Lynn Lempel author page

This theme made a lot less sense when I confidently plunked in HUMAN GENOME.

Fun reinterpretation of NATURE, from "inherent characteristics" to "natural phenomena." It's neat that Lynn found four examples that fit the form (body part) + (natural occurrence). It's doubly neat that they're so consistent, each one overtly referencing the body part. If you'd never been to the FINGER LAKES, I bet you could guess what they (roughly) look like.

Surely there are more examples that would fit? Knee … plant? (Jill has given up taking care of plants, what with the kid knees smashing into them.)

Nose … waterfall? (See: Jake's nose since the start of the school year.)

Elbow … macaroni? (Nope, the only mac ‘n cheese my kids will eat is hardly natural and causes digestive problems.)

Butt ... (TMI.)

BUNGLER is such a fun word. It perfectly sums up my experiences as a parent. See also: TRIAL and LOUDEN.

Solid gridwork, rarely easy with a central 9. I'm not wild about all the extra black squares on the sides of the puzzle — single cheaters could have worked in the place of the triplets — but whatever gets you smooth results is ultimately fine. It would be a different story if there were already a ton of black squares elsewhere, but a total of 38 black squares syncs with most every editorial spec sheet.

I did hesitate on the ELAND crossing the OLLIE. Amusing image, an antelope attempting to leap while riding a skateboard, but perhaps cluing to a famous Ollie would have been better. Or at least, one of my favorite Ollies.

HEADy Monday theme that will hardly be the butt of jokes.

I enjoyed being mystified all the way until hitting the revealer. I was bamboozled, trying to figure out how PARK and DATE and TALK and BILL were related. It all came together with DOUBLECROSS = two words literally crossing each other, and each word can complete the pattern "double ___." Double PARK / double DATE, double CHIN / double DIP, etc.

Double AGENT was especially fitting for the DOUBLE CROSS theme!

It's nearly inevitable to get some gluey short fill around crossing themers. Take the region around BEANSTALK / BILLY, for example — three-letter slots can be tricky to fill smoothly when they're so highly constrained. On one hand, I might have enjoyed a SYD Tha KYD cross-reference. However, it wouldn't have been fair to early-week solvers, so the easy clue, letting newbs see SYD in "Easy does it," was a smart call.

Lynn is such a professional that almost everything else was smooth. As much as I hate partials, I usually prefer them to tough names in early-week puzzles for the benefit of newer solvers. LEDA often is better clued as [___ double-life] on a Monday or Tuesday, but with DOUBLE CROSS already in the grid, that would have been inelegant.

There are a huge number of words that can follow "double" in a phrase, so it would have been fantastic to have some way to tighten things up; to sharpen to a-ha moment. Still, I did enjoy trying to puzzle out how the crossing words were related.

Beasts of burden featured today, four animals assigned to simile duty. I appreciated that it's not just another "general animal similes" theme, since so many have been done over the years, but it more specifically uses a consistent "(verb) LIKE A (animal)" pattern.

I enjoy "tight" themes, i.e. there's a limited set, because that can lend a sense of elegance and/or awe. If it seems too easy to flesh out a theme, it can feel like anyone could do it. This one doesn't have perfect tightness, but there aren't nearly as many other options as I first thought. I came up with:

• EAT LIKE A PIG
• FLY LIKE AN EAGLE
• LAUGH LIKE A HYENA
• SING LIKE A CANARY

And a fifth one that wouldn't fly with the New York Times involving equine evacuation would match nicely with DRINK LIKE A FISH.

It would have been hilarious to tell a story with the four verbs, perhaps WATCH EAT DRINK LAUGH describing party animals getting together to Netflix and Chill. However, one of the most important aspects of a constructor's job is to set up solvers for victory, and Lynn did that well for newer puzzlers. It's not perfect, since something like RIME crossing IRMA might flummox newbs, but it's close.

Let's play ... "Name That Extra Themer!" This man could believably have been in BILLY JOEL's We Didn't Start the Fire, his views on CLEAN COAL causing Germans to PIGEONHOLE him, his EXIT POLL numbers leaving him a LOST SOUL.

Oh, and his head looks like a CEREAL BOWL.

Bing bing bing, it's HELMUT KOHL! Someone stop me, I'm on a roll!

Rhyming themes are a tough sell, but Lynn clears the threshold with six rhyming words, all of which 1.) use different spellings, and 2.) are one syllable. It makes for a tight set, with HELMUT KOHL the only other one I could think of. Him being from decades ago (Kohl, not me! Okay, me too) he's falling out of Monday newb-friendly territory.

Newb-friendly grid, as is Lynn's specialty. She took such care in her layout, using those three central black square diagonals so well to separate the themers. It's often easier to pinch themers together when there are six of them — moving BILLY JOEL up one row, for example, can improve gridding flexibility — but the every-other-row pattern is so pleasing.

This one didn't stand out in the overdone rhyming-but-different-spellings genre, but as a whole, even a troll would say it's a friendly Monday stroll. Perhaps not in Seoul, but—

*XWORD INFO BOT INITIATING DAMAGE CONTROL*

People ping me so often with various TO BE OR NOT TO BE ideas that it's hard for me to be impressed with any of them. That leaning made me shrug when I hit today's revealer. Rhyming words, one with a double B, one with a single B … not impressive, since there should be a big handful of these. Dozens. Hundreds, maybe!

May-B not.

