leave you with cute deer instead. No slapping, I promise.

PSY/CHO! It's such a fitting split, the movie poster containing a vertical slash through it.

Wait. The slash on the poster is horizontal, cutting every letter in half, not PSY/CHO into two parts. Never mind.

Okay, I buy Brad's explanation of the split personality issue = PSY / CHO. I did also wonder if this might be offensive to those with mental health issues, though. Mimicking the movie poster with a black horizontal slash across the puzzle might have avoided that issue (explaining that it's art copying art).

And a jagged line of black squares across the middle of the grid could have split the puzzle in half! What can I say, I love it when crosswords break the rules. This would have been a perfect reason to do so.

Kudos to Kevin for finding a symmetric set that so fully describes the movie, and to Brad for polishing it. Neat how PSY and CHO fortuitously intersected other themers.

There's such a high density of thematic material, though — it's no surprise that there's a price to pay. I didn't mind any one entry, but the agglomeration of BRIS SCTV IONA BOFFO POLER APER made me pause. I definitely wouldn't give this puzzle to a newer solver, except if he/she were a huge ALFRED HITCHCOCK fan. Even then, I might pause.

Perhaps a less traditional "here are a bunch of things about X" tribute concept — if not a black slash mimicking the movie poster, perhaps arranging themers to form the famous shower scene? — could have been more memorable.

I love it when a Monday puzzle temporarily mystifies me. What connects LORD OF THE RINGS, RICE KRISPIES BOX, SANTAS WORKSHOP? Ah! They all contain ELVES!

Wait just a second. Are you saying … that SOYLENT GREEN IS ELVES? Eew, Rice Krispies Treat, my ass!

Come on, you're telling me you didn't think the crossword was implying this? LORD OF THE RINGS and SANTAS WORKSHOP contains ELVES inside, so for consistency, doesn't that mean a RICE KRISPIES BOX also contains ELVES?

You can't argue with logic.

Aside from wondering if this were true (and how many people I could get to believe it), I wondered if RICE KRISPIES BOX is fair game as a crossword phrase. Here are a few entries akin to RICE KRISPIES BOX — you tell me if they should be allowable:

• CLIF BAR WRAPPER
• CHOCOLATE COIN FOIL
• GROUND ELF MEAL

Logic never lies, my friend.

Whatever your view on the plight of the poor elves being farmed for their meat, it's hard to argue with the ROCK STAR gridwork. Three themers plus a short revealer should mean that there's solid assets (HEADDESK, FREE WIFI, ROCKSTAR, ENVISAGE, yes!) and virtually no liabilities (TO BE and that's it). Well done! (Just like how I order my elf steaks!)

One could argue that there are a lot of proper names, many of which could be tough for newbs: NEALE, JOSIE, OTIS, AILEY. Cutting that list in half would be an improvement, but it's not something that should trigger a revision. Nice to get a rare J from JOSIE, anyway, to spice things up.

Overall, an offering I'd happily give to a newer solver, featuring a delightful, if disgusting, moment of discovery.

The colorful LEOPARD PRINT makes its second appearance this month! I'm sorely tempted to expand my wardrobe, much to my wife's chagrin.

Mathematics has an entire subcategory of study called "packing problems." It's not just theoretical, either — there are important applied problems related to shipping, molecular structure, and of course, packing one's bags for a trip. And let's not forget crossword construction!

Packing four theme entries into a 15x15 puzzle is boring. There are so many ways it can be done; way too much flexibility. But when you up that to five or six or even seven themers, that's when constructors crack their knuckles in anticipation of a Herculean challenge.

When a puzzle packs in a ridiculous number of theme answers in an elegant way, it's something you want to study. Delight at. Clap for. It's like the feeling you get upon finally solving a "fit these pieces into a frame" brainteaser. Check out the elegance of the packing puzzle on the right, for example.

When the ultra-high density is enabled by blunt force, though …

I don't mind when constructors take on personal challenges, if the resulting grid sings for solvers. And sometimes a high-density packing can have a wow effect — I heard some praise for Bruce Haight's SS puzzle, for instance.

But when there's so much to turn off newer solvers — AGA TSE NEAP ERE UNI etc. — the degraded solving experience makes IT SO not worth it.

Now, I did like some things — YOWZA was fun, as was MOOCH (huge "Mutts" fan here). I also appreciated that Kevin and Acme made an attempt to elevate the overdone "initialisms" genre. If there had been a reason to include seven LPS, perhaps some band named LP7 or whatever, I'd have said it was justified.

