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I'm enjoying David's experimentation in big center swaths. That stairstep of five stacked 9s is eye-popping. I also like how he kept the grid from getting segmented by running SHAME-FACED and WALDEN POND straight through that center area. Very cool; I enjoyed his neat tips for constructing.

Although I enjoyed LOVE BEADS, RICE PILAF, and POLE DANCE, I liked one of David's prior outings better. LAMINATED and FAREWELLS are fine entries, but as David mentioned, I wouldn't count them as much more than neutral. And AMEBA is a sticky one for me too — I'd only seen the AMOEBA spelling all throughout my 30 years before starting crosswords. I like ENIAC, as it's an important development in the history of technology, but I can see how others might debate its relevance to their life today.

Nice to get some grid-spanning answers, with the snappy WHEN I'M SIXTY FOUR and PERSONAL OPINION. I love the latter, as it's a phrase I use all the time in giving caveats to people asking me for crossword help. And I appreciated how David didn't stop there, giving us chunky white space in the NW and SE. BROWNIE / AIR HORN / ST DENIS makes for a nice trio.

I enjoyed seeing RIM and LIP in symmetrical spots — spots that sort of separate the NW and SE from the rest of the puzzle! There are so many people making themeless puzzles these days, so I like it when there's even a tiny glimpse of something a little extra. More mini-themes, please!

As much as I enjoy a clue that winks at something suggestive, I'm getting a little too much from David's puzzles. I totally get that he's a freshman in college, but the clue for BRA [Something you may need to get off your chest] seemed excessive, given POLE DANCE and entries in prior puzzles. Just PERSONAL OPINION, but given his great talent in grid-making, I'm looking forward to seeing his voice develop past the teenage guy stage.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

HATERS GONNA HATE! A shame that this awesome phrase was used just over a month ago. This repetition — the central entry in both themelesses — reduced the impact of Dave's puzzle for me. I know that Will is cautious about not repeating feature themeless entries too quickly, but this one was unfortunate.

Aside from that, I really enjoyed this puzzle. Dave uses a daunting arrangement of quad-stacked 9s, and he executes well. That NW corner is a beaut. POWER GRAB is colorful, as is SKIN TIGHT. I'm a big RAISINETS fan, too. All that goodness, plus the clue echo [Set off] for TRIP and IGNITED (two tenses!) and HATERS GONNA HATE running through it = great work. Not a fan of NESSES as it seems too close to [Eliot and others], but it does work.

I did like the SE corner, although not as much as the NW. HAIRLINE gets a fun clue in [Plugs can move it forward], but NET LOSSES is a bit too easy to use on an edge, given how many friendly letters like S there are. Plus, this capitalist wants net profits, not NET LOSSES!

I also like what Dave did with his more typical 9x3 stacks. ADEN YEMEN was hard to figure out, and I liked the challenge. It reminded me of kooky things I've seen like AKRONOH and MESAAZ. What bizarre strings of letters, right? But people see AKRON, OH and MESA, AZ all the time on envelopes. I love that kind of stuff which masks usual commas and other punctuation.

Super-smooth incorporation of TJ MAXX's two Xs. As if NINE HOLES, NBA FINALS, LEFT TURN, JS BACH wasn't enough, adding two Xs to the corner is some serious allspice.

Great clues in [Some foreign reserves] for YEN (I plunked in OIL), and [Some ribbons and shells] for PASTA, both cluing plural answers that don't use a terminal S or I.

Very minor gluey stuff like ANAS … but I liked the clue echo of [Santa ___] for both ANAS and CLARA. Overall, a smooth and colorful puzzle.

– puzzle by David Phillips

Normally I don't care for grids that segment puzzles into sections, but this design was so appropriate for the theme. Cool idea to have twelve "boxes" — just like a calendar! Great a-ha moment when I first uncovered (JAN)GLE and TRO(JAN)S, turning my initial grousing about the puzzle's (quasi-)segmentation into compliments.

We've seen a lot of rebus puzzles now, one with the exact same rebus strings and another one still. But David's calendar-looking layout gives it a unique execution. Even though I knew what the rebus square would be in each box, I still had to work to uncover it. Nice balance of deviousness and solvability.

A puzzle like this which uses so many short themers is hard to build — due to word count maximums, if your themers aren't long, your fill has to be. David did well here, with DIETITIAN, RAW SCORE, BEER STEIN, CROSSBAR, etc.

Usually I prefer entries with rebus strings to be long — LIFEBLOOD, SOTOMAYOR, CARL JUNG — but I enjoyed BAN(JUL)'s NYT debut, as I traveled to the Gambia in 2009 with a non-profit org. I learned a ton traveling upcountry for two weeks. The Gambia is a little snake-like country that the British carved out of (French) Senegal, specifically to claim the Gambia River. Crazy colonialists.

I didn't enjoy I(MAR)ET as much. I find it so much more satisfying to uncover something even like (DEC)OCT than I(MAR)ET, wondering if the latter is a valid word. I happen to know it from crosswords, but I liked the WI(N OV)ER / CASA(NOV)AS discovery much better, for example. Personal taste.

ONEK is such an odd entry. The first time I encountered it, I was sure it had to be wrong. It does parse to ONE K, but 1.) it's rare to have a 1-K race, and 2.) it's even more rare to see a race written out as a Five K or a Ten K. Personal preference, but I much prefer entries that one sees in real life. To me, that one sticks out much more so than INTRA or ETATS or even IAL or BRRR.

Very neat effect today with the calendar-looking grid.

– puzzle by David Woolf

Six P- F- phrases today. Nice choice of themers, POPPIN' FRESH my favorite, PILLOW FIGHTS and PARTY FAVORS also colorful. I almost didn't notice PINK FLOYD and PETIT FOUR hiding in the corners, but they're zingy too.

POUND FOOLISH does sound a bit like a partial to me, but I can see the argument that it's fine. I can much more buy PENNY WISE, as I can imagine someone tilting their head, saying "Penny wise ...", and walking away, clucking their tongue as they imply the remainder. (I swear, I don't do this. Much.) I like it when a crossword entry has hidden punctuation.