The fact that HABIT / RABBIT and TREBLE / PEBBLE don't just rhyme, but their endings differ only by a single vs. double B, makes the set so tight. I couldn't think of a single other pair that would work like this.

My appreciation for this concept grew and grew. There's something so impressive about the theme tightness.

And there's Lynn's beautiful gridwork, perfect for newer solvers. It's not technically perfect, but entries like ESE are easily figure-out-able. Plus, they're fine prices to pay to allow for the fun long bonuses, THIN MINT, BELGIANS, ENTR'ACTE.

Not only a strong Monday grid, but a crossworthy addition to the TO BE OR NOT TO BE genre.

I used to call this theme type "parsing puzzles," but I got so many questions. Parsing, as in par sing? Is that a hybrid golf / Broadway sport? Parse, as in Persephone — more like Parsephone because she split (ha) her time between Earth and Hades?

I have peculiar readers, and I'm proud of it.

I tried DO THE SPLITS as a revealer for a puzzle of yore, but Will Shortz politely said something to the effect of "shouldn't a revealer make sense and feel apt?" So, let's call these types of puzzles "spaced out" themes for now.

I enjoyed most of today's finds, Lynn treating us to natural sounding PROP A GATE and CAST A NET, and best of all, the spicy CARD A MOM. That's almost as evocative as CRAW A DAD!

Huh? That's not a thing? Well, if CAB A RET is a thing, then surely ...

Be quiet, you. You know you thought the same thing.

I wasn't as hot on METAPHYSICIAN as the marquee central answer. Not only does the noun "metaphysics" sound stronger, but MET is the only theme verb in the past tense. Sing it with me: one of these things is not like the other …

What else could Lynn have used? I'd have to write some code, scouring through my word list, looking for the letter A in each entry, eliminating it and then checking to see if …

Huh? You stopped listening three days ago? Well, so did I. So there.

I did like the "(verb) A (noun)" consistency, but the theme would have sung so much more strongly with something like PREP A RATION or BUCK A ROO (in a 16-wide grid) in the middle.

I appreciated Lynn's Monday-smoothness. I'd happily give the grid to a newb — those bonuses of ROAD RAGE, CABARET, STIGMA helping juice things up — but I'd have to warn them that it's not the most exciting theme, given how many times the "spaced out" genre has been tapped in crosswords.

It's a joy to get stumped on my "Name That Theme" game on a Monday, if I slap my head at the end, knowing I should have gotten it. Organ KEYS, the Florida KEYS, KEYS in an Atlas, lock and KEY. D'oh! Masterfully done, baffling me until the last grid entry.

"What simple concept ties these things together?" themes are some of my favorite. This one inspired me to brainstorm what else would have worked. There's the KEY on a basketball court, but that could have gotten lost on non-sports fans. (It's the painted floor area around a hoop.)

What else? A cryptography KEY, but that could have also gone over solvers' heads, especially newer ones.

The only other one I could imagine was an answer KEY, although that would have been tough to work in. Perhaps with a TEACHERS GUIDE?

No, Lynn did a masterful job of picking ones that displayed a wide variety of KEY meanings, while making each obviously accessible to a broad solving audience. Well done!

The fill had an older feel to it, though. Once you start with ATLAS ROCKET (from the 1950's), include GARRETS (a term for attics), BABY BONNET, and PRAY DO, you end up with a quaint sort of feel. The FLORIDA ROOM apparently is "retro" now, so that sort of helped? Maybe hurt as well? Not sure.

The clue for KEYS felt off-pitch (that's my terrible pun for you ORGAN players out there). I get what it's going for, riffing on the issue that KEYS seem to eternally walk away, but these KEYS aren't "lost" in the entries, moreso hinted at. A more straightforward clue would have worked better.

Solid concept overall. I especially appreciated that ORGAN DONOR innocently misled away from the musical instrument, adding to my bafflement and thus heightening my a-ha when the light finally snapped on.

Monday fill is like an NFL right tackle — 99% of the time that you notice it, it's because of something it did wrong. Perhaps it missed a block (ambiguous crossing) or forgot the play call (crossword glue unfamiliar to newbs). It's so rare that it executes a play spectacular enough for announcers to applaud.

Check out what Lynn did with her mid-length fill today. As I solved, I kept noticing the beautiful entries: NOSE JOB, UTOPIA, IN DRAG, ATTIRE, GAMBIT, ELOISE, MAIDEN, PEORIA, NO MORE ... but there was more! It's astounding that Lynn created so many of these slots, and then used so many of them so well. All those colorful and evocative ASSETS!

Most themed grids break up their 15-length sides into three chunks, making 3-5 length entries show up over the years ad infinitum. 6s and 7s make appearances much less frequently, so when they do, they often feel fresher to us regulars. I love this layout, the black squares spaced in a Zen-like balance that allows for 6-7 heaven all over.

I usually emphasize longer bonus fill — I'd have tried to extend STATS to make it an 8-9 letter slot, since long entries can often sing more strongly than mid-lengthers — but Lynn achieved so much with her layout. I'll have to rethink my gridwork philosophy.

We've seen many variations on this theme type, celeb names repurposed in different ways. I did enjoy feeling sheepish, as all these years, I thought it was [First name] van Cliburn.

Overall, though, it would have been great to find some way to make this theme set stand out. There are so many first names that can be worked into common phrases that this set came across as too loosey-goosey.

BOY OH BOY, it's been a while since we've seen a "both words can follow X" theme. A few years ago, Will Shortz mentioned that he's phasing out simpler "words that can follow X" themes, and it feels like the "both words" variant is on its last legs.

