Will Nediger author page

I love Greek mythology. I enjoy thought experiments. I even like a word ladder every now and again. So I enjoyed today's exploration, replacing SHIP letter by letter and building it back into another SHIP. Creative combination of duplication themes and word ladders.

It would have been great to have a themer that shared zero letters with SHIP, breaking the Argo into nothingness before building it back up.

Then I second-guessed myself. Is a total teardown of SHIP in the spirit of the SHIP OF THESEUS? Wouldn't it be better if at least some part of it remained at all times?

Yet more evidence that I'm a SHI* philosopher.

I'm glad that Will pointed out OTIOSITY — such useful letters, indeed. The ones that stood out even more to me were UPPISH, NULLITY, and NOSILLY. In a noselike fashion — seriously, Will? And if you're going to use such otiosities—

Ah. No, silly Jeff racks up another SLOW SLIP.

Like most thought experiments, this one forced me to exercise some brain cells, but also like most thought experiments, it wasn't necessarily fun. I might have enjoyed plays on THESEUS more, perhaps replacing two letters at a time? Or using embedded strings, like TIS THE SEASON? TO SAY THE LEAST, I wanted more excitement.

I can see the counterpoint, though. Jim Horne, the yin to my boorish yang, gave it a SLOW CLAP.

I'm fascinated by concepts that can't be easily mined programmatically. After staring at MISS INN FORMATION for ten minutes, I still only have a vague idea of how to approach the problem.

Big winner: FOR THE ASKING into FOR THEE, ASS KING! The Assman would be proud.

Others were more tortured. I could maybe imagine ADD MITTS DEFEAT on a Wikipedia editor's to-do list.

CHRISTMAS CAR ROLL … you can write a long clue involving all the words, but it won't sound natural. Or imaginable.

WELL COME, MATT. Again, when a clue requires such detailed explanation, it's not that welcome.

Interesting decision to reduce the number of themers and the overall word count, too. Where that decision shined was in the west and east. ALABASTER / SAVE STATE / STEELY DAN is STYLING.

Other areas, though: PARENTED, decent. ETRURIA ... I'd so much rather have one great long entry instead of this pair.

I was intrigued enough by these findings that I would have loved a seventh. And although some of the fill required by such a low word count caused me some AGITA, I respect the decision to experiment with theme and entry density.

I recently downloaded the Too Good To Go app. Pastries that are a bit stale, meat that mostly passes the sniff test, and fruit with unexpected flavors and/or textures don't sound appealing, but for roughly 75% off? Heck yeah, we Taiwanese do love a BIG DEAL!

Fine, I'll guess I'll settle for FIFTY PERCENT OFF.

MEGAMERGER … now we're talking BIG DEAL! My neighbor works for Twitter — at least still as of last night — so it's been fascinating to get the skinny of Musk's musky transaction.

I was baffled by ROYAL FLUSH at first. It is a BIG DEAL but in the same way as any incredibly lucky outcome. Neat a-ha when I realized that the word "deal" did double duty, playing on the deal of the poker cards. Clever!

Such an interesting assortment of bonus entries. This chem dork loved RHENIUM. FOIST ON is more interesting than other "add-a-preposition" phrases. My daughter is obsessed with LIP BALM in her quest to become a fashionista (she's still at the clown stage).

F WORDS in the plural felt odd initially, but it works. Great cross between FWORDS and SALTY, too — especially apt after dealing with two sick kids, one with both influenza and RSV. That'll get anyone HUFFISH. RECTO is a niche term, but I liked AGNI much more than usual. Referring to the Hindu god of fire is so much better than [Lambs: Lat.].

"What do these things have in common" puzzles work best when they play on vastly different meanings or interpretations. FIFTY PERCENT OFF and MEGAMERGER were too close, both touching on business transactions, but I loved the wordplay that ROYAL FLUSH dealt out.

Will Nediger touches on an excellent point: Will Shortz is picky about initialisms. His rationale is that if you've never heard of it, it's a string of random letters that could be anything. John Guzzetta learned that the hard way when he seeded a themeless with VBS (vacation Bible school), and I felt the sting with OBO (or best offer). I'm glad that Will Nediger took the risk because hormone replacement therapy is a fresh entry in current news.

