Sam Trabucco author page

Maniacally difficult layout to work with. Three-letter entries are so key to most themeless puzzles because without them, you're almost forced into quad stacks, like the northwest corner. Triple-stacked 8s are easy enough to create, but quad-stacked 8s are rough, often requiring trade-offs of a few dabs of crossword glue and/or less colorful answers. Amazing result in that opening corner — it's so difficult to get all four long answers to sing, and DRAG SHOW / RICE WINE / OPEN A TAB / SILENT BS are good to excellent.

ACELA could be tough for non-East coasters, and GENET might not be the first (or tenth) playwright people think of, but the crossings are fair. A resounding success, that corner.

Similar results in the opposite corner. I've seen I REALIZE and HOT SPOTS in enough crosswords now that they're not as fresh, but they're still solid. And this huge "Princess Bride" fanatic loved INIGO Montoya, who would have been fun to see dueling with BIZET playing in the background.

Given the level of technical difficulty, those two corners are triumphs.

I finished with an incorrect square at VELA crossing KEN OLIN, as VEGA and KENOGIN felt more likely to be correct, at least to my pandemic-triggered-sleep-deprived brain. I'd sympathize with people who struggled with the VELA / RAGNAROK crossing, too, although "Thor: RAGNAROK" was a recent box office success. More recent than "thirtysomething," anyway.

I wasn't familiar with the boxing slang, TOMATO CAN, but what a fun term to learn. Especially fun when paired with HIT THE DIRT.

Jim Horne and I had an amusing exchange around AMEND vs. EMEND when he mentioned how odd AMEND was compared to the "correct" EMEND. This red-blooded ‘Murican pointed out the Amendments to the Constitution, gol darn it! Google's Ngram viewer backs me up, so take that, Canadia!

Is it bedtime yet?

Aside from the one region, I considered unfair (sour grapes and all), a solid puzzle. Sam's comment about not quite enough color resonated, though, always a peril of an audacious 66-word layout like this. It's also a lot easier to bring the heat with longer entries like ALL SYSTEMS GO and NOT UP TO SNUFF than it is with 9- or 10-letter entries.

A couple of years ago, I was at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, chatting with Patrick Berry about a devious (read: infamous) puzzle he'd made for the contest. It was a similar conceit to Sam's, where two answers share middle strings, forming a wide capital I. He said it he'd originally tried to make it in a 21x21 format but had eventually given up. It was only in a weird-size grid (acceptable for a crossword tournament) that he'd been able to make it work.

When Patrick Berry, the Great One, has a tough time building around a theme — that speaks louder than any possible words!

I talked with solvers trudging out of the room afterward, with a wide range of responses. Anne Ellison, a top speed-solver, shrugged, saying that she finished it in a few minutes, but had no idea what the theme was. After another 45 minutes, time was up, and a wave of bleary-eyed zombies came out, asking each other if they'd finished even half of it. The answer was mostly no.

Sam has a clever idea here, a nice twist on word ladders. I missed some of the feature answers on the first go-around, unfortunately, for the life of me unable to see FOR THE LIFE OF ME. The way the answers cross make it tough for the eye to pick up.

It's no surprise that Sam had a tough time with this construction, even going up to 145! words. When you have one Across theme answer intersecting a Down theme answer, the region surrounding that crossing is inevitably difficult.

Then, toss in an additional constraint? The area right around each circled word becomes nearly intractable. More black squares inside each might have helped, but it's hardly a trivial problem to solve.

I might have enjoyed a simpler overall approach, just two pairs of super-long themers, one pair around RISE at the top, and one pair around FALL at the bottom. Maybe some clever RISE and FALL revealer tying them together in the middle? Something about the tides? The ROMAN EMPIRE?

Overall, an admirably audacious concept that tries to blaze new trails. It does have compromises, both in fill quality and solving satisfaction — I imagine MIXED REVIEWS will be apt today — but I'd err on the side of shooting for the moon any day.

★ I dig Will Shortz's notes on Sunday puzzles. Sam is a cryptocurrency trader? What a cryptic job description! (Especially since this MBA doesn't totally get how cryptocurrency works.) A friend of mine participated in a stock-picking game a while back and won it all by heavily shorting Bitcoin. I like the innovative thinking.

Given that Sundays over the past year haven't been that interesting, Sam's innovative thinking today is much appreciated. I use the phrase GIVE THE STINK EYE all the time, but I've never considered interpreting it as "add an I to a synonym of STINK." SMEILL looks so awesomely bizarre, a bit like SMEAGOL.

BE IN THE MOMENT was another perfect example of this single-letter wordplay, a B inside a synonym for MOMENT (INSTANT) = INSTBANT.

Best of all, I enjoyed imagining what will happen to this puzzle in syndication, when overeager copyeditors change GAZACHO back to GAZPACHO. Prepare for befuddlement ...

Not every example worked well, GAZPACHO, for example. SPLIT P is a tortured way to describe "remove one P." Similarly with TEA EXTRACT hinting at "get rid of a T."

I was able to overlook those, though, since Sam did such a great job weaving in bonuses within the fill. For every themer that fell flat or didn't work, there was a handful of HOPE TO GOD, OREO OS, SHAMAN / OO LA LA. I'm usually happy with maybe six or so long bonuses in a grid, so getting a ton of KILL FEE SMOKE RING US SENATE WWI ACE was awesome. BARREL OF FUN and TRES BON are so appropriate!