As they go, this one works well. BALL boy, GAME boy (Nintendo gaming device), HIGH boy (some sort of chest of drawers?), etc. Listing these off makes me feel like Bubba from "Forrest Gump" talking about shrimp. Cabin boy, old boy, altar boy, poor boy, golden boy, mamas boy … boy oh boy, there sure are a lot of them!

A common problem with this theme type is that the phrases tend to be on the dull side since it's not easy to have both parts of the themers mesh with your key word. BALL GAME, BAD NEWS, COW BELL are solid, but as I solved, HIGH OFFICE made me wonder if Lynn had restrictions on her choices. Same with SCHOOL PLAY. They're reasonable answers, but usually, you'd strive for more colorful material.

Having six themers forced some non-Lempelian compromises, too. H??C is a tough pattern to work with, and some newbs may look at HUAC and ask themselves if crosswords are right for them. "I have to know ILIE of tennis?" might be a reason to put down the puzzle and do something else, too.

There are a lot of nice bonuses, though, JUMBOTRON, LIBIDO, KIMONO, PARODY adding spice to the solve.

All in all, a solid, if not outstanding example of this theme type. I'm hoping that Will won't take any more this cut and dried, but there's still room for ones that do something a little different with the genre.

Star search! I've heard the pun on ANNIE OAKLEY = "shooting star" — a few times in crossword clues, even — but the others felt fresh. AL ROKER certainly is a "morning star." SANTA CLAUS as a "pole star" is especially fun.

(I admit, I've heard other many puns on "pole star," though always in ways that are most definitely not NYT-appropriate.)

SIMONE BILES is a "gold star" in that she won a bunch of golds in the Olympics. It's not as direct a pun as the others, though, since it makes her sound like she's made up of gold, or she's a star at Gold's gym. It's a cute pun, but it works differently than the others, so it's inconsistent.

I know, completely ridiculous distinction. But that's me, ridiculous.

This could have been POW! material with a slight change: it'd have been awesome if all five base phrases came from astronomy. So sad that Lynn gave up on DOG STAR!

Unfortunately, that means that as much as I admire SIMONE BILES and her golden smile, someone playing on DOG STAR (Old Yeller) or NORTH STAR (Santa Claus, with "pole star" cluing someone of Polish descent I WASN'T THINKING WHAT YOU THINK I WAS THINKNG) would have given the theme such elegance.

Although the theme wasn't perfectly crafted, the grid was. Snazzy long material (GOES NUTS, OVER HERE, TRAVESTY), middle-lengthers (BONFIRE, TRIPOLI, PARIAH, REFLEX), and minimal crossword glue (ECOL PVT SRS)? It all adds up to a puzzle I'd gladly give to a newb solver.

★ Lynn puts herself in limbo today. Get it, limbo? Because she lowered the bar?

Speaking of lowering the bar, I'll be here all week, folks!

Making a trigram descend is not a novel idea — the one Mary Lou Guizzo and I did a few years ago is just one in this theme class — but Lynn executed it so well. The breakdown:

1. Well-hidden BARs. No BAR OF SOAP or HEATH BAR CRUNCH or DIVE BAR. I had no idea what was going on until I hit the revealer, and that made for a snappy a-ha moment. Lynn even avoided the BAR sound completely. SANTA BARBARA might have been too overt, for instance.
2. Judicious BAR spacing. It is possible to get the BARs on a perfect diagonal line, but that requires either the themers to be in columns 4/6/8/10/12, or 2/5/8/11/14. Both of those present technical difficulties, especially when you have Monday smoothness as a target. Lynn's BARs don't lie on a perfectly straight line, but that's hard to see, even if you use a ruler. Fine compromise.
3. Great execution around themers. Typically, you'd space out CABARETS and LOWER THE BAR by placing the former at the top of the grid and the latter at the bottom, to minimize overlap. Today though, you need to keep both of them toward the bottom. That should cause problems in the SE corner, but Lynn just shrugs it off and produces a silky smooth result, even tossing in some DASHES and SELECT.

When it comes to puzzles featuring down-oriented themers, Will Shortz is laxer than other editors about including long across fill, not worrying about muddying up the theme. Today, I like the inclusion of BOARD GAME. That provides color, important since there's not much room for down-oriented long fill (the five themers take up too much space). I'd have loved for READS UP ON to be as snazzy as BOARD GAME, but what can you do.

Same sentiment for the assemblage of ABBR / NGO / ECTO in the NW corner, but that's a reasonable result, given the level of technical difficulty.

Overall, a Monday offering I'd happily give to a newb. I'd likely have to circle the BARs for them afterward, as they're easy to miss (see below for highlighting), but that only shows them how much a genius me be.

Whenever newish solvers ask me for suggestions on how to get started solving the NYT crossword, I point them to Lynn's body of work. She produces such smooth products, setting up solvers for emphatic slam-dunk victories. Today's is right in line. IRMA is perhaps the only tough entry — and an easy-peasy clue for that, anagramming MIRA, makes it no problem.

I like my crosswords fun and uplifting. This one was fun, but not so much uplifting, given that the themers were ordering me to tear five things a new one. PUT DOWN ROOTS = put down "Roots" was a clever reinterpretation, but the idea of being ordered to put down a literary classic … not for me.

Four out of five themers were spot-on, exhibiting both neat meaning changes and strong base phrases. The only one that didn't hit was TRASH PICKUPS, which sounds more like a dictionary entry than something I'd say in casual conversation.

