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Fail at "Name That Theme" once, shame on me. Fail twice ... shame on me even harder. Dang it!

I had a sense that this looked familiar, but I still struggled to connect GOLDEN, LEAVE, FIVE, COMEDY. That sounded (vaguely) enough like Alec Baldwin's impression of Trump (hey, he's orangey-golden colored, yeah?) that I buzzed in.

Alex Trebek (note how similar his mustache is to Will Shortz's) gave me that condescending tsk tsk smirk.

I'll take "Revealers" for $100, Will. Perhaps something like BUT IS IT ART or PICTURE THIS could have been a fun way to point newbs to today's "hidden synonyms" theme of DOODLE, TRACE, DRAW, SKETCH. I worry that some will miss what's going on.

Delightful SCULPTED clue! Repurposing a valid phrase like "made a bust" is a clever bit of wordplay. Not only that, but it echoes the artsy theme. Such a treat for a Monday puzzle; I'd love to see more of this.

Beautiful gridwork, big ups to Luke. I tend to go on and on about long bonuses, but this is a great example of how you can make your grid sparkle with mid-length material like KENDALL, SWEETEN, CODDLED, RESCIND. You wouldn't write home about any one of those entries, but in total, they elevates the solving experience. Achieving that while forcing yourself to keep to a minimal AS IN, VID makes for a fantastically beginner-friendly product.

The theme wasn't as interesting as Evan Kalish's BIG PICTURE progression, but it worked fine. Regular solvers might have less of a Spidey-sense "haven't I seen that before?" tingle if Will had sat on this one a few more months.

I had an eye-opening discussion with Jim about this themeless. In our regular jibber-jabber about the week's worth of puzzles, he noted that for today's, EVE CURIE was his favorite entry / clue pair, by far.

I didn't literally fall out of my chair, but I wanted to. (That'd have given people at my local coffee shop something to pep up their day!)

I struggled with EVE CURIE, eventually piecing her together, and grumbled that the puzzle was being teachy. Okay, EVE CURIE is crossworthy, no doubt, but why not save that trivia for another puzzle, to spice up the usually boring short entry, EVE?

Jim usually summarizes his feelings about each puzzle with a single line or thought, but here, he wrote a theme paper. His well-thought-out discourse:

1. The clue is an amazing piece of trivia.
2. There's no way I know that answer.
3. But wait, families with Nobels? There can't be that many.
4. Oh, yeah, Pierre and Marie Curie both won.
5. So the last name must be CURIE.
6. And we have a three-letter first name that we can easily get from crosses.

It's rare that my opinions change so drastically, but it does happen. EVE CURIE shall hereafter stick in my mind, with a positive connotation.

Perhaps I'd have been more tolerant of learning a new name if I hadn't already struggled with ENESCU, ZACHARIAH, and ALISON Lurie.

Because they're so difficult to construct, 68-word puzzles will generally have some wastage. This was a perfect example, as DETESTED, ASSAULTS, even EMPHATIC weren't emphatic enough to make me sit up. Thankfully, Luke included enough solid phrases — SPEED DATES / HEAVEN SENT / ON RETAINER made for a snazzy triplet, just for starters — to make up for some of the potential left on the table.

Day 7 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For.

Just a simple removal of a word theme, yeah? Subtract THE to get kooky answers? But look how much the meanings change:

BEHIND THE SCENES to BEHIND (rump) SCENES

WELL OFF THE MARK to WELL-OFF MARK (Zuckerberg)

SEAL THE DEAL to (barking) SEAL DEAL

Every one of these nine themers made me stop and admire the magnitude of change caused by omitting such a simple word. Bravo!

I also appreciated that NW corner. It's wide-open enough that it'd pose a challenge to most constructors. To finish with so many assets — HOT TUB, BLIMEY, HUBBUB, TWITCH — and not a single drop of crossword glue? It's a coup.

A friend of mine told me that people often judge a crossword by its 1-Across, sometimes abandoning ship to do other things if it's ugly. Not only does today's puzzle have a lovely 1-Across, but that NW corner just sings.

And thus ends WTF? Week. But let me finish it by saying another thank you to everyone who reads the stuff I have to say. Special thanks to Will, Joel, and Sam for their continual support and feedback.

Jim and I are lucky people.

What a neat idea! Congrats on the debut, Luke. When I got to that central entry, I smugly sat back. And entered MOUNT RAINIER. So what if it didn't fit? There had to be some rebus-y shenanigans, right? Some Seattle-ite I am. I wasn't aware that MT ST HELENS spread ASH into 11 different states — fun to learn!

As with any established theme type, it's important to do something new, something different, or at least incorporate snappy themers which add zing. Art must evolve or it dies. And I like what Luke has done here. Instead of just saying "Why don't I do a rebus with ASH squares?" he uses that fact about spreading ASH into 11 different states as a rationale. I like that step to go above and beyond. It would have been really cool if the eleven states had been incorporated somehow. Perhaps if 1A had been something like (WA)LTER and 1D (ASH)CROFT — a two-way rebus? Those extra layers are tough to incorporate, but how cool would that have been?

The grid did feel a bit restricted to me, so it wasn't a surprise to find out it was an 80-worder. I didn't mind that so much since there were still a lot of long answers, but the abundance of three-letter answers (25) did make it feel a bit choppy for me. Will typically doesn't allow more than 22-ish three-letter words in a puzzle, and for good reason. Each three-letter word typically has been used so much that it's tough to come up with strong clues for them (that haven't been used before). And to me, so much short stuff brings a feeling of inelegance, both by making a puzzle look constricted and producing a choppy solve where you have to switch from word to word more quickly. Subjective, of course.

A couple of rough spots, not surprising given the 13-letter central answer plus eleven instances of ASH. Even six-ish rebus squares can be difficult, so having eleven is quite the challenge, especially when you consider you can't duplicated answers (if you have ASHEN, you can't use ASHES). The NW and SE corners are where I'd expect to see some difficulty (considering they're the biggest chunks of open white space), and there are some chunky bits. By fixing ASHCROFT, ASHAMED, and TEXAS HOLD EM (great entry!) into place, you've constrained three sides of that subspace. Tough to fill cleanly from there, and OON / FLIC / AREOLE are not a great trio. I wonder if moving that first ASH square to the start of 5D would have been better (ASHRAM, A SHARP, etc.)? Leaving that long 1D unconstrained might have given better flexibility in filling that tough region.

Finally, some great clues. Luke's already pointed out the clever clue for NOOSES and LOO — bravo, sir! I also liked the one for EVEL, which had me thinking about Olympic long jumping.

Congrats again, and I hope to see more from Luke! BTW, Will recently put out a note that he's in greatest need of Sunday-size puzzles and non-rebus Thursdays.