Tony Orbach author page

By all accounts, I should have disliked this puzzle. It's too simple a theme concept. There are hundreds of theme options, as Tony mentioned, making it too loosey-goosey. I didn't recognize one base phrase (PRIDE OF PLACE). The grid sports only a few bonus entries and a large dose of ugly short bits.

Yet I enjoyed it. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. Tony has somehow broken so many of my mantras about what makes a Sunday NYT puzzle enjoyable.

Perhaps it's the number of themers that hit? I didn't laugh at any, but almost all of them amused. Two archaeologists in a dispute over fossils as a BONE CONTENTION. COMEDY ERRORS as a stand-ups flubs. =] !

Or how so many of the themers flipped word meanings so well? Reading a RITE PASSAGE, from the Torah, during a RITE of PASSAGE. STROKE GENIUS as a swim coach, that's a STROKE of GENIUS.

Was it how easily the puzzle breezed by? Since the theme concept was kindergarten-level basic, I was able to drop in most themers with zero thought. I'm far from a speed solver, and completing a Sunday NYT in about 10 minutes — far less than my average — made me feel brilliant.

I usually complain about 21x21 grids not having enough bonus fill (like DEAR SANTA and MIND BLOWN), but having so much short stuff that I could fly straight through helped make my record time possible. Puzzles should leave solvers with a glow, and this one did.

It's not a perfect solving experience by any means, and not even one I'd give to newer solvers. Aside from all the AGFA AIT (!) BCE DEPT stuff, should general solvers be expected to know ISTRIA? LEKS? R.U.R.? My reaction falls somewhere between LEERY and ICKY.

Still, it's a rare Sunday when an old-old-old theme type amuses me so much. I give Will Shortz a lot of heck these days for not innovating nearly enough in 21x21s, but this one is a checkmark for him. There's something to be said for a simple Sunday puzzle that can make a huge swath of solvers feel great.

DJ's SPINNIN' = phrases with D's replaced with J's. GRAVE JIGGERS made me out-and-out belly laugh. What an image that evokes!

HOOVER JAM also entertained, given the change of HOOVER from the name to the vacuum-related noun.

The others didn't do much for me, but humor is subjective. Hopefully, others were more entertained.

Nice touch that Tony and Acme chose phrases that didn't contain any other D's. It would have been inelegant for a simple letter substitution puzzle to have a stray D inside one of the theme phrases.

It's not easy to work so many Js into a single puzzle. Eight of them is no joke! But given that this is such a basic concept, I needed something more to keep up my interest. Here are some possible ways:

• Bonuses in the fill. There's DON JUAN, but not much else.
• Clean as a whistle gridwork? Nope, too much crossword glue. I stopped counting at 10 infractions. Adding / rejiggering black squares, to increase the word count from 138 to 140, could have helped.
• Clever wordplay clues. None that stood out.
• Extra layer of theme. At first I thought there was a neat extra: all the new Js form a circle ... like a record that's being spun! That would have been a solid addition. Alas, no. (Maybe it's a Dali-esque record?)

All in all, some decent theme answers, but I wish there had been something more to enliven my solving experience.

However, it's important to remember that I'm far from an average solver. There's something to be said for occasionally throwing a softball. Many people I know delight in being able to just complete a Sunday NYT crossword, so this could be right up their alleys.

Jeff and Jim Cross Words! We've decided to run this feature on days where we have differing viewpoints on a puzzle.

PANCAKEs! I like pancakes. I like syrup. Three PANCAKEs, two syrups down the sides, what's not to like?

It is an interesting visual, but I spent a lot of time thinking about why this one didn't hit me very strongly. Not badly, just not very strongly. I did think the repetition of PANCAKE with three different definitions was fun. There haven't been very many repeated word puzzles in the NYT's history.

Was it the floatingness of the PANCAKEs, hovering above each other? Or the PAT of butter soaring sky-high like a UFO? With the PLATE at bunker level?

The syrup running down the sides was a nice touch. AUNT JEMIMA came immediately to mind. Not so much with HUNGRY JACK, though. I'm ashamed to say that I initially wrote in SIMPLE JACK. (That's the role within a role Ben Stiller plays in "Tropic Thunder." Ahem.)

And no syrup on top of the PANCAKEs? I would have loved to see the syrup brands starting from the top middle of the highest PANCAKE, then making a turn as they ran down the side. It'd have made AUNT JEMIMA look bizarre with AUNT running right to left before JEMIMA flowing down. But this is a Wednesday puzzle! Some craziness would have been great.

Overall, I thought it was a fun visual concept that didn't quite hit with its execution.

Some funny results today involving a sound addition, Mountain Dew to MOUNTAIN DUET, Vanity Fair to VANITY FERRET (hilarious!), magazine rack to MAGAZINE RACQUET. I was never sure of the pronunciation of CRUET (crew-eht, not crew-ay). Huh. Now I know.

Far and away, my favorite section was the lower left, with GET FUZZY crossing PLOTZ. I recently introduced my 11-year old nephew to the hilarity that is GET FUZZY, with Bucky Katt's poorly thought out evil schemes, and Satchel's innocent dunderheadedness. And PLOTZ is Yiddish slang to faint away in dramatic form, as in "that drama queen just plotzed!" Love, love, love that bonus fill. The L of PLOTZ is going to be tough for people who don't know that or NALA of "The Lion King," unfortunately. I can see an argument that it's not particularly fair.

I also liked entries such as SCHERZO, ASGARD, SNUCK UP ON, but overall, I felt there was too much crossword glue for my taste. The theme density is a little high, given that all four themers are long. But still, I noticed the little bits everywhere, from ETHNO / ENVIRO — two prefixes crossing each other — to a smattering of TAI, HTS, OPP, NEOS, ENNE, etc. Some of it is in the name of working in great fill, like NATCH, but man, the price to pay in that north region is steep.