A couple of delightful debut entries, headlined by ROOKIE MISTAKE. Fantastic entry, and there's so much opportunity for wordplay.

Similar case for AMATEUR NIGHT. "Poetry, but not pros" is no rookie mistake!

BURNER ACCOUNT? BURNER PHONE, sure. But can't you trace a throwaway account by the IP address? Awfully difficult to burn the entire electronic trail.

MUDRA didn't look familiar, but some of the poses sure did. Given how many times I've tried to awkwardly describe one of these, I'm glad to now know the precise term.

There weren't as many clever, playful clues as I want in a Friday, but a couple did sizzle. Roughly 87% of my weekends are spent fixing my kids' crap, so I loved [Roll with many functions]. DUCT TAPE is how I roll.

Given that the "stair stack" is a tried and true themeless pattern these days, it would have been nice to see a less conservative grid design (going down to 68 or even 66 words), with less constricted grid flow into the NW and SE corners. Still, some excellent entries like LIFE HACKS and the chatty I CAN'T LOOK kept up my interest.

With only 120 entries, Brooke and Will set a record for fewest answers in a Sunday 21x21, edging out the old record-holders, Frank Longo and Byron Walden.

[UPDATE: Sam Ezersky beat this record in 2013.]

From a construction standpoint, it's a jaw-dropping achievement. A regular 140-word 21x21 is difficult enough since you have to fill themeless-esque expanses of white space. A 130-word themeless is maybe a factor of two harder — although it's more real estate to fill, you don't have to deal with any pesky themers.

Dropping down from there has an exponential effect. Difficulty level might double again cutting to 126 words. Then double again to 124. Pushing to 120 words is like a moonshot.

Clever use of cheater squares, Brooke and Will nibbling away at the grid's four corners. That makes filling those regions much more possible. Not a bad visual effect, either.

The middle of the puzzle … I wouldn't even attempt something like this, a feat even more difficult than Ryan McCarty's trademark themelesses featuring gigantic middles. The fact that they filled this, period, is astonishing. To do it with some awesome entries like FACE TATTOOS, GAY PRIDE PARADE, and HULA DANCERS is even more impressive.

All that said, the solver in me enjoyed some of the other Sunday themelesses more. There was so much neutral material taking up valuable long slots, like PREPARATIVE, CONCURRENCE, NOT OCCUPIED, DEDICATE. I'd rather break up some of these, clawing back the ability to jazz up other long entries like DETENTIONS, ERRONEOUS, TOTALED UP, REFUSALS. I enjoyed Will's recent Universal Sunday themeless more than this one.

A couple of fantastic clues, like a HAT TREE giving a bowler (hat) a "hook," and GAY PRIDE PARADE was made even better with the wordplay in walk out.

Experimentation is rarely the wrong thing to do. I hope the NYT will continue running occasional themeless Sundays.

PARLOR TRICK, what a delightful title for a PANCHINKO puzzle! I stepped inside a PACHINKO parlor once during a business trip to Tokyo. I immediately clapped my hands to my ears against the deafening din of metal balls plinking to the background of electronically-generated background beeps. Even then, I couldn't help but watch through the window, mesmerized by the random paths of those steel BBs.

I wish the O balls weren't circled. Once I got the first few, I figured the rest might also be Os, and that was that. I'd have enjoyed uncovering the path much more, like in a repeated I string puzzle from years ago.

The grid is immaculately clean, nearly free of gluey short fill. That's an amazing feat, given that even the most experienced constructors need some gloops to hold a Sunday 140-word puzzle together. Even more impressive, given that the Os take away so much flexibility, "triple-checking" so many squares (having to work with Across, Down, and diagonal directions).

There's usually some trade-off required though, and there was some tough vocab sprinkled throughout. I can figure out (ish) what an ISOPOD and a PHONEME are from etymology. ALVEOLAR … related to alveoli? Sort of. Ish. The SACHER torte tasted vaguely familiar to this "Great British Bake-off" fanatic. Not so much Giovanni Battista TIEPOLO or the kitten's TOE BEAN.

I appreciated the effort to do something different, and even more so, visually appealing. High marks for replication of the PACHINKO experience, along with some dings for the mixture of way-too-easy and incredibly difficult aspects of the solve.