Lynn did something unusual with her layout, stacking pairs of themers, i.e., PAN PIPES and TRASH PICKUP atop each other. As long as your overlapping letter pairs are friendly, this often makes grid design easier; as if you only had three themers to work with instead of five. It allowed Lynn to freestyle a bit, working in so many goodies: AIR KISS, BOB DOLE, REPTILE, T BONES, UPTURN.

The drawback is that the themers can feel crammed up against each other. Constructors have an ongoing debate, Lynn's approach here (producing a better solving experience due to stronger bonuses), vs. spacing themers out, in rows 3, 5, 8, 11, 13 (solvers experiencing themers in a more equally distributed manner).

Constructors are weird.

No one makes SOLIDER early-week puzzles than Lynn. Her formula is tried and true: go up to the max of 78 words (or near it), so that you can pack in some bonuses (EXTERIOR, SEXISM, ON FIRE) while making your short fill as unobjectionable as possible. With just minor blips in ESL ESTA, it's a top-notch early-week product.

I've worked with many newer constructors eager to debut what they consider fresh or cool new short material. That focus on personal ego is opposed to solver satisfaction, so I always appreciate Lynn's unwavering laser-lock onto smoothness.

I wish the theme had been more interesting, though. A puzzle this technically proficient deserves POW! consideration — it's so hard to achieve this level of silkiness. I couldn't give it a nom, because intersecting "___ STAR" words is too easy. There's a lack of elegance when you can think of a ton of other options like GUEST, NORTH, RADIO, POLE, SEA, SUPER, TIN, DEATH, DWARF, etc.

Maybe if Lynn had crossed stars like RIGEL (is URI GELLER a star?), VEGA, SIRIUS? Now that would have been serious!

I did like how the crossers pictorially formed stars (ish) in the four corners of the grid. ROCK and CHILD not as much, but LONE and GOLD resemble what you might see in a quick sketch of the night sky? Sort of? If you squint hard?

Although the theme didn't sparkle, the overall puzzle still worked well as an early-week offering. I'd give it to a rookie solver, with the caveat that it's not exciting, but it is likely solvable.

Impeccable gridwork. Perfect for newbs — smooth as silk, ANAT as the only speed bump, and such a feature-filled solve. The crappy crossword you get in your local newspaper (which might even be computer-generated) would never contain an embarrassment of bonus riches like IDIOT PROOF, POPULATION, DISCERN, VISITOR, BISECT, DOGNAP, EUROPA. While it's true that editors prize multi-word phrases for their color, how often do you see something as interesting as EUROPA as an incidental?

Textbook Monday construction. Space out your themers, alternating them left-right. Use a couple of long downs in opposite corners. Then carefully select mid-length entries, while testing, testing, testing to make sure you can fill the last regions without crossword glue.

As for the theme, most Monday solvers won't remember a previous RUMPELSTILTSKIN puzzle. Heck, neither will most regular solvers.

Double heck, some Monday solvers might not even know that crosswords have themes. Fie on you!

It's a shame that my dang brain immediately lasered in on the previous puzzle, recalling not just the author but some of the theme phrases, roughly when it was published, and the fact that I gave it my POW!

I liked Bruce's interpretation better, RUMP EL STILT SKIN as stand-alone words. Lynn's works too, but it's not as impressive. So many phrases start with RUM, for example, that it feels much easier to do this way.

POW!-level gridwork. POY!-level even. Crème de la crème, exactly how a Monday solving experience should be. A shame that the other puzzle bested it — and a shame that I'm likely one of the three people remembered it (me, Bruce, and that guy who keeps emailing me with snide comments YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUDDY BOY OH YEAH YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOU'RE STILL BLOCKED).

Too bad this one wasn't run during the (GOOD) DOG days of summer. (That may be for the best since there are no such things as good dogs days of summer, says this self-professed West coast weather wimp.)

I was curious if this set of commands — STAY, HEEL, COME, SIT, SHAKE, DOWN — was a tight, complete set. FETCH and BEG were the one other one-worders that felt like they belonged. Hard to find phrases that can hide them, though, so I like the set Lynn chose.

The themers are a mix of one-worders, hyphenations, and two-worders. I would have preferred more consistency, which should have been possible, given how common all six words are. But at least Lynn didn't have five of one and a single outlier. A diverse mix is the next best thing to 100% consistency.

Not as smooth and newb-friendly as a usual Lempel grid. Hmm. Why is that?

One of the curiosities of grid design is that it's often difficult to start with an 8-letter themer. 9-10 letters is ideal.

But Jeff, doesn't a longer themer introduce more constraints? Surely, the shorter the better?

(You were expecting me to drop a "length matters" joke, weren't you? I admit, I thought about it.)

Check out the NE and SW corners. See how chunky they are? That's primarily dictated by the eight-letter MAINSTAY forcing a six-square width in the NE. It's possible to break up that space more than Lynn did, but that's not a trivial task. With that much space, it's tough to avoid a couple of clunkers like METRES and the less common EGO(t)ISM, or toughish entries that might trip up newer solvers, like MEDINA / CLOVIS / ANISE.

I did enjoy some of the longer fill — OUTCAST and SEMIPRO were fun bonuses. Note Lynn's pro use of cheater squares at the end of OUTCAST and beginning of SEMIPRO. These made her filling job easier at the expense of shortening those long slots, but she was still able to make good use of them.