Interesting short fill today; some entries we don't often see in early-week puzzles:

• FARON. Anyone with a #1 country hit seems legit to me, as long as the crossings are easy and fair. Thumbs-up from me.
• EPOS. Pretty tough piece of vocab. I might have balked at that EPOS/SETH crossing, but the clue for EPOS indicates pluralization. Thumbs-up.
• SADA. Would she be "important" enough to be in a crossword, if her name wasn't so crossword-friendly with its common letters and alternating vowel consonant pattern? Tough to say.
• NEGS. Not being a photographer, it's tough to figure out if this is a common abbreviation for "negatives." In any case, it's not a pervasive abbreviation. I vote Gluey.
• IDEO. Prefixes are called out as undesirable by most editors. Gluey.
• REARMS. Tough call. Is this a MYOW (make-up-your-own-word)? The RE- addition seems iffy.

So on a case by case basis, I think Herre's fill is pretty good. As a whole, it left me with a bit of an esoteric feel.

I like high theme density — six themers is no joke — but I'm not as taken by it as Will and Joel. The feat is also muted for me since it's easy to come up with all sorts of P- F- phrases.

It would have been nice to get a little something extra, perhaps a revealer. Hmm, PERSONAL FOUL, PHOTO FINISH, PICKET FENCE, POLICE FORCE? Dang it, nothing nicely describes the concept. Ah well.

Pretty fun start to the week.

– puzzle by Herre Schouwerwou

Add a "T-" for kooky results. I liked that the base phrases (MOBILE HOME, SQUARE ROOT, etc.) had their meanings changed fairly well by the addition of the initial T-. I also liked the consistency of always adding that T- to the first word.

For straightforward themes, I like to get some additional material as a solver. ALLEGORY, GOOD TO GO, LAST LEG, NBA STAR serve that purpose (although don't get me started on Kobe's terrible FG% and its effect on my fantasy bball team this year). It would have been so great to convert the other longish slots into that type of material — RE-EDITS feels neutral at best to me, and SNIPE AT isn't much different than SNIPE.

Hmm. BIMBO, really? I wonder if derogatory words like this have any place in a mainstream publication, especially when they target groups already facing societal disadvantages. Good for Will/Joel for cluing it as a bad movie stereotype, but how about not allowing it in the first place? Especially considering that section required an old-school gluey bit, ETUI, I would have liked a redo.

I would have also liked to see less sectioning of the grid. See the two black squares at the ends of OMIT and YET? If you shift the first one to the left, and the second to the right, you open up the grid, letting it breathe. Sure, that would have destroyed NBA STAR (like Kobe destroyed my first two fantasy weeks before I cut him), but it might have allowed for something awesome in place of SNIPE AT.

Overall, the "add-a-letter" theme was made more interesting with the "T + hyphen" consistently added to the front of base phrases, but there were some areas of fill I personally didn't care for.

– puzzle by Jim Holland

CROSS REFERENCES = OED crossing OED (Oxford English Dictionary). I liked Jules' long themers — OEDIPUS REX is such a great entry! And RADIO EDITS crossing PIGEON TOED was really nice too. Normally I don't care much about themers interlocking when the letter patterns make for high flexibility, but OEDIPUS REX crossing CROSS REFERENCES is fun.

It would have been great to have variety in the "references" (ROGETS, maybe?) — once I uncovered the first set of shaded squares, it was too easy to fill in the others. That did help me as JOE DON gave me a tough time (do his friends call him Joe Don? If not, it feels like a long partial, a la HAYLEY JOEL or JENNIFER LOVE), but filling in all those OEDs made the puzzle too easy for my taste.

Well, except for TEAC and BROCA. I thought I had all the Japanese electronics manufacturers down — SANYO, SONY, even NCR — but TEAC I hadn't heard of. (It originally stood for the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company, and they make high-end audio equipment.) I like major brands in my crossword, as they make them feel more real-life, but I'm not sure TEAC qualifies (I'm not even sure how to judge this). That ???C pattern is usually tough to fill, as there are relatively few four-letter words ending in C.

BROCA seems more crossworthy to me, as there's part of the brain called "Broca's Area," after the French Dr. BROCA. But the OTOE/BROCA crossing is going to be rough for some. Whether or not you consider it to be fair (I lean toward yes, since midweek solvers likely have seen OTOE many times), I think crosswords should strive to set the solver up for a win (or at least feel like he/she should have won). I don't think this crossing does that.

It's tough to fill smoothly around crossing themers. Note how there's at least one little gluey bit near each crossing — ENERO in the NW, CHRON in the NE, etc. This arrangement can be done totally cleanly especially if there's flexibility in themers, but it's very difficult to accomplish.

Great clue for the BRONX, Ogden Nash rhyming it with "no thonx." More clever poetry, please!

– puzzle by Jules P. Markey

What a cool triple-stack revealer in DOCTORS / WITHOUT / BORDERS! Three medium-length words chunked cleanly atop each other right in the middle of the puzzle is pretty darn cool. It would have been even cooler if Andrew could have gotten them exactly atop each other (instead of stairstepping them) but try filling around just the *DWB* pattern, much less the rest of the sets of letters. Awesome, memorable execution of the revealer.

I've seen several of the "letters outside the grid" in the past year, and two friends of mine both made DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS crosswords (independently!), so those factors muted the impact of today's puzzle for me. It also felt a little strange that the doctors are outside the borders, not crossing borders.

But I did really like the way Andrew made the grid look perfectly normal (without those outside letters). It's a simple matter to make a grid with NO, OZ, DRE, and WHO sitting outside the grid, but it's much more difficult to do it so that every interior word looks normal: DROVES looks like ROVES, ROPED looks like OPED, etc. Elegant touch.

I also appreciated Andrew's choice of long fill. It's impressive enough to get TOUCHED ON right through the stack of revealers, but it's a great feat to work in the colorful HOT DIGGETY and POP UP STORE. And then you cross ANDRE GIDE and HUSH MONEY through it all, without using a single gluey entry? That central region is just beautiful.