NO LIKEY … that feels like something okay for me to say (I love how flushed people get when I shout ME NO RIKEY!). Not sure if Sam gets the same pass.

Overall, the conceit has a couple of clunker answers, but it's novel and entertaining, and that's exactly what the NYT Sunday puzzle needs.

(MEAN GIRLS — the main characters being Gretchen WIENERS, Karen SMITH, Regina GEORGE, Cady HERON. I wouldn't have figured it out in a billion years!)

The TEEN MOM PORN STAR riddled with SPANISH FLU at the BATES MOTEL, drinking FROZEN MARGARITAS? OH LORDY, Sam, I don't want to know what's on your browser history.

Okay, maybe I do.

A little surprising to see a good amount of DSO ICBM SST OER in a Trabucco production. It's a reasonable tradeoff for so much impressive ADIOS AMIGO, ALLOSAURUS, BLOW A KISS, RED CARPET, ZERO DOWN material, but I was curious to figure out why.

Turns out it's a combination of two factors: 1.) going to 68 words, a tough task in itself, and 2.) FROZEN MARGARITA locking FRO and ITA into place on the west and east. Either constraint by itself could have led to a cleaner grid, but when you combine the two, it's a virtual certainty that you'll need some trade-offs.

Speaking of EAST, what a brilliant clue! [It's right there on the map!], is it? (Think of "right" in a literal sense.) I'm usually plus minus on these directive clues, but it's so meta to have a directive clue clue a direction.

Much to love in this one, but the combination of a certain subset gave me a vague sense that there was too much emphasis on the "horror" part of an otherwise amusing Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Sam Trabucco and I had a fun exchange over his recent themeless riffing on this pattern, as well as his first one. It looks so difficult to fill, but it's not nearly as difficult as it seems — that is, until you reach the very final stages of gridwork. I learned from my own experimentation that if you're willing to put in a ridiculous amount of time iterating, this general shape can be a gold mine. (Maybe a silver mine.)

My reaction to this one mirrored my reactions to Sam's previous ones. I loved LEOPARD PRINT, BREAK DANCERS, ASTRAL PLANES, METRIC SYSTEM. I side-eyed ACHATES, TMS, IBI, ANGE. These types of trade-offs are inevitable when working with such giant corners, four long answers stacked together. Either you push toward more color or more cleanliness. It's rare that you can ever achieve a high degree of both.

Sam pressed toward the side of color, with such great entries in a single corner as SAKE CUP, IT'S A GIRL, and even BE AT EASE. It must have killed him to have to swallow IBI. I do like the overall trade-off, but IBI sure is a stinker.

When I worked my second and third times with this pattern years ago, I remember weighing 20+ different versions of every single corner, tearing my hair out as I was deciding what dings would take away from solving pleasure the least.

Not many people push the envelope of the crossworld, but Sam is one of them — he let me know that his experimentation with this shape is done; he's moving on to new frontiers. I'm looking forward to seeing what he has in store.

Playing SETTLERS OF CATAN with friends? AH, THIS IS THE LIFE!

I wondered how many solvers would struggle with the former, only to say "settlers of … wtf?" at the end. I love the game, but if you've never heard of it, those last five letters are random. (Though how apt for the last letter to cross NERDFEST!)

[Ghost buster, of a sort] — I haven't been so pleasantly stumped by a clue in years. I was already struggling with the oddball U SHAPE, so that wasn't helping me break into that corner. Finally grokking PAC MAN as a buster (of a sort) of ghosts = a brilliant a-ha.

I heard a lot of complaints about DANK MEMES, one of those hipster-fresh entries the youngsters introduce. Not fair to judge a puzzle by its oddest entry, but people feel what they feel. I've heard of JANKY — it's a funny term used in our climbing gym all the time — but JANK did make me pause.

Also in the "made me pause" category: HOME CURE, which didn't sound as strong as "home remedy." JOS is part of a menswear brand? HATARI was well before my time. The aforementioned U SHAPE (is O SHAPE or T SHAPE also valid, then?).

It's tough to put much more into your themeless grid when two crossing 15s already take up so much real estate, causing so much inflexibility. Sam did well to pack in a lot of APERITIFS CAT TREATS PHONE CASE SGT PEPPER (what a beautifully bizarre string of letters, SGTP to start!) and much more.

MUCH more, now that I take another look: LONE WOLF, the funny MEGADETH, SLED RIDE, SPAMBOTS, TOP FORTY.

Too bad my solving experience was tinged by a handful of "hmm, that's weird" sensations. A shame, because the sheer volume of long answers — in addition to two 15s! — was impressive.

I've both solved and made a lot of parsing puzzles (where adding or changing spaces create new phrases). Not many stick in my mind anymore, since they all tend to run together.

Today's theme stood out. It's fantastic. Not only are the finds interesting — I know a few BAR TRICKs, but the one I'll lead off with now is that shifting its space turns it into BART RICK. And PHILANDERS to PHIL ANDERS? Excellent!

And the revealer! MARRIED MEN brought everything together so perfectly. I can't remember the last time I've expressed a WITT (wish I'd thought of that) longing so strongly.

I badly wanted to give this a POW!

Alas.