As a dog-lover, I enjoyed the overall IDEE. A couple of longer themers like SPIKED HEEL or DOUBLE DOWN could have both brightened and eased the solving experience, though.

Anyone else humming "Strangers in the Night" right now?

Tight set of homophones, DOO DEW DO DUE DEUX.

I bet fans of Hüsker Dü (the band) or Hūsker Dū? (the game) will be shouting THAT'S NOT A TIGHT THEME SET YOU JERKY JERK, HOW COULD YOU FORGET TO INCLUDE THE BEST BAND / GAME IN THE HISTORY OF BANDS / GAMES?

(You'd think I was joking, but I do get emails like this every once in a while.)

At the risk of enraging fans more, I like the decision to not include HUSKER DU, as this theme is so straightforward that it had to be run on a Monday. It'd be a rough ask to expect newer solvers to fill in the bizarre-looking HUSKERDU string. Hu skerdu?

It's tough for me to get excited about such a straightforward and simple theme. But the set is tight, the grid is solid, with just a bit of WOOER (is the other person the WOOEE?) and LECID (could be a turnoff for newer solvers). Along with solid bonuses in STONETOOL, STATE REPS, AVENGER, BIMODAL, it's a friendly offering for newbs.

I loved this concept, phrases that can represent GOOD NEWS or BAD NEWS, depending on how you look at them. To GO DOWN IN HISTORY is fantastic, in terms of creating a lasting legacy. Going down in history class, not so much.

DRAW A BLANK is so clever — great thing to do, in Scrabble! Not so good when you DRAW A BLANK, as in when you're unable to come up with something (as I often do in Scrabble!).

GET A RUN is another good one, GOOD in baseball, BAD in hosiery.

MAKE PASSES is okay, as it's good to complete passes in football, not so good in a bar. But MAKE PASSES is stilted-sounding in the realm of football.

I'll explain PRO to those that might have been as confused as I was. How does a PROfessional give you the "aye"? When it's a professional pirate? Nope, I red-facedly admit it took a long time to think about a PRO vote = giving the "aye".

I wish we had some pirates in the Senate.

Solid Lempelian gridwork. All you need is a pair of great bonuses — SIDEKICKS and PRIVATEER, yes! — and the doggedness to keep your grid to a minor smattering of INST ABED. Often, it's "just" a matter of tireless and grueling iteration. The best constructors like Lynn make it seem easy.

This is a Wish I'd Thought of That concept. It's a shame that MAKE PASSES fell flat for me, as this would have been an easy POW! choice otherwise. I can see where Lynn was coming from though — you have to stop and submit at some point.

GO FIRST! Because the theme answers start with synonyms for GO. As in DEPART, EXIT …

Er, more like synonyms for "GO!" SCAT! SCRAM already! Kind of a pushy Monday puzzle, sheesh! Trying to tell us something, hmm, Lynn?

Some neat finds, most of the themers snazzy. I wasn't sure what a SCATTER RUG was (another term for a throw rug apparently), but I like the sound of it.

I hitched slightly on LEAVENED BREAD, as it's the only one where the GO! synonym changes pronunciation. It would have been nice for all of them to have a pronunciation change, or none of them, for consistency's sake. Ah well. The crossword gods can be cruel.

Are GITANO JEANS still a thing?

Now, this is the way to execute on a simple Monday theme. Go up to 78 words if you need to, but make sure to weave in at least a couple of long bonuses — WEARS THIN, INSIDIOUS, MCQUEEN, even ATTACHE — while keeping your short stuff from getting noticed. Lynn is so good about using those longer slots to her advantage, elevating the solving experience.

Although, there was one area I felt was subpar for her: the DDE / ALEE / DUNNE region. It would have been fine if it had been any other constructor, but a little-used Presidential monogram, a nautical term, and an actress from "old Hollywood"? Not quite up to Lynn's bar.

I liked MCQUEEN and the YOUNG / THING pairing. I'd personally have chosen to smoothify the grid by taking one or more of those out. But I can respect Lynn's choice.

Overall, a fine Monday puzzle. I liked the theme enough that I considered it for the POW! If the revealer had packed more punch, creating a sharper a-ha moment, it might well have been my pick.

Phrases in the form of (adjective + article of clothing = slang term for a person). I've seen related themes, using STUFFED SHIRT and SMARTY PANTS. But most of them have been much looser, including stuff like MOVIE SHORTS, YELLOW JACKET, BLACK HAT, etc. So I like the added level of tightness today.

BLUESTOCKING was a new term to me. Fascinating to read up on the history of the Blue Stockings Society, a women's pro-education movement.

I had a hard time figuring out if CITY SLICKER was out of place, as the only one where the article of clothing changed meaning. But SMARTY PANTS … appears not to be related to the PANTS one wears? Not sure.

As usual, Lynn gives us a solid Monday grid. A couple of nice bonuses in PORKY PIG, CAPUCHINS, CHRONICLE. Nothing amazing, but all in all, enough bonuses to keep up my interest.

Most important for a Monday is that it's accessible to a newer solver, and this one *mostly* fits the bill. Short fill is usually where constructors fall off the wagon, but with just a bit of NEER — minor, since NEER-do-well is a common enough phrase — it's super smooth. Yay!

(There's an argument to be made that ROCS / AUK might be tricky, but I think these words ought to at least look familiar to educated solvers.)

If it hadn't been for BLUESTOCKING … the last thing you want to do as a constructor is to turn off newer solvers, and I wonder if newbs might scratch their heads even after a correct solve, wondering if they need to know stuff like this to be successful at crosswords.