I'm not a fan of BESTIE, as it has too much of a pre-adolescent, cutesy feel to it. This is just personal opinion — I like TRUE DAT a lot, as I hear it all the time among adults, and I use it myself, but I can see some NYT readers scowling, saying "kids these days!"

You know who's saying that? THE OLDS! (I don't know that when applied to parents, but it is a term I sometimes hear for people who technology has left behind). A lot of subjectivity in what is "good fill."

An incredible middle region of the puzzle, and I might have given this the POW! if it had come out a few years earlier.

– puzzle by Andrew J. Ries

I enjoy mini-themes in my themelesses; an unexpected bonus. I got stuck in the NW corner, so it was great to realize Pete's DREAMGIRLS / JERSEY BOYS link. I don't know either, but I like the connection a lot. I'll have to check out DREAMGIRLS especially — Jamie Foxx, Beyonce, and Eddie Murphy = all-star cast! It would have been perfect if the gap between musical and movie had been exactly the same for both shows, but what can you do.

Pete shoots for the moon, with 18 long slots. It's a very tough arrangement, since there are long entries running through the triple-stacks and interlocking into each other. Check out how I DID MY BEST, ABSORPTION, POCAHANTAS, and COTTON SWAB link together in the middle of the puzzle — that restricts flexibility in filling, since so much of the puzzle's skeleton is locked together, one answer affecting many others. Very tough to convert all 18 slots into assets.

Pete gets a lot of strong material dotted in, from DOGGIE DOOR to OSCAR WILDE to BREAKDANCE to PILOT ERROR. There are a few long entries that didn't hit for me — ANOINTINGS, STARTS OVER, LETTER TRAY, LACERATED — which isn't surprising given the high degree of interlock. It's one of the themeless constructor's dilemmas: do you start with a small number of long entries (about 10) and work hard to convert them all into assets, or do you start with a huge number, knowing that you'll likely end up with a few so-so entries?

Hey, an innovative PSI clue! I was just in Bloomington, Indiana over the holidays ((I tried to go see Will's puzzle exhibit at IU, but it had just closed — boo!), so it was fun to realize that the pervasive IU symbol does look like a psi.

A couple of minor offenders in SSR, WSW, ETE, etc., but the great cluing swept those away for me. My favorite was [One with a lot to think about] — a HOMEOWNER owns a lot, or a parcel of land. [Professional fixer] made me think of Harvey Keitel's character in "Pulp Fiction," but this was a very different kind of "fixer," as in a VET spaying cats and dogs.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

Beautiful work in the bottom stack. Typically at least one of the crossing answers in a quad-stack is gluey or a clunker, but Jason does very well, with A TOI the closest thing to iffy. Okay, ENSILES and ASONANT are a bit esoteric, but one can reason them out using etymology.

Speaking of reasoning, some solvers avoid puzzles with these giant open spaces because they seem impossible. Pro tip: thinking like a constructor makes them much more solvable! I got stuck in the top, so I stepped back and thought about what makes a big section easier to fill:

1. Common letters. Try guessing an A or E for a vowel, or an R, S, T, L, or N for a consonant. These letters give constructors flexibility.
2. Alternating vowel / consonant. Many words do break this pattern, but when you need to fill a large chunky section, sticking to alternation makes things much easier.

Example: [Belief in a strong central government]. I forced myself to think about point 1 — what -ISM could be made of those common letters? STATISM, perhaps? I plunked it in, and it seemed to work ... almost. So I thought about point 2 — ah, ETAT is the French word for "state," and it fits the alternation!

Look how well that continues, with EVIL / TITERS / ARAMIS / TELOS / SHAH. I liked so much this — TELOS is a toughie, but the Greek concepts are fair game, given how much they've affected Western culture.

Breaking the alternation pattern is necessary given the two Ss in THESIS STATEMENT and the TH in ROSIE THE RIVETER, and that forces an unfortunate pair: STPS (a plural which Rich Norris at the LA Times has asked me to avoid) and IERI. I like some foreign words in my crossword, especially if they're in use in English language, but IERI = not so much. At least the crossings make that workable — unlike the N in UPPER PALATINATE / MENES. Both are crossworthy answers that I felt I really should learn, but crossing them made this solver cross.

Anyway, a standout bottom quad-stack and a great brain workout.

– puzzle by Jason Flinn

★ Patrick is one of my favorite people in the puzzle business. His cartoon art is right up my alley, and there's something to his humor that reminds me of my days of reading MAD Magazine (those days being yesterday, today, and tomorrow). Perhaps that's because he's contributed to MAD!

Today's puzzle has that flavor, with "what they said" followed by "what they really meant." I smiled at pols saying "No new taxes!" but thinking JUST MORE OF THE OLD ONES. My favorite was "I'll slow this country's spread of drugs!" really meaning EXPECT CUTS IN MEDICARE.

I did find the last one to be not like the others, though. As much as I'd love to see a politician with the humility to say IVE GOT A LOT TO LEARN, that sensibility doesn't fit with the other five themers, nor does it carry a humorous bent. Still, 5/6 ain't bad.

Sunday 140-words puzzles are incredibly tough to build smoothly. Even for an uber-pro like Patrick, finishing with some gluey bits like A DRAG (partial), RNAS (not really pluralized in real life), SETHS (plural names aren't very elegant), LST (tough acronym, especially for younger solvers), A BAN (partial) is par for the course.

What helped me brush those aside was some really fun cluing:

• Who knew that Winnie the Pooh was introduced by AA MILNE as Edward Bear?
• Ian Fleming was a fan of James BOND, the ornithologist? Another great piece of trivia.
• I love me some bridge, so a [Bridge table foursome] being LEGS was fun.
• STRAYS may be measured by the pound. The dog pound, that is.
• SANDERS are used in the evening — the evening of boards.
• [Put on a nonpolitical button, say] was perfect for this puzzle, misdirecting away from SEW.

A really fun solving experience for me, the humor in the theme and the clever cluing far outweighing the small dabs of glue here and there.