There's a constructors' maxim that a fantastic grid can't make up for a subpar theme, but a fantastic theme can overcome most anything. If I didn't know anything about Sam — one of the few five-tool constructors, meaning that they can make easy, mid-week, tricky, themeless, Sunday — I'd probably have given the benefit of the doubt and slapped on the POW!

But it's Sam. With four POW!s to his name already, I expect a lot out of him. He'd need an excellent reason to use ITER in a grid. Not to mention ECARTE, and the olio of RES OFT ADAH GREYED OMNIA.

My guess is that Sam flew too close to the sun. It's hard to work with seven themers. When you push even further, to incorporate a ton of great mid-length fill — SO COOL, HOO BOY, BAD COP, SCHLUB, DATE UP all standing out — you're bound to get burned.

Sam did excel in the SW / NE corners. Most themeless-focused constructors don't dare to work with big 4x7 chunks. Toss in a constraint, of NORMANDY and BARTRICK reducing flexibility, and most constructors would flub. I had a strong feeling that Sam would make these sing, and with COINSTAR / AP COURSE / BEER BONG, COLOR TV / HOTWIRE / THANK GOD, Sam did just that.

Tough call. I loved the theme. Loved the SW / NE corners. I wouldn't go so far as to say the middle was an ATROCITY, but a bit too much of looking the other way cost Sam his fifth POW!

Note the similarities between today's grid and Sam's last themeless? They're not identical, but they're so similar. Today's is easier to fill in general because you can work on the SW / NE more independently, since those regions are easier to separate from the rest of the grid.

Similar impressions about the grid qualities, too — both have a lot of stellar entries, not many gluey bits, but some oddities. The SW corner is a perfect microcosm of this. Starting with ALRIGHTY THEN and THE CONGA on the outside edge. INBOX ZERO, LOWBALLS, MG MIDGET, IRON RULE inside — wow! And no crossword glue!

But DRAWMEN? GULLED?

Huh.

Since the SW corner is easier to construct today compared to his last grid, I can understand the allure of going for broke, stuffing as much great material inside as possible. DRAWMEN is a heavy price to pay though, especially if you're crossing it with XMEN. Most other editors wouldn't allow that.

Along with VIENNA COFFEE (a sort of espresso drink?), FAST ICE (solid H20 during Ramadan?), LOESSER, BURKINI (cross between a burqa and a bikini), that's as a whole too esoteric for my taste.

Don't get me wrong — I like each of these entries on their own. Some of them I like a lot — BURKINI, what a fun term! But it felt like it had the potential to be a slew of punishingly-tough material forced upon some poor solvers all at once. I'd have rather had a few less of these and a few more minor short offenders like STET and EXTS.

Spot-on revealer, CHARACTER ACTORs describing people who played a person whose name was a single letter. I didn't buy it 100%, as no one faithful to the comic books calls Professor X just "X" — blasphemy! — but for crosswording sake, I let it slide.

Note the chunks of three black squares in the SW / NE; interesting choice. It makes construction easier, allowing for more space between themers, but I'm not a fan of the resulting visual. So many black squares!

It would have been very tough to construct around themers in rows 4 6 8 10 12 — just a single row of space separating them. And it would likely have meant that there wouldn't have been as much bonus fill. Just getting the darn thing to work would have been hard enough.

I like much of Sam's bonuses — yay for THE BEAN! — but I'm not sold on it all as a whole. As a Harry Potter fanatic, I love the PENSIEVE, a great play on words. (It's a big bowl you dunk your head into, to see memories.) But ...

• GAMER TAG. Okay. Two words that make sense of the clue when joined.
• TECHBRO. BRO is a swaggery dude. TECHBRO, a BRO in TECH. Similar to the concept of a BROGRAMMER?
• DUDETTE. I've heard this thrown around, but I'm not sure if it's always a compliment?

Freshness in crosswords is good. But too much all at once can feel overwhelming; even turning solvers off. I've gotten the hate mail to prove it!

Overall, I appreciated the solidity of the theme concept. But the execution, while fine in most objective regards, didn't personally speak to me.

One reason I like to experiment with every known grid type is that it helps me understand niche challenges in crossword construction. Having worked with today's themeless grid style once or twice or three times, I have a pretty good feel about where difficulties can pop up.

It's incredibly tough to work with any 62-word themeless grid, but this particular one isn't quite as bad as others. The huge number of cheater squares — the two above BREECHES and the one above JER, for example — nibbles away a ton. It's maybe a factor of 10 (!) times harder to fill if you took out all those cheaters.

Still, a 62-word grid is a 62-word grid, bound to require some trade-offs. Like Sam, I found that the middle of this particular style is incredibly challenging. Even if you can find something that works, it often doesn't flow into one of the four corners very flexibly, requiring dozens of painful reboots.

Sam made his job even more challenging today by having four long entries all intersect in the center. And great ones they are! DRAMA COACHES, the MIRACLE ON ICE? Sam PUT ON A CLINIC! I'M SPEECHLESS at how strong those are. I don't mind EERO and ARIE at all to hold that juicy center together.

Flowing out to the corners gets so difficult at this point, what with those four long answers fixed into place (and the other entrance to a corner fixed as well). Take the NE, for example — you have MR starting 18-A, which doesn't have a lot of possibilities. Combine that with CLINIC set in stone, and you're bound to end up with some JER BENETS oddity.

