Paul Coulter author page

I love the way this theme plays out, three great "negative food" themers, followed by a HAPPY MEAL revealer that flips everything on its head with a positive spin. Kudos to Andy Kravis for the brilliant way of tying things up!

While the theme made me smile, the solving experience didn't quite measure up. The biggest reason was that each of the themers is clued so opaquely that it's almost like uncovering a quote puzzle, relying on every crossing Down answer. That's often a frustrating experience.

Another issue was that the grid was chock full of tough entries, like ED KOCH from decades ago and Julie KAVNER, who would be tough if you've never seen "The Simpsons." Then add in Scooter LIBBY, tricky TACET, inelegant PLASM, and a bunch of AMS, CIE, ISR, OREL, PSA … it's probably a passable result for a Wednesday since mid-week solvers can usually handle trickier things, but no doubt, I had to put up a fight to figure it all out.

Since this is a fairly simple theme, I'd have much preferred to slate it to run on a Monday, with more obvious clues — NOTHING BURGER clued to McDonald's, for example — and a newb-friendly grid.

I did enjoy some clever clues, thankfully. SALOON as a place where shots are served (or fired); that's amusing! It took me a while to understand why ASIA might be "polo grounds," but once I figured out the capitalized P was important — as in Marco Polo — it delighted.

SYLLABLE was the highlight, referring to the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" — so much fun to see that spelled out, especially considering crossword clues usually are kept brief. This kind of accessible amusement would also have been great on a Monday.

★ It's tough not to smile when a puzzle is all about happiness. Great interpretations of five catchy phrases; Paul imagining them as they'd apply to appropriate professions. Of course, a happy meteorologist would be ON CLOUD NINE, and an astronaut would be OVER THE MOON.

Even IN GOOD SPIRITS made me smile. My first impression was that a medium wouldn't be IN spirits as much as "within" them. I mean, it's not like the medium gets sucked in and swallowed by a ghost. Furthermore--

At that point, I delivered a kick in the pants to OCD Jeff, choosing to simply enjoy in the kookiness of a medium floating WITHIN GOOD SPIRITS.

Bah! Don't put WITH in bold! Bad, OCD Jeff, bad!

So many fantastic clues, too. Early-week puzzles often get toned down so that newer solvers won't get tripped up on their way to a victorious solve. What a treat to get [You drive it on a parkway and park it on a driveway] clue for CAR. [They're game] indeed describes PHEASANTS. YOYO MA taking a bow — his cello bow, that is — before his performance. A LAB being "chocolate-coated." Such joyful clues match the joyful theme.

A couple of blips though, in VINGT (tough foreign word), DEOXY (esoteric prefix), MOUE — gaaaaAACK!

That was the sound of a sock being stuffed in OCD Jeff's mouth. A puzzle this uplifting is allowed to have a couple of misdemeanors, especially when there are nice bonuses like IDIOT BOX to balance them out. No AW MANs today.

Above everything else, crosswords should entertain. If you don't deliver a few minutes of joy to your solvers, you've failed as a constructor. Smashing success today, Paul!

Reminds me so much of rebus puzzles in GAMES Magazine, visual gags that I loved as a kid. PUB next to PUB = PARALLEL BARS? That's groan-worthily fantastic!

PER SPIRE reminded me of an element within a friend's clever word puzzle — he mused that a steeplejack (a chimney cleaner) gets paid "per spire."

Groan!

Double groan (in a good way), that PER SPIRE is literally BREAKING A SWEAT.

To Paul's point, there have been hundreds (maybe thousands) of these visual interpretation puzzles in various publications, so today's theme felt too loose for my taste. There were the standard ones, like LONG (OVER) DUE and BREAKING A SWEAT.

Then there was won — er, one — using homophones, (two) BIG (two) IGNORE.

Another involving parsing, FRANKS IN ATRA?

(ODDS AND ENDS is so apt!)

FRANKS IN ATRA was my favorite of the bunch, having never seen that spacing change before. I would have loved a full set of six or seven themers that worked in this way.