– puzzle by Patrick Merrell

Neat progression: a BOULDER, ERODED into a ROCK, to a PEBBLE, finally into DUST. I like this theme type, especially when the concept isn't readily apparent until you hit the revealer. I appreciated how Howard disguised some of the progression, as BOULDER DAM (the original name for the Hoover Dam) doesn't automatically make you think of a giant boulder, and ROCK LOBSTER (awesome song!) also camouflages what's going on.

It would have been great to do the same with PEBBLE BEACH and DUST JACKET, but there's not really other usages of PEBBLE or DUST. And before I got to those, I had already hit ERODED, so the jig was up anyway.

It's a shame that ERODED wasn't the final across answer. I really liked this concept, but I might have loved it if it had kept the theme opaque all the way until the end. It isn't easy to work with a six-letter revealer in the last across spot, but, I think it would have been possible. Also, it feels inelegant to have ERODED in a random-feeling spot. I suppose a case could be made that it's kind of cool that ERODED intersects two themers, but to me, its placement feels a bit haphazard.

Nice job working in PAPER TRAIL and KNOW BY NAME, two snappy phrases, in the normal long down configuration. It's unusual to have long fill in the across direction, and I like that Howard worked in WINGSPAN and SMACKERS. (FOR A TIME feels more neutral to me, and I could go either way on LONESOME.) Long fill in the across direction can muddy up what's theme and what's not, but here, I like that it helps disguise things!

No surprise that there's some ESE/ETTE, ESTA, ESTER sort of stuff given how much long fill Howard worked in, but it would have been nice to get more variety in types of gluey bits. So many E, S, T letters in there, and two suffixes tend to make them stick out. Given the flexibility in the SE corner, maybe something like ETTA could have been better.

All in all though, a really nice idea that gave me a smile.

– puzzle by Howard Barkin

★ Very cool idea, names of fashion designers hidden within phrases (highlighted below), with INTERIOR DESIGNER as a perfect revealer. I'm a little tired of the "same word hidden in four different phrases" theme type, but it's a different story when four different (but related) words are hidden.

It's especially neat when the hidden words are pretty tough to hide, i.e. 4+ letters or ones that contain tricky letter sequences. Finding ARMANI within FARM ANIMALS is a great discovery, and the KL in KLEIN makes it tough to identify a phrase across which KLEIN can span. I thought ANKLE INJURY was the weakest of the themers since I hear "sprained ankle" or "twisted ankle" much more frequently, but it is something you see in the sports pages.

With wide 16x15 grids, it's important to keep the solver's attention. So I appreciate C.C.'s (Zhouqin's) efforts to work in BITTER END, STEADY JOB, OSCAR NOD, even things like BOCELLI, GOOGLED, DELAWARE, TOLD YA. All makes for a more interesting solving experience.

I wondered if the MUSCAT/BOCELLI crossing would trip people up, although I think it's perfectly fair. NYT solvers are expected to know, or at least recognize world capitals. And BOCELLI being one of the most famous opera tenors of all time means a NYT solver really ought to know him.

The ALOMAR / LEDA crossing was more questionable for me. On one hand, Roberto ALOMAR is in the Hall of Fame, one of the most storied second basemen in baseball history. On the other hand, I feel for people who grouse about crosswords having way too much baseball in them. And LEDA, the Queen of Sparta, is a toughie even for this Greek mythology lover.

There's also too much of the S STAR (feels like cheating what with the two starting Ss), ENL, ITI, OEDS (odd to pluralize it), AMT, SRA for my taste, but that's the price to pay of working in so much good long fill into a puzzle with five long themers. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see fewer gluey bits at the expense of not as much nice long fill, but I can appreciate the balance C.C. struck.

Very nice theme concept with a perfect revealer.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

Sound change theme, two-syllable words ending in -RROR getting their last syllable dropped, and the first syllable replaced with a real-word homonym. Complicated! I liked that all of the final words had a replacement that made me work to figure out the base phrase (ROCKY HORROR, CLERICAL ERROR, REARVIEW MIRROR, SHEER TERROR).

REARVIEW MERE felt like the weakest of the bunch, as I kept on staring at the word MERE, wondering what I was missing. (The dictionary lists "a small lake or pond" as a secondary definition of MERE. Curious.) I wonder how many solvers actually looked it up vs. shrugging and moving on.

I like that Jeremy used a complete set — can you think of any other words ending in -RROR? — and all four sound changes worked in exactly the same way. Such completeness is so elegant. It would have been perfect if MERE had been a more common noun, but what can you do.

I'm mixed on THREE RS as a revealer. What about the poor O in -RROR? The THREE RS just doesn't seem to describe what's happening very well. I think I would have preferred to do without it.

Speaking of doing without, ADOLF next to SHEER (terror). Yikes.

Jeremy always does such a nice job with his long fill, and he goes big today, working in an astounding eight (!) pieces of long fill as well as some mid-length stuff. Very few constructors would tackle such a task, and cramming in CHINA SHOP, PEN NAMES and SAYS A LOT into a corner which already has a theme answer is a bold move. I don't like the long partial A HOME, but APRS and AMI are minor.

The CRAZY EYED corner is easier, with just one long piece of fill, but working in the bonus of GO AWOL makes it tricky as well. Again, Jeremy executes well on it.

And some beautiful pieces of languages in BUM A SMOKE and I SURE WILL. Jeremy is such a star at working great long fill into his puzzles.

Although some aspects of the theme execution didn't quite work for me, I still really enjoyed this one.

– puzzle by Jeremy Newton

I like a good spoonerism (swapping beginning sounds of two consecutive words) theme now and again. I appreciate that Jeffrey used a tight set, constraining the themers to songs by THE BEATLES. It's such a shame that THE BEATLES themselves don't spoonerize into something. Now that would have been a coup!

Consistency and tightness bring elegance to crossword themes. Because thousands of word pairs can be spoonerized, it was important for Jeffrey to narrow down the pool — that's tightness, and he did well there.