And the opposite corner, HIND LEGS MS PACMAN are fantastic! I'm not sure they're worth LICTORS (and ELMIRA), though. It's a tough call. Any time you use an entry unused since the Maleskan era, it's a risky decision.

Overall though, I really enjoyed the solving experience. It's not often that constructors take on a 62-word challenge, and even rarer that the final product comes out with so many snazzy answers.

I had to rub my eyes when I counted out how many long slots Sam worked into this themeless. For a 70-word puzzle, 12-14 is about average. This one has … 18? Wow!

And Sam is so good at transforming potential into actual. Rarely is one of his long slots left with something neutral or dull — he's so careful about making it all count. Out of all 18 slots, I could only find one (!) that was a bit meh: REGALEMENT. Some might even like that one, but it did feel a bit odd in the noun form.

AIDES DE CAMP, PATRON SAINT, SEED OYSTERS, SKI LESSONS, CAMERA SHOP — NOT A CHANCE that this is boring, DO YOU HEAR ME?

I did wonder if there was a bit too much niche material overall, though. I personally enjoyed DECEPTICON (Megatron always got a bad rap), RACE BIBS (I've had many pinned onto my shirt over the years), SHEEPLE (sheep + people portmanteau), UZO ADUBA (I watched some "Orange is the New Black" until I couldn't stand Piper anymore), WIIMOTES (Wii + remotes = wordplay!). But that's a lot that might potentially turn off a solver for one reason or another.

It's a tough call. Is it better to go safe, with entries that most everyone will recognize, or push the envelope? These days I tend to favor the former, as a single entry can sour a solver's impression of an entire puzzle. I don't think that's fair at all, but it sadly does seem to be a real phenomenon.

Along with what seemed to be an enormous number of short entries — you do have to pay the price for having so many long entries — it wasn't quite up to Sam's usual for me. Still entertaining though.

Ha! Ian Livengood and I wrestled with this exact theme almost ten years ago, wanting it to end with BEARD TRIMMER [Device needed after finishing this puzzle]. I don't remember why we abandoned it. Drat, I wish we had followed it through! BEA ARTHUR was our middle themer, and I'm pretty sure we had BEAR TRACKS on our list of potential phrases.

Double drat!

Ah. One of the big reasons we gave it up was that we couldn't find a starting themer that matched the length of BEARD TRIMMER. We were dead set on having B start that first phrase so that every themer consistently began with the BEARD growth. I think that's why we stalled out.

Funny. Now that I see BEARD at the end of the last phrase — the only one not at the start — it doesn't bother me. Makes me wonder if I should be less anal about consistency in themes. Four at the start and one at the end seems perfectly fine.

I like Sam's gridwork, especially in the big NW / SE corners. At first, I was skeptical, wondering if things like AFFAIRE and RESEAT were worth it to get FALSE IDOL and THIS IS WAR. I'm still not sold on the cost of AFFAIRE, but FALSE IDOL is such a colorful bonus that it's hard to pass up.

Speaking of added color, there's so much goodness packed into those four corners. THAT GUY made me laugh, as in "don't be THAT GUY who takes all the fun out of crosswords due to his annoying overanalysis." Along with MALWARE, AT LARGE, and PLANET X, JOB FAIR, MALL MAP, it's a ton of gold worked in.

I think I'd have loved it if the themers had been vertical and the BEARD grew from left to right (or the BEARD was in the middle column, at the bottom). But it is easier to read the themers horizontally.

Overall, a solid concept. Along with really strong gridwork, it made for an enjoyable solve.

Interesting dilemma faced by Will: today's puzzle features CHARLIE ROSE dead center. After being fired due to allegations of sexual harassment — one of the bigger names in the #metoo movement that's helped give so many victims a much-needed voice — should this puzzle have been published?

It's not the choice I would have made. Even with the clue, calling him out as part of the #metoo revelations, I'd much prefer to not see him at all in my crossword.

Sam is quickly becoming one of my favorite themeless constructors, always integrating great long stuff like THE TWILIGHT ZONE, PEA SHOOTER, PRESS PASS, AA MEETINGS, FOOD PORN — what a HERCULEAN EFFORT to get so much sizzling material into a very difficult grid design. 64 words with great, flowing grid feng shui, everything so wide-open? That's incredibly tough to work with.

(Note to TROCHEE ECT IOLA: I'm looking the other way because of all the puzzle's delightful assets.)

Ultimately, I understand that Will accepted this puzzle a long time ago, and he wanted to honor his commitment to Sam. A person is only as good as his/her word. And it's a strong piece of construction, no doubt.

But I would have asked Sam to try to rework the middle if at all possible, or if not (most likely the case), I would have paid him a kill fee. If CHARLIE ROSE's inclusion front and center — no matter what the clue — makes me (a guy who tries to ignore the news) uncomfortable, I can only imagine how others will feel.

★ Will often gets correspondence on a certain clue, expressing outrage that HE IS MOST CERTAINLY WRONG, SIR! (Turns out to be right 99.5% of the time.) I was all set to write him and his copyediting team to say that there was something wrong with the clues today … and then I realized that THERE WAS A TRICK RUNNING IN MY THEMELESS PUZZLE! WHAAAA?!