But the ultra-high density approach, replete with such a high amount of crossword glue, doesn't make for a good gateway puzzle for newer solvers.

ADDED NOTE: reader Jeff Doyle-Horney points out that there's an eighth themer — a young dog from SoCal at 23 Down. Ha!

Business in the front, party in the back! A celebration of movie MULLETs today. Usually, I'm not fond of listicle-like puzzles, but what a neat visual element, adding pics of the six stars right on the pdf file. Hilarious!

Normally I like to see a bit of variety in genders, ethnicities, etc. But today is probably one where women and minorities can rejoice that they weren't included. Huzzah!

I have a strong image in my head of what a MULLET looks like. Sly and Travolta are perfect, neat up front, letting it all hang out in the rear. Mel … not so much. And Nic, well, Nic just looks ridiculous. So, not exactly the spot-on MULLET-mania I was hoping for.

Especially given that, it felt like too much theme material, needlessly overtaxing the grid. Right up top, THE LOST BOYS over DIRTY DANCING — there's not a ton of choices for the ??B?Y pattern. I don't mind a short duplicated word here or there — THE or I or AN, whatever — but BOY crossing BOYS? That's no bueno. Felt so so so so so inelegant.

All over, there are too many spots that are overstressed with too many themers fixed into place, requiring NSEC, ISO, EREI, TOR/CLE, ACCTS, etc. No bueno again!

And I can't condone PACA (and ENO to a much lesser extent) on a Monday. Those poor Monday solvers!

I did appreciate some of the bonuses, DOGFIGHT and SCORPION especially, helping to keep MULLET-hating solvers engaged. But these put yet more strain on the grid (see: PACA). Oofa.

Getting rid of CONAIR — which doesn't feel as memorable as the others to me — would at least have helped Kevin present a solid NW corner.

Overall, I love seeing something a little different, and the actual pics in the pdf are awesome! Execution, though … BOYs OH BOY.

I did very much enjoy Kevin's note — such funny MULLET love!

LIGHTS … CAMERA … ACTION! Nice sequence hidden at the ends of three phrases. I liked COVERT ACTION the best of the three — not only is it a snappy entry, but it gave a meta wink to the fact that ACTION was covertly(ish) hidden. CANDID CAMERA feels a bit old at this point, but it is a famed show. BRIGHT LIGHTS didn't feel complete without "big city," but it also does work.

FILM DIRECTOR serves its purpose to reveal what's going on. I would have preferred something less direct and more playful, but I can't think of what that might be. Also, this is a Monday puzzle, so FILM DIRECTOR's explicit, no-nonsense reveal is probably better to target a broader swath of solvers.

I usually am not a fan of bonus fill jammed into a grid at the expense of short fill, but I was wowed by FLOTSAM and JETSAM right next to each other — in the proper order! Beautiful. The letter starts that they force — FJ, LE, OT — greatly reduce flexibility, necessitating the inelegant triplet of ONT, RTE, DOR. But none of those three are bad by themselves. Well worth the trade-off for me.

I might not have been okay with that trade-off if the rest of the puzzle had contained a lot more crossword glue, but with just some MASC, ISR, B AND B (usually written B&B), I thought Kevin made a good decision to go ahead with that FLOTSAM / JETSAM pair, along with the associated prices he had to pay.

I would have loved a more oblique revealer I had to work for — I want to earn my a-ha moment. Maybe something like LETS ROLL or even a picture of a clapperboard made out of black squares? It's a tough balance — being too clever can sometimes leave a big chunk of solvers confused.

HEY JOE hints at four colorful JOE ___ phrases: JOE BOXER, JOE CAMEL, JOE COOL, and JOE BLOW. It would have been neat to have SIX PACK ABS as a themer, and I'm sure there are others, but these ones were fun.

Loved BOXER REBELLION, COOL BEANS, and BLOW HOT AND COLD, all snazzy phrases worth featuring. CAMEL CASE … it was interesting to learn about. I never knew there was a term for "capitalizing a word within a phrase" like PowerPoint. And it's grown on me since, as a middle capital does kind of look like a camel's hump! Cool beans indeed. (Apologies to all the young people who just groaned at my usage of that phrase.)

Some interesting mid-to-long fill, BAD LUCK my favorite. As a Seahawks fan, I cannot abide having the hated STEELERS in my grid, but I suppose it's good fill. Bah! DUE NORTH and ASEXUAL elevate the solving experience too.