Consistency ... seeing TRAY DIPPER (Day Tripper) made me want all two-word phrases for the next themers. But then we get SHES HEAVING LOAM (She's Leaving Home) and LEIGH SHOVES YOU (She Loves You), with words left unspoonerized. And then PAPER RACK BITER (Paperback Writer) gets one of its words split before spoonerization. Breaking up a word like that felt pretty odd. All in all, not very consistent.

It also felt strange that SHE was in two themers. Granted, one was shown regularly and one post-spoonerism, but that also felt inelegant.

Tough grid arrangement. It's a nice change of pace to see such a wide-open grid on a weekday — 70 words is a tough task when you're working with so many themers. It's also incredibly difficult to do this while keeping your long fill snazzy and your short fill free of gluey bits.

Jeffrey really challenges himself in the NW and SE corners. That arrangement — three adjacent long answers crossing two themers — is so difficult to execute on. I like Jeffrey's NW corner a lot — LATE PASS, AMARANTH, and PERSPIRE are all pretty good, with some very minor AMES and PST stuff. The SE demonstrates the difficulty of this arrangement, ONLY ONCE not quite feeling in the language to me, and AINT I, ICER, and DEYS needed to hold it together. Even some of us longtime solvers have a tough time keeping REYS, BEYS, and DEYS straight.

I prefer trickier (as opposed to simply harder) Thursday puzzles, but this one did give me a themeless-like workout given all its big swaths of white space.

– puzzle by Jeffrey Wechsler

Check out that big swath running from top left to bottom right! It's one thing to work in four nice long answers — SISTERS IN LAW (with its sneaky plural NOT ending in S), ONLINE POKER, LADIES FIRST, and HOMESTEAD ACT — but check out how the pairs of entries are locked so cleanly together by all those six and seven-letter answers in the middle. The more I stare at it, the more impressed I am.

And crossing a double-stack of long answers into a triple-stack like APENNINES (the Italian range) / WENCESLAS (with a clever clue nodding to Carole King) / NEOLATIN = a real feat. Constructors usually try to separate all their stacks as far away as possible, but Patrick crosses them together so smoothly. (Yes, some solvers say EPEE gets overused in crosswords, but it's a perfectly legit word.)

There were a few long answers that I thought were just neutral — ENSCONCED … okay, just ENSCONCED. Pretty amazing.

Given the high bar Patrick has set for himself, I wasn't as taken with the top right and bottom left corners. They were nice bonuses — many constructors would have been happy with just the NW to SE swath — but STEALTHIER feels just neutral to me, and LENS COVERS doesn't hit my ear nearly as well as LENS CAPS.

Additionally, Patrick's layout in those corners uses many more three-letter words than usual, which tends to make the puzzle too easy. For example, if you have a three-letter word referring to a bathroom, it's going to start with L (LOO or LAV). And entries like ALE and ELM and LYE have been used so many times that it's tough to come up with a new and devious clue. Those two corners fell all too easily for my taste.

As always, I love Patrick's innovations and experimentation in grid design. So cool to always see him work with a totally new grid design.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

Sean Dobbin, formerly of the "Man vs. Puzzle" blog! Great to see him back in the construction game.

This grid skeleton does a nice job of balancing solver flow and ease of construction. The triple-stacks of answers are separated, those sinuous sets of black squares acting like labyrinth walls. Yet there's plenty of ways into each of the corners, so that the puzzle doesn't feel choked off. It's a great layout in terms of allowing you to work (mostly) on one corner at a time.

I liked the NW and SE corners a lot, each featuring three very nice entries. I personally liked PHOTOBOMB / ROB REINER (of "Princess Bride" fame and more) / OOLONG TEA a little better than AD INITIUM / RENE RUSSO / ERGOMETER since the former set felt a little fresher, but I wasn't keen on MT APO (a bit esoteric) and OENO (prefix, and not a super common one at that). Tough to achieve that perfect balance of snazziness and cleanliness.

Note how the other two corners both have a long entry running through them — LIP SERVICE through the NE and CINDERELLA through the SW. Although these entries add a lot of color to the puzzle, they also add a level of construction difficulty to their respective corners. I liked IT CAN'T BE! and SINGSONG (although apparently that means "monotonous" — exactly the opposite of what I had thought!) but SHIVERED is more neutral for me.

And ATTAGIRL is okay, but IRONICAL … isn't that "ironic"? And DESK SETS is one of those entries constructors rely on for grid edges, given its preponderance of friendly E S T letters. (STRESS TEST and ESSAY TEST also fall into this bucket).

Thankfully, Sean gives us all fair / easy crossings for Julie TAYMOR, who earned two Emmys for "The Lion King." I like learning a new piece of information or two, but only when it's introduced in a way that allows the solver to conquer the puzzle. Sean does a nice job of accomplishing that.

– puzzle by Sean Dobbin

This puzzle construction gave me fits. It was hard enough to identify eight themers that would work in the way I wanted — circling around a single black square like a storm, before continuing on its merry way — but working with the max 140-word constraint made things tough. Each of the eight themers took up very short slots, meaning that I had to work in more long fill than usual. And having those single letters stick out — the H and S of IS THIS THING ON, for example — constrained the grid in tough ways. Throw in CORIOLIS FORCE for a revealer and the fact that I wanted the central black squares to look like a storm ...

The bottom left corner alone took me maybe 25-30 reboots. I was hesitant to use MUTTONY, which I needed to make that corner work, but I thought of a fun clue for it: [A little sheepish?]. Sadly, it was left on the cutting room floor.

Will worried that BANH MI wasn't going to be familiar to many solvers, and the crossing with DEBI might feel unfair. (In Seattle, you can throw a loaf of crusty bread 100 yards in any direction and hit a BANH MI shop, but his reasoning was sound.) I tried a few other options, but in the end, Joel helped us settle on the original, given the BANH MI's rising prominence in the food world and its utterly delicious combination of roasted pork and julienned vegetables.

All of a sudden, I'm hungry.