And what a trick! I nearly solved the entire grid before realizing what was going on. An example: 18-Across references 10-Down (literally). What does that "literally" mean? There's a T E N at the end of EVERY SO OF(T E N)! It has nothing to do with the entry at 10-Down (RESTLESS); just a fake-out.

A fantastic a-ha moment! Best in my recent memory! Heck yeah!

But to be honest, I had mixed feelings at the end of my solve. Such a great concept — I loved, loved, loved it! Why was it running on a Saturday though, where I expect my themeless to be a little more chock-full of colorful long fill? This could have been the perfect Thursday puzzle. Quintessential.

I discussed it with Jim, and in the end, I decided that I liked Will throwing us all off guard, keeping us on our toes, not being too predictable. It's good to break expectations every once in a while.

And ultimately, there was still enough sizzle in the grid — THE ARTIST, GENE POOL, PRESS EVENT, the dreaded FRIEND ZONE, MODEL UN, COW POSE, HAND BRA (think about Vogue covers …) — that I felt like it'd be plain stupid not to give this fantastic theme the POW! just because it ran on a day I didn't expect. It's pretty incredible that Sam managed to fit in his four turning themers — all super-strong choices — plus all this great fill, with just a few KETT TRA dabs of glue.

Bravo, Sam!

I enjoy when a theme makes me wonder how easy/hard it would be to find fitting examples. Seeing LOGGED IN "pass by" the CAB in LOG CABIN did exactly that! Some neat finds in PLAYING DEAD / PLAYING CARD, SUNTAN OIL / STRUCK OIL, etc.

Ultimately, there are a lot of pairs that can work like this, especially with CAR and CAB. The real challenge is finding pairs that can be placed symmetrically. Pesky crossword symmetry! I thought Sam did a great job with this. All five themer pairs were solid to great, and there were some especially nice finds, like working the juicy POTTED PLANT around that tough *DPL* letter sequence.

So tough to work through pairs of themers! Sam has such solid gridwork. He's one of the few people I'd trust to execute on a paired themer puzzle. The only rough spot was ADC, which I *think* means aide-de-camp? There's a good reason why Will advises constructors to avoid initialisms that aren't known by virtually everyone.

The a-ha moment was nearly enough for me to put this in POW! contention. But I got confused at first, since LOG IN almost fit with the LOGGED IN clue: [Began a PC session]. And then there was something odd about the base phrase not being clued in any way, i.e., PLAYING CARD sort of just sitting there. I did come around to appreciate the concept more and more, though.

I felt like there was one aspect that pulled the puzzle out of POW! contention, though. See the connection between LACUNAR, WIVE, SEA PIG, DAY DRINK, SEAM RIPPER, RUN GOOD? Took me a while to understand my discomfort — each entry would be generally fine on its own, but as a whole, they all felt … weirdly hard. Not in a satisfying way.

Thankfully, there was enough CARBO LOAD, CAT TOYS, TIGHT RACE, TRUTH SERA, and especially WHERE ITS AT to keep me going.

Interesting concept overall, though.

Sam is ON FLEEK today! (The kids these days, they stopped using the term once I started using it.)

It's tough to have both 1.) a grid-spanning 15-letter entry and 2.) a ton of other long slots (8+) letters, while making all those entries sizzle. There's so much to love here, from NETFLIX ORIGINAL (thanks NETFLIX, for saving "Arrested Development"!) to ABC ISLANDS to EXCUSE YOU to GEL INSOLES to ANTIDOTES. Sam is one of the best constructors around when it comes to converting his long slots to winners.

So many great debut entries, too. I love BENTO BOXes at sushi or teriyaki places, giving you a bit of everything. FAT ELVIS is hilarious! Although I haven't seen LEO MESSI play, enough people gush about him that I think educated solvers ought to at least be familiar with his name.

All this, with just STOA and LENOS holding things together? Superb craftsmanship.

It was so close to a POW! But ...

• One concern was the CLOVIS / AVON crossing. That's more due to the tough AVON clue, so it's reasonably fair.
• WIN AN OSCAR felt a bit flat — does it open things up to WIN AN EMMY, WIN A PEABODY, WIN THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER?
• That TRIES TO clue felt bumpy: [Hopes, with some effort, that one will] felt like it was trying to WIN THE MOST CONVOLUTED PHRASIFYING, OF LEXICOGRAPHY AWARD. Talk about effort!
• And finally, I wondered if ON FLEEK is an example of TRIES TOo hard. I remember when ON FLEEK was on fleek … maybe ten years ago.

I know, I know, such ridiculous nit-picking! Themeless standards have rocketed up over the past few years. Even two years ago, this might have been a slam-dunk POW! pick for me. Today, this one just missed out.

As long as a themeless exhibits a decent level of gridwork proficiency, I'm pretty happy. What turns a good themeless into a great one for me is the difficult-to-define quality of "voice." In the writing world, agents and editors are all searching for voice, that spark in a manuscript that makes it un-put-down-able. Sometimes it's personal resonance, sometimes it's the author's ability to generate tension, or a character's memorable dialogue.

A long-winded way of saying that I'm a fan of Sam's voice. Such a nice pairing of WELCOME TO MY LIFE and DON'T WAIT UP FOR ME, both catchy, common phrases. NEVER FAILS echoes WELCOME TO MY LIFE, as does PLEASE STOP and DON'T WAIT UP FOR ME. I like when a themeless shows these fortuitous connections.