Pretty good gridwork, only the bottom with ESTA / SRTA and SWARD / SLUE making me hitch. I could have used more colorful long bonus fill though, in the vein of ADAM AND EVE and ONE DAY SALE. I'd be interested to see if Paul could have removed the black square between TED and TILL and gotten something great out of that 8-letter slot. Or worked the NE a couple more times, to get something stronger out of one of the BEANERIES / SALT MARSH slots.

Wrapping up with a standout clue: [All you can eat] baffled me. Great a-ha, realizing that it was a factual description of EDIBLES. Almost qualifies as another themer!

Jim is so diplomatic. I come down on the side of "Brilliant? Maybe not."

If I were a regular solver, I wouldn't have bothered doing anything after finishing. But I'll undoubtedly get questions today, so I felt I had to do further research.

I didn't enjoy trying to figure out if maybe they were all movies (BIG and FROZEN, definitely!) or musicals (WICKED, yep) or plays (NINE?). Or figuring out what the difference is between a musical and a play. Is one a subset of the other? If so, DOUBLE PLAY would have been a perfect revealer. Or, if Paul had chosen all movies, DOUBLE FEATURES!

I think there's a nice idea(s) in here, playing on DOUBLE PLAY or DOUBLE FEATURE. But I think "two musicals stuck together," without a revealer to tie things together, is a flawed concept.

Also odd: BIG COMPANY is a legit phrase, as is HAIR GREASE. Not WICKED NINE or FROZEN ONCE, though. Why not make all of them kooky, opening up so many more possibilities? Go BIG or go home!

Also flawed: going down to 74 words. I love that LOVE SEAT and LAKE ERIE, GUIDE DOG and MAKE GOOD jazz up the joint. But the prices of so many STERE ARIOT DONA (I flubbed, finishing with DOMA / USMA), ITISI EARED etc. Great to add something in for solvers who don't connect with the theme, but it's so important to do it in a way that isn't a net minus.

One thing I did love: the clue for MENU, putting the CARTE (the French word for card) before the course. Lovely wordplay! There's a crossword theme in there somewhere ...

Congrats to Paul on his NYT debut! I've seen his name in other venues, so it's great to welcome him into the NYT fold.

Circled Os, representing wheels, support a TESLA, FORD, LINCOLN, and a DODGE. I've prettied up the picture below, the same as what we did when this same idea ran a few years ago. It's a shame that Paul got scooped. Very common for two people to come up with the same idea independently, but the previous one sure takes away from the novelty.

Nice selection of themers, all of them snazzy. I hadn't realized that a TESLA COIL was a radio transmitter — fun fact to learn. Every themer does a good job disguising the car make, too. Minor nit: I would have liked all four makes to be at the front of their phrase; a little wonky to have FORD be the only one at the end.

It's not easy to work in those eight Os in fixed places. I liked how Paul balanced each of the four cars so nicely, each wheel exactly one square away from the end of the car. But it sure created some compromises.

Take the west section, for example. It's not easy to work with two long entries atop each other in LINCOLN PENNY and TOESHOE. Add in the fact that there's a pretty big white space to fill above them, and it's not a surprise to get CII (random Roman numeral) and CANIO (such a tough name for a Monday).

And check out the lower left. Neat revealer in TIRE — that was necessary to make this a Monday-easy puzzle — but TOR is a heavy price to pay. (I'm an avid rock climber and a regular crossword solver, and TOR is barely familiar to me.) Along with ALOES, an odd plural (made even more so by the presence of INDIGOS and YOOHOOS), it should have been reworked.

Sometimes I curse my stupid brain. In this case, Liz's puzzle came immediately to mind, and it took away from my solving enjoyment today. Perhaps more time separating these two puzzles would have helped, but a better solution would have been to ask Paul to rework with some new layer or feature. Not sure what that would be ...

Admirable to hear how hard Paul worked both on this crossword and on his 35(!) novels!