A simple search pattern, * OF *, turns up hundreds of phrases fitting this pattern. Narrowing them down into those that produce amusing results when the first and last words are swapped — now that's another story. Then, methodically scoring your candidates, using proper sequencing, is critical.

The lesson in all this? Order of points makes a huge difference.

(Point of order, that joke sounded funnier in my head.)

DRAWERS OF CHESTS worked the best since both words changed meaning. It's not LOL-worthy, but I appreciated that it made me rethink both words.

None of the others accomplished this. Fortunately, there were some chuckles: COMMAND OF CHAIN evoked images of dog vs. man struggles, and MAN OF RIGHTS amused as a much-too-predictable boxer.

There are so many things I'll get questions about:

• TUBI. No idea either. Sure, it sounds like a streaming service.
• OBVI. Obvi, this is short for "obviatingliness." Obviously!
• EUCALYPTI. "Eucalytpuses" sounds even more wrong. The plural is clearly best expressed as "that eucalyptus and a bunch of others, too."
• THEOC. Fox's drama about reality star Theo Campbell, who goes by Theo C. (Jim Horne's correction: ignore Jeff mockery. THEOC is actually an ancient Sumerian two-syllable word that rhymes with "me mock.")
• BOTNET. It is just as it sounds, robot network. I'd say more, but the rise of the machines and all. Praise ye, robot overlords!
• ENBIES. All joking aside, this is a great term to learn. Not only is it relevant to important rights issues, but it's gettable. Think non-binaries = NBs = ENBIES.

This isn't the most memorable of themes — the ol' switcheroo has been a crossword standard for decades — but there were a couple of entertaining results, along with some great bonuses like JUST RELAX and best of all, BALD EAGLE with that awesome Benjamin Franklin quote hating on our national symbol. That might not fly so well these days …

I love the "Wallace and Gromit" shorts, "The Wrong Trousers" capturing this mechanical engineer's imagination decades ago. I haven't seen Aardman's longer features, but I look forward to watching them with my kids some day — "The Curse of the WERE-RABBIT" sounds delightful.

TAKES FOR GRANTED is apt today, solvers likely to take for granted how far triple-stacks have come over the years. Ten years ago, most of them had to be held together with paper-clips-and-bubble-gum short fill. Today's is beautifully clean, every cross and surrounding entry immaculate. Love it; how times have changed.

I did find TAKES FOR GRANTED a bit dull, though, especially since its clue was so straightforward; no playfulness at all. Thanks to the pre-Shortzian project, we can see that this entry debuted way back in 1969! I can only imagine what a triple-stack built around it would have looked like.

PROPELLER BEANIE made me smile. I've never seen one in real life, but I wouldn't put it past some Seattle hipster doofus to wear one. And make me want one.

Jim Horne and I debated how strong STARBUCKS ORDERS felt. Is MCDONALDS ORDERS equally valid? Would we enjoy seeing IHOP BREAKFAST in a themeless? Ultimately, Jim convinced me that Starbucks has made a cultural statement about tall, grande, venti, and I did enjoy the misdirection in the clue, making me think about Ariana Grande. Excellent use of the "hidden capital" trick.

Some great cluing today, Facebook offering 50 different choices for GENDERS? Maybe they're not all bad! (Only 99.7%.) And what a great way to make a shortie like EMU stand out. Won't defecate for 50+ days during egg incubation? So many questions …

Grid-spanning triple-stacks can be so amazing when all three entries feel like fist-pumpers. This one didn't get there, but much of the other material added zing — STORE BRAND, I OWE YOU ONE, MERCEDES BENZ, ON BROADWAY.

SEE ME AFTER CLASS, get it? The first word can precede CLASS. And the second word starts with ME. Because the revealer tells you that you can see ME after a type of CLASS.

Get it? Do you?

Maybe if I explain it more?

Interesting set of finds. It didn't hit me that strongly, though, partially because the revealer's clue was so wonky. "… or a hint to the first words … and following letters! … get it, because ME begins the seconds words of those theme answers … and the—"

DELE

Great gridwork, as per Will's usual. Note that there are no cheater squares. Not that there's anything wrong with cheaters (extra black squares that help constructors make big regions easier to fill), but many people would make their lives much easier in the upper-left corner, by blacking out MAN, thus creating a "Utah block." There'd be nothing wrong with that, except that you'd miss juicy fill like RISING STAR.