And the beautiful entry/clue pairings:

• ENEMY SPY is great on its own. But [Plant from another country] so innocently made me think of flora. It's a beautiful clue that couldn't have been used for just SPY, elevating an already great entry to standout status.
• A REAR AXLE generates "backspin" — as in, the back axle of the car spinning. A bit groany, but also a bit genius.

The puzzle also spoke to me through TIGER MOM, a term both hilarious and tear-inducing for me and my peers. I'm still waiting for someone to debut ASIAN F (an A minus, according to TIGER MOMs).

Seriously, my mom once looked at my report card that had all As and one A minus, and said "why didn't you do better?"

There were a couple of dabs of crossword glue here and there — PKS (penalty kicks), the AMU Darya River, RIMA — but not enough to make me give Sam the side-eye. A ton of beautiful long entries that personally resonated with me (part of me is a surf bum at heart, wanting eventually to run a SURF SHOP). Close to getting the POW! but it got edged out by another puzzle to come this week.

Lines from someone who was interrupted … and the lines themselves are interrupted! Novel idea, using hyphens for line breaks. PLEASE LET ME FIN-ISH was perfect, as it's so apt to the theme, and ISH ends up being a perfectly fine crossword entry in its own right.

DO I LOOK LIKE I'M D-ONE didn't feel as strong, as the phrase didn't hit my ear very well, and it felt odd to hyphenate a single-syllable word.

QUIET I WAS SPEAK-ING was somewhere in the middle for me — I liked the more natural hyphenation, but the QUIET at the front felt added on for bulk.

Strong choices in the crossing hyphenated words. HI-C, A-Z, NO-NO all solid. I would have liked some longer ones, but due to the layout of the theme — three (almost!) grid-spanning themers, that wouldn't have been possible.

Would have also been nice to get a fourth themer, but again, that's not possible since the crossing entries have to be in the far right column.

Given that there could only be three long themers, Sam did well to use his freedom and flexibility to incorporate a ton of great fill. THE BIBLE, JELLY ROLLS, TALKS TRASH, OPEN A TAB, CAL POLY, MRI SCAN = fantastic work. When you're forced to keep theme density low, this type of great snazziness in fill is what you should be aiming at.

And to do it with just a bit of HWY, SQIN was great. Great attention to detail left me with a feeling of elegance in craftsmanship.

Fun concept. If all the themers had worked as perfectly for me as PLEASE LET ME FIN-ISH, this would have been the POW!

★ Sam had me at THE LEGION OF DOOM. Even if you don't know this one, what an incredibly catchy name! So catchy that the Seahawks nicknamed their Super Bowl defense "The Legion of Boom." That would also make a great feature entry in a themeless!

And it didn't stop there. Love the audacity of such a huge swath of white space in the middle of the puzzle. Stair-stacking five long entries atop each other is such a tough task. Often, an arrangement like this results in a ton of crossword glue and/or subpar long entries, but not today. AIRLINE FOOD is the butt of many jokes. GALLIVANTED is so entertaining to say. TECH SCHOOL felt slightly off at first (I was thinking "vocational school), but indeed, it's an accepted term. And a FISH STORY running through it all? Yes, please!

Now, HAVE A isn't great, and TALLAHASSEE is on the dry side, but what a great save on TALLAHASSEE — made me wonder what other cities have three sets of double letters.

Along with NERF ROCKET and SNAKE EYES, Sam hit my wavelength right on. It's an incredible amount of snazzy material to pack into a low-word-count (64) grid.

I didn't know what the GIRL CODE was. An equivalent to the "guy code"? The clue confused me even more, "sisterhood" making me think it was about nuns? It's tough to use this type of misdirection on an entry that might not be that well-known. (I'm told there was an MTV series called GIRL CODE?)

There was some ARIE, AGFA (no longer in business), DEBTEE kind of stuff I didn't care for, but the overwhelming amount of great material crushed those uglies down (with THE LEGION OF DOOM's death ray). Such a fun solving experience.

★ Aside from colorfulness and smoothness, you know what makes a themeless stand out in my eyes? It makes me feel smart. I'm not ashamed to say I like having my ego stroked every once in a while, and when a Saturday puzzle tosses me a perfect alley-oop so I can reverse windmill jam for a SportsCenter highlight? That's what I'm talking about!

Okay, maybe plunking in GOTTA CATCH EM ALL without any crossing letters, or OTTER PUP off just the P in PAO isn't *quite* the equivalent of a spectacular dunk. But it felt like it.

(I can touch the rim, honest! Okay, on a 9-foot hoop. Fine.)

Overall, there were so many entries on my wavelength — classic TABULA RASA, MS DEGREE (of which I have two, neither of which I'm using now, huh), BETA TESTER with its brilliant non-question marked clue about a "bug catcher" (code bugs, that is), EATS CROW (which I often do, considering how many typos and errors readers point out!) … great stuff all around!

See that black square between HARE and BILES? I appreciated that Sam left it in. So many constructors would have taken it out to create triple-stacks in the NE / SW (instead of the doubles Sam has). Usually, I applaud those sorts of efforts to work extra sizzle into a grid. But with the central GOTTA CATCH EM ALL spanning the grid, I think Sam made the right decision.