ALL WORK … boy, that sounds like a partial to me. When would you ever say that by itself? Maybe ALL WORK AND NO PLAY, clued in parallel structure as ["You gotta leave the office sometime or you'll have zero life …"].

I have a strong preference for Monday puzzles to be particularly smooth, to draw in newbie solvers. There wasn't anything really egregious except the heavily crosswordy ETUI (just imagine a newbie solving this puzzle and staring at the completed grid, wondering what mistake he/she made to end up with the weird E T U I sequence), but with CANER, APER, ALAR, and URAL, it felt like too much for me. I appreciate Kevin's effort, though, as incorporating a few pieces of snappy fill often comes at a price. Seems like ETUI was the price to pay for BAD LUCK, for example.

Glad that 1-Down, HEY, didn't totally give away the game. I would still have preferred to see HEY / JOE across the middle in order to delay the reveal, but it was nice to still nice to not know what the puzzle was about until the end.

NORSE GODS hidden in colorful phrases. ODIN, THOR, LOKI, and … TYR? Apparently Kevin and Brad aren't afraid of getting on Baldur, Frigg, Freyja, and Sif's bad side. Seriously though, it's too bad BALDUR doesn't get his due, as he has a great story, the "invincible" one getting killed by his one downfall, mistletoe. Someone have a famous kid named ARCHIBALD URANUS or something.

Great construction. There was so much excellent fill that I had to stop and admire it a few times during the solve. Five themers with a central 11 is a tough arrangement, so it's really cool that Kevin and Brad worked in BOSSMAN and LAW FIRM adjacent to that central TRUTH OR DARE. Great bonus material! I also liked those big SW and NE corners, with the juicy HEEL TAP, TELL MAMA, and EN VOGUE. Even BARRON was fun for this financial type (although BARRONS would have been much better).

Interesting to work in two Olympic figures, Matt BIONDI and SHANI Davis. I think the former is perfectly legit, with 11 medals, including five golds in one Games. SHANI Davis … I usually avoid that S???I pattern because SHANI is one of the few entries that works. But I read up more on him, and the fact that he's the first black athlete to win a Winter gold in an individual event is groundbreaking. Okay, he's perfectly fine too.

Took me a while to figure out why PIANO was an apt instrument for Alicia Keys. Keys. Keys! D'oh! Good one.

Nice to know that an EEL's blood is poisonous. Eel's blood vs. mistletoe? I'll take my chances on the latter.

Really strong execution. If TYR had been at ODIN, THOR, or LOKI's level, this would have been a serious contender for the POW.

★ This puzzle tickled me. Perhaps it's the piles of drivel that I read to my daughter that make Dr. SEUSS stand out? Not all his work is amazing, but so much of it makes reading board books (over and over and over) at least palatable. Love the "Because after all, / A person's a person, no matter how small" quote from "Horton Hears a Who," for example. It's easy to make rhymes, not so easy to make ones with a neat story and a flowing meter.

Kevin and Brad did a nice job of getting in a good amount of longer fill without introducing too much glue. I love MALE EGO, the easily bruised thing, and it's nice to see the full EMO BANDS instead of the usual EMO. I also liked getting Brad's erudite vibe in the mid-length stuff: PRECIS, NEWELS, MENSA, and ABSCAM, thankfully updated with an "American Hustle" clue.

I did notice a ton of 3-letter entries, which made me feel like I was switching from one answer to the next awfully fast. There are a whopping 28 of them, which explains it. Thankfully, most of them were innocuous, with just a bit of TES and UNA, and ABA and ANA kind of things.

I would have also liked to have the DR in Dr. SEUSS as part of the revealer, or at least SEUSS positioned in a central or final across slot. Tough to do with five themers, though.

Most of the time, I'm not wild about puzzles that have most of their oomph in the clues, but seeing snippets of Dr. SEUSS did it for me — beautiful idea. I'm big fans of both Brad (who publishes my stuff in the Chronicle of higher Education) and Kevin (who I roomed with at the ACPT two years ago), so I was glad to see a solid and entertaining Tuesday puzzle of out their collaboration.

Nice start to the week, a vowel progression using S + the five long vowel sounds. I like that Kevin and Acme choose some wacky spellings like SIOUX instead of the straightforward SUE. Kept me on my toes. And the themers are well-chosen, a quintet of strong phrases. It's hard to argue with SCI-FI CONVENTION. I've never been to one, but I'm hoping my brother and I get a chance to use our Spock and Evil Spock (one guess as to which one I am) costumes again.