I wondered if BLACK HAT would have been a better inclusion, but stupid crossword symmetry wouldn't have allowed for that. I couldn't think of any others to match either BLACK HAT or STUFFED SHIRT. Drat! I suppose I hesitatingly would have ended up making the same decision Lynn did.

Someone make up another term already to appease the crossword gods! How about ... MUSTACHIOED SHORTS (describing a lover of enigmatology, of course)?

Who knew that DOWNSIZE-ing could be fun? I've highlighted the key words to make Lynn's creative take stand out. SMALL to MEDIUM to LARGE to … JUMBO? Hard to find a good phrase hiding the word EXTRA LARGE, I suppose!

Loved SMALL WORLD; great phrase. To me, that was the standout of the four themers. MUMBO JUMBO was the snazziest of the bunch, but JUMBO didn't feel quite right in the size progression. I so badly wanted XL — stupid t-shirt industry with its indoctrination!

(We snooty Seattleites know that the proper term for "ridiculously large" is VENTI.)

PRINT MEDIUM … I'm so used to seeing it in the plural, PRINT MEDIA, that I struggled to stretch MEDIA across those last six boxes. And an AT LARGE RACE does appear to be a phrase in usage, but it didn't roll off my tongue as I said it to myself.

Not as smooth as Lynn's Monday puzzles are. Lynn mentioned many of these already, but kicking off with ET ALII, tough for newbies, some OPEL, LASSI (generally fine, but a lot of possibility to turn off newer solvers), ISA, TGI, both ELLS and ESSES. Oof!

Why so much? This layout is a little unusual — the placement of DOWNSIZE takes up valuable real estate. And check out how SMALL WORLD and PRINT MEDIUM aren't staggered, like adjacent themers usually would be. (PRINT MEDIUM would usually be shoved all the way to the bottom of the puzzle, for better spacing.) That creates problems in the NW corner.

But I did appreciate Lynn's efforts to give some bonuses here and there. MODEL UN was great, as was REDDIWIP and VAMOOSE.

Overall, I felt like Lynn's original idea of just a SMALL MEDIUM LARGE progression, along with DOWNSIZE (perhaps split as DOWN / SIZE across the middle row?) would have made for a tidier Monday puzzle. Neat concept, cool idea that I hadn't seen before — but I wouldn't recommend the puzzle as executed to newbies.

★ What a nice Christmas present, opening up another Lempelian delight. Like Lynn mentioned, I'd seen this theme a few times before — disguised synonyms for HIT — but I still got an a-ha moment because she did such a great job obfuscating CLOCK, BELT, BEAN (as in a beanball in baseball), PELT, and PASTE. Why had this huge "Peanuts" fan never thought of how apt LUCY VAN PELT's last name is?!

Great themer choices, too, colorful selections in SHOT CLOCK, SUN BELT, HIT PARADE, etc. Almost all of them I'd happily incorporate into a themeless.

Interesting choice to use the "windmill" layout of themers. That often allows for smoother fill because it spaces themers out to the max. Today, it lets Lynn squeeze two shorties — SUN BELT and WAX BEAN — into the center. A more traditional layout of "all themers in the across direction" would likely have resulted in more difficulty in filling, as putting six themers in the traditional way is no joke.

Neat that Lynn still managed to work in some beauties in the fill: CELSIUS, FAUX PAS, even MOXIE. The "windmill" layout's drawback is often a dearth of bonus fill, so good work here.

A bit more crossword glue that I'm used to in a Lempel, though: OTT, CSA (Confederate States of America), RAH, ILIE, RUSSE, VETOER. And a tough section for novices, CILIA / ILIE / SMELT. Given the simplicity of the theme, I would have preferred a stricter adherence to newbie-friendliness.

But overall, another gem of a puzzle from the early-week master, still at the top of my list of favorite Monday bylines. Such a pleasurable solving experience.

Speaking of pleasurable, heartfelt thanks to all our readers and site users out there. Jim and I know that you all have many URLs that attract your attention, so to continually get your eyeballs and feedback is a blessing to us. Happy holidays!

★ So much fun to make comedy out of regular phrases … using comedians! FALLEN IDLE made me laugh; so appropriate to kooky Monty Python humor. PURPLE HART (heart), PAW PRINZE (prints), PRYOR (prior) COMMITMENT, BARR (bar) FIGHT — nice that Joy and Lois drew from different ages, genders, races, and styles of comedy. I only vaguely knew Freddy PRINZE, but that was fine with me, as hitting 4/5 for this pop culture idiot is pretty darn good.

Five themers can give newer constructors fits, so it's a good thing the early-week veteran was on board. Lynn is such a strong constructor, always turning in clean and snazzy grids, and today's is no different. The 15-letter central entry is much easier to work with than a 13 or 11 or even 9 — a 15 doesn't force you to place any black squares — but still, look how many down entries must run through at least two across entries. So many constraints.

Lovely long downs in HARDY BOYS, NOTORIETY, DALAI LAMA, RESCUE DOG. So important to make your long fill slots count, and they did great here.

Smart to stick to 78 words, the max allowed. Some constructors might have attempted the low-word-count challenge (74 or even 72), but that's generally not wise, requiring a lot of compromises.

It is true that there are a ton of short words — a whopping 69 out of 78 that are five letters or less — but that's perfectly fine for an early-week puzzle. The high word count makes it so much easier to avoid dabs of crossword glue. Just some NEHI, OER, ENO, which I'm even hesitant to point out because they're so minor.