Curious, huh? GOTTA CATCH EM ALL constrains the NE / SW to a surprising degree. Probably doesn't look like much — who cares about a little ALL fixed into place, you might ask? By itself, that is no big deal; easy to build a triple-stack around. But that's not the only constraint the corner faces. Look at how much flexibility you lose with that long BYGONE DAYS, and even the SHANDY ARM BAR arm-barring the stack from above. I'm all in favor of Sam's decision here.

A couple of blips here and there; RETAG is iffy, and EL ROPO feels esoteric. But such great craftsmanship overall.

A Saturday constructor's job is to create a tough challenge that the solver can ultimately struggle through to achieve a meaty, satisfying completion. I say YEAH DUDE! to Sam for this one.

Check out all those rare letters in BUZZFEED QUIZZES! Four Zs and a Q = snazzy seed for a themeless. I didn't realize Buzzfeed does quizzes, but I've finally started to admit that I'm no longer cool enough to know about these things.

I was cool once, honest!

(Okay, I wasn't.)

Sam didn't stop there with the rare letters. BAZOOKA JOE running through BUZZFEED QUIZZES gave us a juicy J in the SW, as did YOU'RE A JERK. I loved the former, but wasn't as hot on the latter, especially given the presence of I'M A MORON. These are fine entries, but both in one puzzle seemed to me like a bit of a downer. Personal preference — I'd rather my crosswords be uplifting; an escape from the daily grind.

And don't forget the first Q in QUEEQUEG! Or the X in FIREAXES! During my solve, I didn't notice quite how many rare letters there were. Impressive, a full 10 complement of JQXZs.

It's not easy to work with so many rare letters. Those two Js in the SW force some unsightly crossword glue in REJOIN and AJA. (Steely Dan fans might disagree, but AJA is one of those constructors' crutches for the difficult-to-fill ?J? pattern.) That QUEEQUEG / BUZZFEED QUIZZES crossing constrained the middle, forcing SQ IN (square inch) and the awkward plural FIDOS.

So many constraining rare letters also force trade-offs in terms of the long slots. Sam did well to generally fill the grid smoothly, but using UNTAPED, the outdated-sounding CYBERCAFE, SIT AT HOME, RATE CAP / BASE SALARY tailored to finance wonks … these more take up space than shine, in my eyes.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but MIKE PIAZZA does seem crossworthy to me. Most any Hall-of-Famer is fair game, methinks.

Neat to get all those rare letters. Along with some standout entries like SAYONARA and FAKE NAME, I enjoyed this one.

GOOD STUFF all around today, Sam jam-packing in so many assets. It's such a rush to keep uncovering great entry after great entry after great entry, SORORITY ROW to NEVER EVER to BANANA PEELS to PUFFER FISH to TAROT CARDS. I count about 13 assets in this themeless, well over my threshold of 10.

I also liked the intersections of TAKE A SNOOZE / DOZE (both using that snazzy Z!) and ASSAY / TRY both clued as "test." There's something so fortuitous about those sorts of crossings in a themeless.

There were a couple of entries that fell flat to my ear. FRESH FACED … hmm. DARE ME? These do appear to be reasonable phrases, at least to Google. I wouldn't go out of my way to incorporate either into a themeless, though.

I wonder if some solvers will complain about HEGIRA and/or ALEWIFE, especially crossing each other? I don't actually mind either, and I'd much rather get a HEGIRA than a DARE ME. There's so much subjectivity in assessing how "good" an entry is, but I'd argue that HEGIRA is an important term in Muslim history, something educated solvers ought to know (or strive to know if they don't).

I do appreciate that DARE ME is more inferable, but just as long as all the crosses are fair, I'd much rather have HEGIRA.

Great craftsmanship overall, with hardly a dab of crossword glue. I'd argue that nearly every 70 (and 72) word themeless should be this clean and sparkly — there's just no reason to settle, given that it's near the maximum allowable word count. We as constructors should rarely — perhaps NEVER EVER — settle for less.

Silent letters have been played upon in many crosswords, but there's still room for a new twist. I like what Sam did today, featuring base phrases turned into kooky ones when the silent letter is ignored. I laughed at GIVES A DAM(N), giving a handout to the downtrodden beavers. I had heard RENAISSANCE FA(I)RE used with this wordplay before, but it's still fun to think about giant turkey legs waved about.

I hadn't heard of a TAROT SPREAD. Apparently, it's the way a reader spreads out … tarot cards? Not sure it's snazzy enough to work as a featured theme answer. It didn't resonate with me nearly as well as the others.

Given that there are so many words with silent letters — and also so many phrases using words with silent letters — I appreciated that Sam spelled out something with those key letters. KNIGHT is sort of appropriate given that it also has a silent letter — how meta! — but it didn't have quite the a-ha moment of brilliance that I was hoping for. Hmm.

Sam executed so well on his grid, keeping his crossword glue to just minor nits like ERN, ARIE, TGEL, OYE, DTS. One could argue that some of these are perfectly fine. GOTAC (GOT A C) felt a bit arbitrary, but again, one could make a case that C students are the most common type of students, if grading is done on a bell curve.

And some outstanding bonus entries, DATA STORAGE, THE IDEA!, DON'T BE CRUEL, NEON TUBE elevating my solve. SNOOP LION too! (Apologies to the rap haters out there.) Going from Snoop Dogg to SNOOP LION (and back?) is interesting.