Will also felt that the puzzle as I had it — no arrows — would be just too hard. I drew up some storm-looking things, but Will decided to use arrows instead. I still like the idea of "storms" within the puzzle, spinning in opposite directions in the Northern hemisphere vs. the Southern ... I wish my meager art skills had better conveyed that. Maybe then, my original title of "SPIN CONTROL" would have flown. Ah well.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Impressively smooth debut from Kathy, whose husband got his debut in the LA Times just over a year ago. She gives us POETRY IN MOTION, or the letters P O E T R Y mixed up within phrases. I love the phrases Kathy chose, as MINORITY REPORT was one of my favorite Tom Cruise movies, and PYROTECHNIC is just plain fun. Was anyone else addicted to "Dance 360," with Kel shouting out to the PARTY PEOPLE as DJ K-Sly dropped the beats?

No? Me neither. Ahem.

Even experienced crossword constructors tend to have a rough time making Monday puzzles. I think an ideal Monday puzzle should be accessible to all sorts of newer solvers, which means all crossings should be very fair, with leeway for gaps in people's knowledge bases. They should also strive to keep the crossword glue to a minimum, as these ugly bits can elicit a head-scratching reaction from newer solvers. So I was a little worried when I opened up the file to see a 74-word puzzle — most new constructors stick to a 78-word puzzle, which is much easier to execute on.

There was a bit of A TALE / ASEA in the east section, but that's all I noticed during my solve, aside from a stray AGA. And for Kathy to work in such nice vocab as MAELSTROM, RENEGADES, CADENCE, even SPARROW with its interesting clue [Fictional pirate who shares his name with a bird] — that's really nice work. It shows how much care and time she put into making this puzzle.

I wasn't as taken with the theme concept, as POETRY IN MOTION doesn't quite say "anagram these letters" like MIXED or SCRAMBLED would. Additionally, there's so much flexibility in arranging six letters anywhere inside a phrase that it feels a bit too easy to come up with themers.

Still, Kathy chose vivid themers, and she did quite a nice job of pulling together a smooth Monday puzzle, one of the tougher construction challenges out there. Looking forward to more from her.

– puzzle by Kathy Wienberg

Could it really be that this is Byron's Tuesday NYT debut? I think of him as one of the few "five-tool constructors," with the ability to construct:

1. 140-word Sundays
2. Tricky Thursdays with a clever twist
3. Themeless with both voice and clean execution
4. Early-week ultra-smoothness
5. Mid-week intermediate difficulty

I list these in approximate order of difficulty/rarity, so I suppose it's no surprise that Byron hasn't worked much on tool number 5 — not as much of a challenge. I am curious to see if he can hit for the cycle with an ultra-smooth, interesting Monday puzzle.

I was very glad to get a revealer today, GONE FISHING sort of hinting at the theme: four fish starting long entries. I really liked Byron's consistency of starting with a type of fish that has a different meaning, making it past tense, and then adding a preposition to finish it off. FLOUNDERED AROUND seemed like the weakest of the bunch, as I usually think of FLOUNDERED by itself, but I can see the usage. It's impressive to find four fish that work this consistent manner — without repeating a preposition.

Byron has great ability to work in vocabulary that makes me think. I mulled over RICE SEEDS, wondering if rice really starts with seeds? (It does.) I wasn't familiar with SALT DOMES, but they were interesting to read up on. And then to get SIR GALAHAD, KEPT IT REAL, OLD MONEY, TAX DODGES — that's the kind of great stuff I expect out of a Walden. Even BAD PR is a great little entry.

It does come with a price, in gluey bits like IME (partial), GINO (poor guy never went anywhere after his Heisman), ENNE (suffix), APAL (partial). This sort of thing is to be expected when you cram so much good long fill into an already theme-dense puzzle, but I normally don't see quite this much in a Walden puzzle.

I think this trade-off is fine though, as mid-week puzzles can tolerate a little more crossword glue than Monday puzzles (where the gluey stuff might turn off newbies) or most themelesses (where there are so many people making them that the bar is ultra-high).

– puzzle by Byron Walden

GIN + VERMOUTH + ICE = DRY MARTINI It's pretty unusual to have a themer past the revealer, so I was initially confused by uncovering OLIVER TWIST after I thought the puzzle was already over. But I like getting surprised — how many times does a puzzle give you a second a-ha moment?

I think what the clue for OLIVER TWIST is getting at is that a DRY MARTINI can be garnished by an OLIVE (‘r = or) TWIST. It took some self-convincing to believe a bartender would pronounce it as "(do you want an) olive ‘r twist?". It's such a nice feeling to get an unexpected a-ha moment though, that I gave it the thumbs-up.

With hidden words puzzles, I like consistency — it would have been great if each of GIN, VERMOUTH, and ICE had been hidden the same way. But finding VER MOUTH inside RIVER MOUTH is a nice discovery, and it's hard (impossible?) to break I CE or IC E at the end of a phrase. So I give that a pass too.

That READE/IDRIS crossing is going to be tough for some, and I sympathize. I'm a huge fan of IDRIS Elba, as he starred in "The Wire" and one of my favorite movies in recent history, "Pacific Rim." But has he made it big, to the point where he's "important enough" to expect NYT solvers to know him, even if the crossings are nebulous? I don't know about that.

I EVER sticks out as the most inelegant entry, more so because it's around that READE/IDRIS crossing. Difficulties are bound to arise when you have so much overlap between themers — the TINI of DRY MARTINI over IVERT of OLIVER TWIST in this case.

I was confused by the AMA clue, and the AJA crossing also felt a touch unfair. I like that AMA (ask me anything) was clued with a fresh feel (it's usually clued to the American Medical Association), but I don't think solvers should be expected to know the 40-year old Steely Dan album without fair crossings.

But a strong construction everywhere else, and a surprising second revealer that was almost genius.

– puzzle by Herre Schouwerwou

I liked Dave's take on SIDE BARS — we've seen a lot of "side" or "around" type puzzles, but I like the feat of stacking "bars" in sets of two., i.e. SNACK (bar) next to POWER (bar), TOOL (bar) next to MARS (bar).