Many constructors would have the knowledge to space out the long downs, alternating them like Will did with RISING STAR to SANTIAGO to UBERNERD to HAILS A TAXI. Few would have the guts (or patience) to leave a long Across where TORMENTS and IGLESIAS are, though, a big swath like that tormenting them. Such beautiful results.

A shame that the theme didn't hit me more strongly, more a curiosity than an a-ha moment. This is one example of when "tightness" didn't matter. Usually if I can't think of a single other possible theme answer; that elevates my admiration, but here, the a-ha moment was muddy enough that tightness didn't help.

Still, the gridwork was so strong that the overall solving experience was still pleasant, what with Will's technical prowess to study and admire.

I didn't fully understand the theme until I read Will Nediger's notes. I'm glad that he had a formula, because my first impression was that the products were a mish-mash, too loosely related to their companies. Even knowing the rationale now, though, I'm not sure I buy it. Why a (specific brand) + (generic product)? Why not (specific product) + (specific product)?

Some of them were such a stretch that I couldn't suspend disbelief. Starbucks product is GROUNDS? Photographers buy SHOOTERS? I suppose people going to Greyhound's web site might book COACHES instead of buses.

Theme qualms aside, Will is such a strong grid technician, and Dick did some fine work filling the skeleton. The upper right and lower left are particularly tough — triple-stacks of 9s are doable, but quads are so tough that I almost always try to break them up. OBJECTORS / BEAVER HAT / IN BALANCE / TONE POEM is excellent work.

I used to watch "The Daily Show" daily but still couldn remember how to spell JABOUKIE (JABOOKIE keeps sticking in my head). Excellent work making sure the crosses were unambiguous.

A handful of strong clues helped keep my attention, too. Clever clues can make your long marquee fill even spicier. HOTELIER is already a nice entry, but playing on the "in crowd" makes it more memorable.

(The BAGS clue refers to a "Birkin bag." Not a surprise that this sweatpants wearer hadn't heard of it.)

"Corporate mergers" feels like it has a lot of potential as a theme concept. I wish there were more oomph or a stronger a-ha with this implementation.

I say, "I'm probably overthinking this, but …" so often that I'm surprised it's not a meme. Jim Horne and I chat every week by phone, and I can always see him sitting up and rubbing his hands together every time I utter those five magical words. This week:

JIM: What confused you?

JEFF: It's probably clever, a SPOILER ALERT. But aren't the TOO MANY COOKS the spoilers? So they've already been spoiled?

JIM: No, the word SPOIL is what comes next in each saying. The very next word. Thus, a SPOILER ALERT is perfect; such devilish wordplay.

JEFF: But in that case, it should be SPOIL ALERT. It doesn't make sense as—

JIM: (hysterical laughter)

Once I solved SPARE THE ROD, I had that vague sense of unease that I would receive a flood of irate emails. I appreciate that Will Nediger acknowledged this landmine. I don't know that it's considered universally harmful and wrong, though — there are people with strong opinions on both sides.

Fantastic grid, amazing extras in IRISH PUBS / SPORTS BAR (although I wondered if there was a secondary theme in here), HOT TAKE, and fun mid-lengthers like OEUVRE and SVELTE.

I botched MESHUGA, guessing MESHUSA (sounded like Methuselah? Wasn't he a little crazy?), but that's the clue's fault, not the grid's, since both SLOB and GLOB aptly rhyme with "blob."

There's a fine line between clever and stupid, and this puzzle falls well toward the side of clever, with me heading the other way. It's such a great concept and presentation (once you stop overthinking it), but a shame that SPARE THE ROD is a lightning rod of controversy.

I'm a slow but steady Saturday solver. Once in a while, though, lightning strikes, and I get on a bizarro world thrill ride, humming along on a constructor's wavelength at the speed of Quicksilver. I had a feeling that that dictionary-esque clue [Metaphorical setting in which everything is inverted …] had to be BIZARRO WORLD, and all of a sudden, I had tapped into the Speed Force.