Finally, an outstanding clue for PAC-MAN. It's already a great entry, but it's raised even further clued as one "following the dotted lines." A single clue like that can make an entire puzzle so memorable.

Fun theme, if not quite different enough from other silent letter puzzles for my taste. But Sam's strong execution helped to make my solve enjoyable.

Sam helps BREAK THE GLASS CEILING today, six women cracking into their respective fields. The circled letters contain types of GLASS — it's not a PINT that's a 16-ounce container, but a PINT (GLASS). It's not STAINED that's a building material, but STAINED GLASS. Nice how each of the women breaks through these different GLASSes. I enjoyed these groundbreaking — er, ceilingbreaking — women getting featured in a puzzle with a nice trick.

Fun that the first letters of the women's names helped form a new word in those GLASSes. PINT to P(O)INT, STAINED to ST(R)AINED, etc. Didn't totally get the rationale for that, but there were some interesting finds.

I also dug Sam's fill. I love the DIY KIT, OH GEEZ, YOU IDIOT, SEXILE mid-length entries. FLEXAGON is another one I love (written about by the great Martin Gardner). Some may hate it because they don't know what it is, but haters gonna hate.

I wasn't a fan of the grid segmentation. As Sam mentioned, it helps create six distinct "ceilings," and makes each of the "rooms" easier to construct — but it was such a choppy solve. Felt like solving 10ish mini-puzzles; no flow at all.

The north and south are the worst offenders, what with a single entry connecting them to the rest of the grid. Opening those even just a little, like moving the block between IRE and EASTON one space to the right, would have helped tremendously. But that would have made construction much more difficult, no doubt.

A couple of gluey bits, but less than usual in a Sunday puzzle: I SEE A is indeed a bad partial, and OSA is an entry Will and Joel are trying to phase out. But very smooth overall, especially considering all the constraints.

All in all, I liked the concept and celebration. If only the grid had been even a little less partitioned, it would have gotten serious POW! consideration.

★ Such a well-executed puzzle. Colorful themers, strong long fill, nary a gluey bit in sight, and a really fun revealer: HEADS WILL ROLL, describing an EGG roll, BARREL roll, DRUM roll, and LOG roll. Hits most every criterion I look for in a Monday puzzle.

Okay, there was one point I considered before giving this the POW. Will has said that he's not taking "words that can follow (or precede) X" puzzles anymore, and rightfully so. Over the years, these have been done to death. And I can just hear people asking me, "Isn't this essentially a words-that-follow" puzzle?

Yes and no. I came up with a tiered system:

• Lowest level: using the word ROLL at the end of the puzzle for a revealer, with the clue [word that can follow the starts of …]. I think many will agree that this is pretty boring.
• Middle level: using a dry phrase as a revealer, i.e. ROLL TOP [Type of desk, and a hint to the starts of …]. A little better, but still not punchy.
• Higher level: using a colorful, themeless-worthy phrase for a revealer. ROLL CALL ["Sound off!" and a hint to the starts of …] is pretty fun.
• Best: using a colorful, themeless-worthy phrase for a revealer — which cleverly hints at the position of ROLL: HEADS WILL ROLL indicates that the first word — or "head" — of each phrase is a type of roll.

And EGG HUNTS, BARREL RACE, DRUMSTICKS, LOG CABIN are all phrases I'd give check-marks to in a themeless. As are HOT SEAT, FAMILY TREE, END OF STORY, even IM NEXT. Sam wisely spreads out his long fill so he doesn't have to struggle with filling it. Beautiful results, only the minor blights Sam pointed out. And ET TU I'm perfectly fine with.

Doesn't hurt that I'm a huge Andrew Luck fan. Go COLTS! And go Sam! Really well done.

It's very infrequent that I see a debut this smooth, this colorful, this well-executed.

Fun theme — L I O N repeated in four themers, all at the end of one word and the beginning of another for perfect consistency. How cool is it that the LIONS SHARE revealer exhibits the exact same quality!

Sam doesn't push the boundaries too much today, what with a 78-word puzzle (the maximum allowed), but he executes on it so well. Look at the long fill: IDIOT PROOF and SEE IF I CARE. Great choices; colorful answers. The 7-letter ones are excellent too, DR SEUSS and INKBLOT. Even tossing in some MYSTIC PRIEST helps with zest.

And such little glue to hold it all together. I like that Sam has the self-awareness to point out some of the gluey bits he really wanted to work out, but I actually don't mind AVI. The one-named author (real name: Edward Irving Wortis) is a giant in kidlit, having won one Newbery Medal and two Newbery Honors. Agreed that ANSE is pretty esoteric, but he's more crossworthy than the lesser-known of the Kenan and KEL duo, isn't he? And I don't mind UAE and IGA at all, as they're commonplace acronyms. So I think Sam did a tremendous job in his short fill.

With all the gushing praise, why didn't I give this the POW? As much as I enjoyed the solve, I found it too easy, especially with the circles giving away the game. It also would have been nice to have the five circles appear a bit less haphazardly — probably too much to ask given the constraint of the theme — but I could have forgiven the circles if they had all been in a straight line. Plus, given how smooth Sam made this puzzle, I wanted to see him challenge himself to go with a 76- or 74-word puzzle and incorporate more long fill.

But those are minor details. I debated between today's vs. yesterday's puzzles for the POW. Looking forward to more from Sam.