Joe Krozel mentioned to me that stacking two answers is much easier than people might think, and David does have extra flexibility in being able to switch themers around, i.e. TOOL, MARS, DIVE, OPEN, CLAM, TIKI, SAND, TACO could all be interchanged. Still, Dave executes with impressive smoothness around all those pairs. I especially like TRIMOTOR and FIRE OPALS extending out from the NE pair. I wasn't as taken with VENIAL in the west, kind of an odd word, but all the crossings are fair.

As one of the younger constructors on the block, I've liked Dave's voice, giving us fresh-sounding entries like ALT-TAB (if you don't use this shortcut to switch between applications, I highly recommend it) and AW NUTS. Not as much today as with his other puzzles, but given the challenges in this construction, I like that Dave went for (and achieved) a smooth and clean fill.

Thursdays can be made trickier by 1.) a twisty, innovative idea, 2.) deviously clever clues, or 3.) just plain stumper-hard clues (listed in my preferred order). I've seen enough of these "side" puzzles that it didn't feel very innovative, but some clues sure were clever:

• Pitcher's delivery had to be WIND-UP or something ... except if a pitcher is defined as "one who pitches a SPIEL."
• What the heck could C - V - B - N - M possibly mean? Turns out it's letter sequence above the SPACE (bar).
• Round figure led me toward ESTIMATE or GUESSTIME or FUDGE FACTOR (we engineers like our fudge factors). But it just meant a round shape, i.e. a SPHERE.

The theme was a bit repetitive once I cottoned to it, but a bunch of clues like these really kept my attention.

– puzzle by David Phillips

My engineer's brain loves quantification, and that extends to my evaluation of themeless puzzles. Usually I count any long(ish), colorful entry as an asset, tally them up, and add a point or two (or even three) if there's some cool visual impact or level of construction difficulty. I've found that the if the result is less than 10, I feel like there's not enough great stuff packed in.

At first glance, this puzzle didn't have a huge visual impact — sure, a wide-open, innovative-looking grid, but nothing that wowed me. However, there is something pretty impressive about six long answers interlocking — I've highlighted them below to better illustrate the effect. It's tough to do this and still make all six answers sparkly, and Paula has excelled here. It's fun to see the fresh GLUTEN-FREE PASTA, and the rest of them are absolutely assets in my eyes. So I might add a point or two for the difficulty factor.

I tend to stay away from themelesses with crisscrossing skeletons, because they are so difficult to make sparkly and cleanly. Each intersection reduces your flexibility, and when you have a section like the south where POTATO PEELERS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY, and GLUTEN-FREE PASTA constrain it, you're bound to need some glue like E-DATES (does anyone really use this?) to hold it together.

The corners have fewer constraints, but they're still hard — when you have to run mid-length answers through the start of POTATO PEELERS and BACK IN THE SADDLE, you tend to need things like the old-timey ONE O CAT. I did like entries like PENTANE (I love me some chemistry), RATED PG, SKI BIB, SWEE PEA in the full, and STAN LEE though.

Overall, this type of construction is still not my favorite, as its level of difficulty can be tough for non-constructors to appreciate, and the gluey bits like DIA, TRA, KEL, E DATES, etc. can be harder to overcome, since there's not a ton of snazzy fill.

– puzzle by Paula Gamache

★ Beautiful construction. I'm still surprised at how few constructors use giant chunks of black squares in "stair" shapes. Tim Croce turned me onto this idea a few years ago, telling me how they can make wide-open constructions immensely easier — nibbling away at the spaces you have to fill turns out to be a gigantic help.

Low-word count puzzles tend to be dry, with a lot of neutral filler to hold them together, but not today. Very impressive to see GUIDERAIL stacked above REAGANOMICS and KINDA… SORTA… Running FAMOUS AMOS and GOSSAMER through that big NE corner makes it even more stunning.

Years ago, a friend and I submitted a themeless with ZOE SALDANA at 1-Across, but Will felt we had made the puzzle too name-heavy, which could turn off a large chunk of solvers. It made sense — back then I was admittedly worried that Saldana wouldn't be well-known enough to make many solvers happy. But now she's a real star, featured in several blockbusters. I bet I'll get some reader mail grousing about her crossing with LEDA and its tough clue, but I think Saldana's someone important enough that if a NYT solver doesn't know her, he/she really should.

The Marvel Universe fascinates me, so I liked Mister Fantastic's debut. I would have loved it if it hadn't been in the odd-looking MR. form, and if it had a more interesting clue; something to entice people to look him up — his two Harvard Ph.D.s by the age of 22, his ability to change his structure into a near-fluid state, that he's on the autism spectrum ... okay, I'm a dork, but Marvel has created some complicated, multi-faced characters.

At 45 black squares, this themeless gets onto our most black squares list. I'm mixed on the effect. My initial impression was that there was a ton of white space eaten away. But the wide-open "X" shape is pretty cool-looking.

Overall, I really enjoyed the puzzle, a fantastic amount of sparkly fill worked into a wide-open grid, with just some ICER, GAMA (feels odd with the DA), ILS, SIGNEE (man, did I want that to be SIGNER) crossword glue. Impressive work.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

"INITIAL TURN" hinting at three-letter acronyms formed by swapping the last two letters of a normal word. Francis and BEQ sure found a ton of good answers — BOY WONDER turned into BYO WONDER (bread), CUP OF NOODLES into CPU (central processing unit) of NOODLES, etc. And BTU, SERIOUSLY?! hit perfectly for this mechanical engineer frustrated by non-metric units. I especially liked the ones that added in some sort of implied punctuation, like TIM COOK into "TMI, COOK!"

We longtime solvers even get an insider's nod, with SDI AND NANCY — the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) is something Will has been trying to phase out, but it works here. Neat find, that SID (Vicious) AND NANCY (Spungen, both of the Sex Pistols) turn into a pair of Reagan-related answers.

One aspect of the puzzle that I really liked was that the odd letter combinations — words starting with CPU, TBA, SDI — seemed totally wrong. I actually erased these starts a few times because they seemed like they couldn't be right; that some sort of word-bending trickery had to be going on. Neat to realize that there wasn't, and my mind had just led me down a wrong path.