Amusing theme, superb execution. Not easy to entertain with an early-week puzzle, but this one succeeded for me.

★ Always such a treat to get Lynn's byline. She's an absolute wizard on early-week puzzles, producing fun themes surrounded by excellent long bonus fill, and a silky-smooth solve.

Homophone themes have been done many a time, and even homophones on letters of the alphabet. But I don't remember seeing this exact implementation. As a huge Q*BERT fan in my youth, it was fun to see CUE BERT as a kooky indication to signal BERT (from "Sesame Street"). And GEE, STRINGS amused this former cellist.

I paused at TEE BILL, having to think too hard to figure out the base phrase of "t-bill," a government bond. Embarrassing, given that I got my MBA with a focus in finance. Ahem.

I didn't like DEE FLAT as much, either, this one so grammatically tortured. Since Lynn had so many themers already, I would have preferred that one struck out, and EX FILES put in the center of the middle row.

Speaking of theme density, this grid didn't have quite the same astonishing level of snazz and smoothness that I've come to expect from a Lempel product. EXEMPLAR was fun, but JURISTS jarred my ear. Some research shows that it is a very common word in law, but I'd so much rather have something exciting, like LOOK HERE! or CAP GUN.

And it's odd to point out just a handful of AMTS, JRS, ATTY as more crossword glue than usual for a Lempel puzzle, but she's just that good.

Why not as much snazz and a bit more glue than usual? Six themers is not easy to work with, even if four of them are short — as a whole, they take up so much real estate. This is another reason I would have preferred just five themers — I'm sure it would have allowed for at least another pair of strong bonuses in the fill, and given Lynn the flexibility to smooth out one or two of those unsightly short entries.

But overall, such a fun solving experience. Not all themes have to be ground-breaking — a twist on a tried and true theme type can work great when you execute well on your grid. I thought Lynn did well today. Maybe not quite up to her (very high) bar, but still such an enjoyable early-week solve.

DO THE SPLITS, apt title for introducing spaces into regular phrases for kooky results. I enjoyed GO OFF ON A TAN GENT, and BRA IN WAVES evoked a funny image.

Humor is so subjective. I found some of the resulting phrases stilted, especially POE, TRY READING. Not only grammatically does it feel odd, but I imagine Poe wouldn't have needed much prompting to read. And FAT AL ATTRACTION … something there makes me cringe. Not sure what.

UNFUNDED MANDATE as a base phrase. I vaguely recognized it as a thing, but even after researching it, it still doesn't sing to me.

Some nice long bonus fill, RAW RECRUIT matching well with a TROOPSHIP, and … GOOSESTEP. That last one is a regular term for a common military practice (especially outside America), but boy, does it have uncomfortable connotations. Perhaps recently reading about the siege of Leningrad colored my thinking.

Lynn is so good with her short fill — she usually focuses on Monday puzzles, giving us some of the smoothest Monday offerings around — and today is no different. Although it's a tough task to build a 21x 140-word puzzle — I'd estimate it to be about five times harder than a Monday, since there are necessarily much bigger swaths of white space to fill — this is such a smooth offering.

I did hitch at DAVA, but 1.) all the crossings were fair, 2.) Pulitzer Prize nominee, and 3.) if that's one of the few quasi-gluey bits you end up with, that's a win.

Although most of the themers didn't resonate with me, a few great clues helped to elevate my solve:

• [Gives an order] made no sense for RANKS until I realized that it wasn't a sergeant giving an order, but a spreadsheet jockey.
• LADLE delivering a punch sounded like it should be "delivering punch" or "a cup of punch," but I still liked the clever wordplay, nonetheless.
• ATOMS are indeed at the "heart of the matter" — all matter, to be precise!

Everyone's favorite / most annoying sci-fi bot, R2D2 inspiring today's puzzle, each theme phrase containing a word with two Ds + another with two Rs. Growing up in California and thinking of myself as a surfer (I'm barely passable even on a long board), I loved SURFER DUDE. The rest of the themers were solid, although to Lynn's point, NARROWLY DEFINED felt more dry; like something out of one of my b school textbooks.

Some beautiful long fill today, the conversational DO YOU MIND my favorite — it brings up some interesting imagery. CAR DEALER is a nice two-word phrase too.

People ask me sometimes why I prefer multi-word phrases (as opposed to one-worders) when it comes to long fill. Generally, I find that multi-word phrases tend to be more colorful — putting words together in interesting ways can produce great effect — plus it's fun as a solver to figure out where words break within a phrase.

Contrast DO YOU MIND with ABANDONED, which to me is an everyday piece of language, serving as sort of a nail or screw holding the English language together.

But no doubt, there are definitely great one-word answers. CRUSADERS for example is beautiful, laden with all sorts of historical context and stories about Richard the Lionheart. What a nickname! During my solve, I stopped to admire the answer, wanting to go read up on this subject. To me, that's one mark of what can make for a great piece of long fill.

As usual, a smooth offering from the master of the early-week puzzle. There's just a tad of glue — SDAK, ACCT, SRTA, PERI — which isn't surprising since Lynn uses the "parallel downs" structure in DO YOU MIND / ABANDONED. It's so tough to put two long downs right next to each other like that and come out squeaky clean. Notice where three of the four gluey bits (SDAK, ACCT, PERI) are …

My initial reaction was that I wanted a tighter theme — or more snazzy themers in general — since there are a ton of two-word phrases that fit this D D + R R theme pattern. So it was really nice to hear from Lynn; her self-imposed constraint about having no Ds in the first word or Rs in the second is not something I ever would have thought of. Much tougher than I had thought!