Then, a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen clue? Plop in NEMO!

[Visual effect from a partial eclipse] didn't immediately lift its veiled shadow, but considering Mr. PENUMBRA's 24-hour Bookstore is one of my favorites, it took only 24 seconds to get that.

Sometimes it pays to be a nerd.

I don't know that I'd strive to seed a themeless with BIZARRO WORLD since if you'd never encountered the phrase, you'd likely think it's bizarre. But for us, the Sir Dork-a-lots of the icosahedral table, a quest into BIZARRO WORLD is just what Anorak ordered.

If it didn't totally make sense, I'm currently reading Ready Player Two, which (sadly) makes even less sense.

One standout clue today, [Holiday production?]. I had MUSIC filled in, but I could not make CHRISTMAS or YULE or MULE (don't ask) work. Brilliant way to hide (Billie) Holiday. I wondered afterward if "blues music" was a great phrase or not — "I listened to some blues music" is much more bizarro than "I listened to some blues" — but that clue was so strong that I swept my qualms aside.

I appreciate how meticulous Will is with his craftsmanship, never allowing even a dab of crossword glue. (Maybe you could slightly ding ERE). I would have liked a bit more out of the long slots, though — RESTAURANT (yes, great clue, but a boring entry), REPROACHES, ROSEMARY, SHOWERS, TROOPED not doing much more than take up space. Give me a bit more juice in exchange for glue on par with ERE, and I'd put this in POW! territory.

Synonyms for "outside layer of FRUIT" found literally on the outsides of theme answers. It's not exciting, but it's a nice representation of SK___IN, PE___EL, ZE___ST, RI___ND.

What was exciting: Will's execution. What a beautiful grid, filled with so many snazzy answers that it could have been a themeless. ZEITGEIST is great, crossing ZEPHYR, then RIGHT THIS SECOND? Thank you, I definitely will have seconds! Toss in some Xs in XFINITY and X GAMES, match THE WAVES with IRISH SEA, and put a curvy black diagonal through the middle of the puzzle = great work.

So smooth, too. Will knows how to walk that fine line between audacious (read: gloopy short fill) and conservative (read: boring).

Ultimately, it was still a "words hidden at the ends of phrases" puzzle, and the fact that the "outside words" were literally things found on FRUIT outsides wasn't enough to excite me. I did appreciate realizing that there are curiously four different words to describe the outside of FRUIT. There's a difference between PEEL, RIND, and ZEST? Who knew?

The puzzle sure got me thinking, though, which is a rare occurrence, wondering what else could you do with this theme. How about a big circle made of black squares in the center of the grid, with the themers running through it — most of each themer, that is, except for the SK/IN outsides, which would sit outside that black circle!

Maybe that specific implementation would be too complicated. Still, something in that vein, hitting both wordplay and visual element notes, would have distinguished this puzzle more from its tried and true "outsides of themers" genre.

The best rebuses have a beautiful raison d'etre, something that perfectly explains why the solver should shove a bunch of letters into a single box. CHATTERBOX is as good as any, although the BOX notion is becoming overdone. It's a common rebus rationale, HAT BOX coming to mind immediately.

As a huge NINJA WARRIOR fanboy — I think I could get about 12 rungs up the Super Salmon ladder — seeing that entry tickled me.

And how meta was it to get GAB within TALKING ABOUT! I usually don't care for "add-a-preposition" phrases, but the self-referentialism here was worthwhile.

I usually love casual, conversational phrases, so WHADDYA KNOW should be my favorite of the three themers. I paused, though, as it strikes me as potentially unfair to plunk a rebus square in the middle of a phrase that can be spelled in many ways.

I have to disagree with Will on CACHINNATE. It's such a bizarre word (and spelling) that I couldn't believe it was correct, even knowing all the crossings were so easy that it had to be. The best crosswords generate a victorious fist-pumping moment for solvers, and this did the opposite, leaving me a bit puzzled and feeling stupid.

I begrudgingly admit that it's beneficial to learn new things, but don't force me to learn when I don't want to.

Similarly, I got stuck in the lower right, in a corner that felt hard for hardness's sake. LOGE is tough enough, MOTES staying so maddeningly generic with the clue, and even as a beer drinker, [Cream ___] = ALE wasn't anywhere the top of mind.