Will has mentioned that he's trying to phase out SDI, Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative." I actually don't mind it that much since the so-called Star Wars defense system was a big topic of discussion when I was a kid, but I see where he's coming from — those acronyms are rough. It looks almost necessary given the layout, stuck in that highly constrained region between SNUCK UP ON and LACE INTO.

LACE INTO … dictionary says it's legit, as "attack, devour, or scold." Still, it's not my favorite use of a precious 8-letter slot.

Some amusing results generated off of solid base phrases, with some rocky points. Still, the image of Satchel Pooch PLOTZing away gave me a huge smile.

★ So much fun, I didn't want the puzzle to end. Given my short atten — something shiny! — I tend to bog down on Sunday puzzles. Not today. I thought I knew what to expect from the title, but I didn't expect nearly so much entertainment from these clever spoonerisms of celeb names. BEER GOGGLES to GERE BOGGLES is pure gold. Strong base phrase, laugh-inducing kooky result; it doesn't get much better than that.

Sometimes I'm guilty of wanting Sunday puzzles to do too much. I have to remember that I'm not the average NYT solver. So many people leave the NYT Magazine out on the kitchen table, working on the puzzle over hours or even days (by themselves or with friends), and if the theme is too tricky or intricate (a "puzzle more for constructors than solvers"), it's not satisfying if they don't grok it. This puzzle is a fastball straight down the middle for that demographic; a known theme type, not too difficult, with a high degree of solving satisfaction. Even a couple of chuckles.

And check out how well-executed it is. Nine themers is good theme density, and there's a lot of strong fill. I wouldn't expect any less from these two veterans. I like how they break convention a bit. Note how the first themers are in row four? That's unusual, since putting themers in row three is the norm (that helps maximize spacing between theme entries). But they take good advantage of this arrangement in the NE and SW corners. Look at the juicy stuff: WASHRAG, AT PEACE, and the crazy GETSANA = GETS AN A. Now that's using your seven-letter spaces wisely. And a big thumbs-up to SPY-FI. I don't know if that's a term in common use, but I'm going to start using it.

Just like most Sunday NYT puzzles, it had a couple of rough spots. ALY/KIEL tripped me up pretty good, for example. AVY/KIEV sounded just as good, by gum! And as much as I liked OH HAPPY DAY! it caused a high level of fill constraints. Check out the pile-up of UOMO / UNHIP / RPTS / ORA / ANS. Perhaps another piece of long fill would have produced a smoother region. Or a set of cheater squares could have been employed to smooth things out. The rest of the puzzle is relatively smooth, so this concentration of glue stuck out a bit for me.

Finally, one of the nicest a-ha moments in a while. I could not for the life of me what [Polo grounds?] was talking about. I knew some trickery was happening because of the giveaway question mark, but it would not come until I had almost all the crossing answers. Great big headslap when I realized it was all about the (Marco) "Polo grounds." Beautiful stuff.

An experienced constructor and fellow CrosSynergy member, Tony gives us a straightforward "add-a-letter(s)" type theme today, ENRICH being construed as "add richness by adding an EN." Some funny resulting phrases, LET ER RIPEN being my favorite. Beautiful base phrase (LET ER RIP!) and an amusing image of a fruit picker maniacally stripping green apples off a tree. CAN I BE FRANKEN also gave me a chuckle.

LEAVENING LAS VEGAS has a nice base phrase (LEAVING LAS VEGAS, possibly the most depressing movie of all time), and I got a kick out of someone sprinkling leavening all over Sin City. So the clue confused me. There is one dictionary definition for "leaven" that goes: "to permeate with an altering or transforming element." But that doesn't seem like a comic's job as much as a city planner's? Perhaps too nit picky on my part. I suppose I shall have to prolong my wait for the leavening fairy's arrival.

Ah, the "breakfast test." This term is bandied about by editors, as to whether or not an entry (or a clue, for that matter) will cause distress for a person doing the crossword over breakfast. Even though Preparation H was disguised within PREPARATION HEN, it gave me a bit of an ick factor. I'm not really a fan of picturing that yellow and blue container, people in ads making all sorts of pained faces as they point at their... apparently this commentary doesn't pass the breakfast test. Sorry about that!

Some nice fill today. P B AND J, now that's a way to start a puzzle. And PONIED UP is good stuff, as is TAKES AIM, and PERFECT TEN is, well, a perfect ten. At first I wondered if it would have been better if there were no other ENs in the puzzle (especially not in the long entries like PERFECT TEN which could possibly be mistaken for themers)? But that seems pretty picky. Silence, stupid constructor's brain!

As with most every Sunday puzzle, there will be compromises. They're just so much harder to create than 15x's. It's a bit unfortunate to see two (var.) tags in one puzzle, one on ALINING (aligning) and the other on ASANTE (Ashanti). And woo-wee, did I have trouble with the ASANTE/SHEREE crossing. Apparently I'm not watching enough "Real Housewives" (okay, so there is a show more depressing than "Leaving Las Vegas"). And ARE NOT/CAN TOO felt a bit much. It's tricky. You want to give the solver great stuff like SHINBONE, but not at too great a price. Very tough to balance, even going up to Will's maximum word count of 140. Tony's grid skeleton is pretty good, lots of space between themers. It's just tough to fill a 21x cleanly with a lot of zest.

Finally, I loved the cluing on [It comes as a shock]. Similar sorts of wordplay have been done before on TREMOR, but I still got fooled, thinking about surprise announcements. But OH NO HE DIDNT didn't fit. Okay fine, I watch "Real Housewives"!