Great layout today. Vowel progressions necessitate five themers of course, which usually makes gridwork a little challenging. Many constructors would section off the grid into bunches of short fill to make things easier, but Kevin and Acme do well to leave four slots for longer fill. WHERE AM I, TIME FLIES, NON TOXIC, GET OVER IT! Four for four, if you ask me. Also, just as they've spaced the theme answers out, they've spaced these four long fill entries out too. Good spacing often is key in achieving sparkly, clean fill.

Since this theme type has been done quite a bit in the past, I would have liked a little more tightness. The first three had me smiling (aside from SAY HEY KID missing the important "THE" start), with identical three-word phrases (allowing for hyphenation is fine by me in this case) and three-letter starts. Perfect! The fourth made me pause, as the SO broke the pattern. Why not SEW? I wondered.

And the fifth went completely different with SIOUX. That's perfectly fine, but I think I would have really liked it if all the themers had fit identical patterns, or all of them had been completely different. Personal preference, of course.

Nice work in the fill today, really just the NE corner giving me a slight pause with its ONE TO, OR A, and OTERI. The last is a perfectly fine entry, and the SNL tie-in helps, but until she does something with her career like Kristen Wiig, I'll usually try to avoid using her in grids.

Interesting grid today, one that perfectly embodies a standard and timeless themeless-building principle: use four triple-stacks of 8's, separated out into the four corners. Visually, a pleasant grid pattern, easy on the eyes. There's something so pleasing about its symmetry, as Kevin described above.

Nice stacks. The NW corner is particularly fine; JONESING / EMOTICON (Do people really say EMOJI now? Kids these days.) / RED SAUCE. I might have preferred the more colloquial JONESIN', but that's splittin' hairs. Nice that Kevin managed to take pretty good advantage of his eight-letter slots, even the single-word entries carefully chosen to still give some oomph. CATALYST is a strong entry, and STREAMED gives the puzzle a bit of 21st century feel.

I'd make a funny comment about INDIANAN being a middle-of-the-road entry, but Will is from Indiana. More importantly, so is my wife. And Bloomington, home of IU, is quite a nice place to visit. Not to mention IU's basketball team has the most ridiculous warm-up pants ever. (I may or may not secretly want a pair.)

This layout doesn't have other long (i.e. 8+ letter) entries, so Kevin has to take advantage of his seven-letter slots to gain more assets — often not an easy task. I really like NBA GAME with its fun clue (and schadenfreude against the often big-headed Heat), and BAY AREA spoke to me, as it's where both Kevin and I hail from. It's too bad that the rest of the 7s were just neutral, i.e. PASSION, OPEN ERA, etc.

For non-stunt grids, I like to see five or less glue entries, so getting CDT, SOR, SST, ASST, A TRY, ESAS, NITRE did feel somewhat inelegant. But overall, a nice array of eight-letter entries helped make up for that.

Enjoyable to hear the interplay between constructor and editor. Nice puzzle today, made nicer with Will's touch of adding the circled E and T. If only the puzzle could add a sensory element to those circles, making them taste like REESES PIECES. Seriously, we have smartphones and life-saving medical devices but no one's invented "Solve N Taste" yet? Constructors: contact me for Solve N Taste® licensing rights.

An unusual layout today. I always appreciate seeing something different out of a construction, if nothing else to break convention and open one's mind to what else is possible. And this grid certainly allows Kevin to work in a lot of good stuff about a memorable movie. A drawback is that the short thematic material tends to get lost in the shuffle (I've highlighted all the theme material in the grid below to help it stand out). For some, that may not be an issue at all, but in my opinion it causes a slight loss of elegance (n.b.: some might see this layout as having increased elegance, due to the high degree of theme interlock). Additionally, the cross-referencing (OUTER/SPACE and REESES/PIECES) often causes complaints from solvers, forcing them to jump around as they solve.

Amazing that Kevin was able to jam in some long fill too, even given all the thematic constraints. DOORBELL and THE MRS are especially nice. EAR DOCTOR is a real profession (otologist), yes, but as a phrase, isn't not as snazzy as the other long fill. And given that the north and south sections suffer a bit with STER, AGIO, A GIRL, I might have preferred less long fill if it meant getting rid of some of that. But it's hard to say if breaking up some long answers would even be possible with this layout (without making the puzzle feel too segmented).

Overall, neat theme idea with a lot of good stuff packed in.