Overall, a reasonable rebus concept and strong technical execution — no junky short entries at all! — but ultimately, the subjective constructing and editorial decisions made for a less-than-ideal solving experience.

Ah, our good crossworld friend, the Reverend Spooner. He stops by the NYT crossword frequently, and I'm sure this won't be the last we've seen of him. Whether it be switching starts of words in a phrase, starts of syllables, playing on famous people, etc. … he works in mysterious ways.

Speaking of mysterious, the title was originally "READY SET … GET SLOW!", and it confused the heck out of both Jim Horne and me. I pretended like I knew what was going on, smiling knowingly at Jim while saying that it would be a good exercise for him to explain it to me.

When we finally worked up the courage to ask Will Shortz what it meant, Will admitted that it was supposed to be GETS LOW, a spoonerism for "let's go." Ah! See, I'm not as stupid as I look. Or sound. Or smell.

It's been changed for the digital files. Sometimes the print version doesn't get updated in time. Fingers crossed!

I enjoyed many of these finds, STEVEDORE to DIVA STORE a gold-medalist. It doesn't make any sense to have a STEVEDORE DIVA STORE, but I'm willing to overlook that to enjoy the interesting discovery. The spelling change is so dramatic.

I didn't get a lot of laughs from the themers. You can sort of imagine a birdwatcher saying BOO BLURRED BLUE BIRD, but it's more of a tongue-twister than a smile-inducer.

I would have preferred presenting just the spoonerism, i.e. DIVA STORE as the grid entry, with its clue containing "stevedore." DIVA STORE is crazy enough. STEVEDORE DIVA STORE is bonkers, to the point of making for a frustrating solve.

All in all though, technically strong gridwork, and there were some gems that would have made the good reverend proud.

It's a shame that this one comes so close on the heels of another stress-change puzzle. I enjoyed Will Nediger's today, although it didn't feel as creative since there are tons of lists out there containing dozens, if not hundreds of words whose meanings change with a shift in stress. I appreciated Will's effort to tighten the theme, but I'm afraid I missed every layer he described. Hopefully other solvers will be more astute.

There's also the ground-breaking stress-change puzzle from 2010 that was so brilliant. The best puzzles take ideas from disparate areas and combine them in fascinating ways. Stress change + entry duplication = memorable.

A few weeks ago, Evan Birnholz wrote to me, offended (rightly so) by an offhand remark I made about high word counts leading to "crapfest" puzzles. I was surprised since I wasn't at all talking about his Washington Post Sunday Puzzle — I'm a great admirer of Evan's themes and gridwork, which often outshine the NYT's Sunday puzzles these days. He made a great point, that he usually goes up to 144 words in his grids, and no one's ever complained to him about word count.

That doesn't mean that word count is irrelevant, though. Take the notion to the extreme, for example. If you made a Sunday puzzle with 200 words, it'd be chock-full of nothing but short entries, and it really would resemble the crapfest you see in your local small-town paper.

And look at today's 140-word grid — Will did a fantastic job of adding a ton of color. The NE corner is beautiful, for example, APOSTATE / SEASONAL / ACRONYMS so fun. Many constructors would be happy to break up ACRONYMS to make filling easier, going up from 140 to 142 words, and I wouldn't want that.

Is 140 or 144 words is a better target? The short answer is that I don't have the answer. If you can fill with enough color at 144 words (which Evan and few other constructors can do), then I say go for it. But if you can fill with color AND cleanly at 140 words (like Will and even fewer other constructors), I'd always opt for that. I enjoy having biggish areas like today's NE, which 140-word puzzles are better at allowing for.

A couple of weeks ago, Matt Gaffney and I were talking shop, and Will Nediger's name came up. When it comes to pure construction chops, Will is in both of our top ten lists. That's saying a lot, when it comes from the mouth of one of the best constructors on the planet!

(Matt, not me, of course.)

Even the best get sucked in by the allure of a construction challenge. Will is one of the few constructors out there for whom a Sunday 140-word puzzle is no problem. So when I encountered COTANS. STORER. AS A UNIT. FROLLO? I had a sense for what happened. Then all the padding in ROARS AT, LUGS IN, ASK TO, OWES TO, TRUED UP confirmed it; I was certain this was a sub-140.