Francis and BEQ do something few ever dare: cramming 12 theme answers into a 140-word Sunday. It is true that some of their themers are shorties (GTO MILK, TBA COLA, etc.) but executing on a Sunday with an average number of themers (about seven) is probably the toughest skill in the game. Trying to nestle in 12 themers is just plain old nuts. Given how much is going on, it's really impressive that they still gave us some nice long fill — MOUNT ETNA, MEIN HERR, CALL SHEET.

It was a little surprising to run into a good amount of crossword glue like SAR, STYRO, CEN, NYES, etc. in a puzzle built by these two masters — that helped solidify my belief that something tricksy was going on — but after some thought, it really shouldn't be surprising given how much theme and long fill is packed in. Just part of that trade-off to get so much nice material into the grid.

– puzzle by Francis Heaney and Brendan Emmett Quigley

Another squeaky-clean construction from Ian today. This straightforward theme gives us examples of CHEW TOYs — a BALL, STICK, ROPE, BONE. I'm not convinced that a BONE is really a toy, but that might just be semantics, as there are plenty of dog toys out there shaped like bones.

I like how Ian gives us a little flair today by crossing pairs of themers. It's not done very often since it's hard to find pairs that cross nicely, but the O in ROPE and BONE is at the perfect location, allowing Ian to place these answers in the critical row/column 13. The stars aligned just right!

Once he got those in place, he had some flexibility in choosing the starts of *BALL and *STICK — with so many words that can precede each of these, there was bound to be a combination that made the intersection possible. I'm not a huge fan of MASKED BALL, as it doesn't sound nearly as strong as MASQUERADE BALL, but it works.

As usual, Ian pays such careful attention to his fill. Nary a partial, an odd abbreviation, etc. anywhere. And when you lay out two themers horizontally and two vertically, it can be a bit difficult to get in much other long fill without muddying up what's theme and what's not. Great work in integrating ALTAR BOY, THE NERVE, THE NBA. To Ian's point, excellent use of black squares above ALTAR BOY and below THE NERVE to artificially shorten the entries — at eight letters, ALTAR BOY doesn't stand out quite as much as FISH STICK, helping to reinforce that it's not part of the theme.

A lot of constructors and I tend to agree that it's fine to have "duplicates" if they're shorties like IN, ON, THE, IF, etc. But I'm in agreement with Ian here; THE crossing THE feels inelegant to me. I do love both of those though. THE NERVE! in particular is so colorful.

Not the most mind-blowing idea, but a very solid Monday.

– puzzle by Ian Livengood

★ Timely puzzle, a tribute to DAVID / BOWIE. I like it when tribute puzzles have some added layer or are understated, so this one worked great for me. I didn't see GROUND / CONTROL / TO / MAJOR / TOM coming until I hit DAVID / BOWIE, for a nice a-ha. It's a memorable snippet from arguably Bowie's most recognizable song; a lovely way to remember a man who made such huge contributions to pop music and pop culture in general.

Sam has his own indie puzzle site, and it tends to run a bit too crude or "bro" for me, so I like the more subtle personal touches he put on this puzzle. I HEAR YA sounds so much like Sam, and the clues ["Well, aren't you something!"] for LADIDA and [Yes ‘n no"] for KINDA also carry his voice. Entries like NUMLOCK give the puzzle a younger, fresher feel, and starting the puzzle with YUKS is so pleasing. Well done.

Speaking of TO TASTE though, I don't really want to hear about diarrhea in my puzzle. I appreciate how beneficial IMODIUM is, but it wouldn't be at the top of my personal list to include in a puzzle.

Otherwise, nice and clean work. The only piece of fill that stuck out was IT ON, and that looks necessary given that IPOD NANO runs through three themers, and that north section is very constrained by two themers along its bottom. Just a minor ding, especially considering how much theme material there is.

I would have loved if DAVID BOWIE had been the final theme answer, so the a-ha moment would have come later — and seeing BOWIE to the left of DAVID was odd — but it's tough to squeeze in so much theme. If you can split up a themer into two parts like DAVID / BOWIE, it does give you more flexibility in a grid layout.

I've heard some solvers accuse constructors of morbidly pre-making a puzzle to commemorate a celeb's death — that's some bizarre thinking — but rest assured that this one was constructed afterward and swapped in at the last minute. As I understand it, it's not easy to go through the NYT's logistical process to do this, so I'm glad they did. Very nice tribute.

– puzzle by Sam Ezersky

THE TIMES / THEY ARE / A CHANGIN tying this puzzle together, featuring six (!) fine anagrams for TIMES. They're starred in the clues, but I highlighted them below in blue so they stand out better. (I must admit, I missed two of them at first.)

I felt like I ran into a lot of crossword glue as I solved — ALIT, APO, SMOOT, ATNOS just to start along the left-hand side. And given that at first glance, there didn't seem to be a huge amount of longer theme material, I stopped to consider why this was.

A normal weekday puzzle has roughly 50 theme squares, something like four themers of 12ish letters, or five themers of 10ish letters. This one, at 53 squares doesn't seem to be much different. But it's much, much harder to work with a bunch of short answers than it is just a few long answers. This might be counterintuitive, but every time you place a word, no matter how long, it reduces your flexibility. Now consider that Adam had nine (!) entries to place. That fixes so much of your grid into rigidity.

The next problem is adhering to the 78-word maximum. Because every theme answer is relatively short, you must work in some long fill. I really like INDIGO GIRLS, IN THE MOMENT, even TWITTER, SANCTUM, TUNA SUB, CIAGATE. But every time you place one of those, it further chokes down your flexibility, forcing so many little areas that require crossword glue to hold them together.

Now, I still didn't love running into IM AT, REOIL, I GO, TEM, etc. during my solve, but at least thinking about the construction challenge made me better appreciate it. I do wonder if it might have gone a bit smoother if two of the six anagrams had been placed on the west and east (roughly ,where ALIT and ESOS are). That might have helped them to stand out, as well.

It is pretty cool to have six different anagrams that all work just fine — quite a nice find. That plus a perfect revealer splitting up just right for symmetry made it an interesting theme idea for me.

– puzzle by Adam G. Perl