FOOL AROUND = synonyms for FOOL "wrapped around" phrases. CHEST BUMP is a colorful base phrase — neat that CH/UMP happens to be wrapped around it. And I thought the juxtaposition of MOTOR NEURON and MORON was particularly amusing, the latter not using a ton of the former.

I wasn't as taken with DORK around DOUBLE PARK. The dictionary definition is "a dull, slow-witted, or socially inept person," but I'm more used to (and partial to) DORK as a compliment, as in "that dorky girl has some serious nerd cred!" Perhaps this explains a lot about me.

DUNCAN PHYFE … whoo, that was a toughie to put together. Thankfully Lynn took her usual care to make all the crossings gettable. I did struggle with the SNIFF AT crossing, but mostly because that PHYFE last name looked so odd. I was curious if any other phrases were available for DUNCE — one I liked was the DEAD CAT BOUNCE, an investing term related to a technical chart pattern. Usually I'd prefer to stay away from nasty-sounding terms, especially ones referring to death, but given that DEATH is already in the grid …

DUE DILIGENCE could have worked too.

Not that DUNCAN PHYFE is bad, but it sure is tough for a Monday and may not do much for non-furniture enthusiasts like myself. I did appreciate that the clue was interesting enough that it made me want to look him up.

I did find it un-Lympelian to get an assortment of crossword glue: CSA, ATA, ASSN, ISR, ENGR, ETTE, and especially SERE. Thankfully it was spread around the grid so it didn't seem overwhelming in any one spot, but as a whole, it was a good bit more than we usually see in her puzzles.

This type of grid arrangement often does cause construction difficulties, what with those four biggish corners plus the fact that so many regions have to interact with two themers. So I did appreciate Lynn working in some nice mid-length fill such as ID SAY SO, SUMATRA, FERRARI. Pretty good use of those 7-letter slots, helping to make up for some of the gluey bits.

★ Another fine offering from the early-week master. Today, Lynn takes single words and breaks them into a verb + famous person command, i.e. PLAYWRIGHT gets interpreted as telling Wilbur WRIGHT to PLAY. Fun idea. It's beautiful how Lynn found so many that work with perfect consistency.

I liked almost all of the themers just as normal words, too. SHAREHOLDER, BATTLEFIELD, GRINDSTONE, FIREBIRD, PLAYWRIGHT are all colorful entries I'd count as assets to any puzzle. That's not often the case with single-word entries! IRONWOOD didn't quite sing for me because I was confused — was it some TV show (I was thinking of "Ironside") or some sort of slang, perhaps for a hybrid golf club (there really ought to be such a thing). It is a pretty interesting term though, a general name for trees known for their hardness.

So much density — six themers is always tough — yet Lynn executes the grid so smoothly. Hardly any short gluey material needed to hold it together. ILIA will be tough for some, but it's a perfectly legit term and the crossings are fair. The grid is well laid-out to ensure smoothness, Lynn wisely stacking PLAYWRIGHT atop IRONWOOD, and FIREBIRD atop GRINDSTONE.

I would have liked more long fill, though. I got BOGGED DOWN by so many short answers in the grid. SUBTLETIES is a nice long entry, and WOBBLY is fun, but there's very little else in terms of answers greater than five letters. Why do I care about this piece of data? Because most short answers have been used over and over again in crosswords, so it's difficult to introduce color through them.

I liked the theme, but I personally would have preferred maybe five or even four themers in order to get some more vivid bonus fill. Still, Monday puzzles which are both super-smooth and also interesting don't come around very often, so I'm happy to give it the POW!

Another fun early-week puzzle from Lynn. She takes single-word entries and interprets them as double words for kooky results. Really neat to start and end with related themers: BOMBS HELL and EYES HADES. Great find! I've seen a lot of puzzles involving a shifting of the letter S, but this one had a fresh feel to it. As I would expect from Lynn, the themers are consistent, all one word splitting into a kooky two-worders.

Bonus to get six themers. With shortish ones (8-9 letters), it's not so bad to pack six of them in, and Lynn shows us a smart method to do so. She takes her shortest answers (8 and 9 letters) and stacks them in rows 3 and 4 — this lets you treat the grid kind of like you're working with four themers, not six. You just have to be careful about those few overlapping letters — in the top case, the LL of BOMBSHELL and the UP of UPSTARTS — but as long as those letter pairs aren't really weird, like XU or JN or something, that little of an overlap isn't usually a problem.

Making the construction akin to one having only four themers also allows for a bit of long fill. Lynn does well to give us PIRATE SHIP (or is that PIRATE'S HIP?) and RED HERRING (ah, I guess not then).

Lynn's grids are usually so impressively clean that see AGUE and ETTE was unusual. These would be minor blips in most anyone else's grids — although some would argue that AGUE is perfectly fine since it's used in historical writing — but I put the bar quite high for Lynn.

Since that north section is somewhat flexible, I think the allure of the Z in ZULU must have been high. As much as I like rare letters in a grid, I would personally have preferred not including AGUE, favoring something like NOSY/TRUE. Given that Lynn has expertly worked in a J (JUDEA/JAB) so cleanly, that would have been enough in terms of rare letters for me.

Consistent, fun theme with grid execution well above average.