Will had come to the Dark Side. My guess was 136 words.

It's to Will's credit that the grid turns out to be a 132-worder. It's still not as smooth as someone with Will's abilities ought to produce, though. The technician in me admires the job he did with a 132-worder, exceeding my expectations for that immense level of construction difficulty.

The solver in me says (yet again), please give me a smooth and colorful grid. Please. I'm begging you.

The theme concept reminded me of another puzzle playing upon pairs of words containing the same consonant set. I liked that one better, as the finds felt harder to achieve, given that the consonants had to be in the exact same place within the entries. This one, requiring the same sequence but any place within the word, wasn't as elegant.

I like word oddities. I didn't get a laugh out of the themers though, so this concept felt like more of a curiosity than a delight.

I spent some time thinking about what other movies might fit a LACK OF CHARACTER theme — nothing came to mind. Tight theme.

(Now I'm bracing for the slew of obscure movies readers throw at me.)

Speaking of obscure, I wasn't aware of THE LADY VANISHES. I've seen a lot of Hitchcock films. Considering how high THE LADY VANISHES appears on many Hitchcock ranking lists, it looks like I need to shore up my knowledge base.

Editors often prize multi-word fill, as it tends to be more colorful than single-worders. VERMEER is awfully colorful, though. PRURIENT is an interesting word, CREVICES as well.

Most constructors stay away from six-letter widths at the edges of puzzles because they tend to be much harder to fill cleanly than five or four-letter widths. Take a gander at the top of the grid: IN DEBT is a strong headliner, but NAIVER hit my ear wrong. The south further confounded me when I was sure that John NAVIER of the Navier-Stokes equations was correct.

Apparently, that was Claude-Louis Navier and John NAPIER.

Excuse me while I go turn in my mechanical engineering card with shame.

Along with EX-ALLY making me tilt my head, and MALE NAME not sounding quite right (although after some thought, it felt fine ... ish), it wasn't the best grid product I've seen, especially given how strong Will is at construction.

The theme worked well enough, although it provided more of a head-nodding moment than a delightful a-ha.

Back in 2016, I built a 15x15 puzzle using the exact same L/R idea, except with better pairs. Will (Shortz) quickly accepted it in early 2017.

It had been sitting in the queue until a few weeks ago when he sent me a message: Will (Nediger) had recently submitted a Sunday 21x21 version that they couldn't say no to, so they were going to pay me $300 to kill mine. (Normal print fee is $750.)

I was irate at first — what kind of messed up business practice is that?

But then I thought about it from Will (Shortz)'s perspective. Last time he gave an inventory count, he only had 4 Sundays on file. (For other days of the week, he had about 30-50.) That's shockingly low — especially considering that the Sunday puzzle is the NYT's flagship puzzle.

So I figured it'd be better to let it drop. In the long run, I enjoy having puzzles in the NYT. I reasoned that Will and Joel might give me enhanced consideration in accepting future submissions, given today's bitter pill.

Back to the puzzle. When I created my version, I had three things in mind:

1. I wanted long entries, with multiple L/R replacements. I found hundreds of pairs where there was only one L/R difference, so that felt too easy.
2. The concept would get too repetitive over a 21x21, so a 15x15 was 100% the way to go.
3. Pairs had to be clueable as opposites — that's essential to the "mirror" concept. (I'm an identical twin — the evil one, of course.)

One example: COLONELS [Ones at the start of wars] and CORONERS [Ones at the end of wars].

I ended up also using MOLASSES and MORASSES (my only pair with a single L/R difference), but I clued them as [Causes of some good sticky situations] and [Causes of some bad sticky situations]. Much more interesting than today's clues.

I do like one of Will (Nediger)'s pairs a lot: GO TOPLESS and GO TO PRESS features a fun parsing difference. The rest didn't do much for me.

And I did appreciate the gridwork challenge. I had a hard time working with a 15x15 using no other Ls or Rs in the grid. Big kudos to Will (Nediger) for his smooth fill today.

My puzzle recently got accepted by the WSJ, if you want to compare and contrast.

I've worked in corporate America for a long time. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's just business, nothing personal.