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ROLLING IN THE AISLES literally interpreted as HA rebuses sitting in places that have aisles … with a space put in to represent the aisle! Fun visual.

I knew something was going on when ED HARRIS wouldn't fit (I just watched "The Right Stuff" recently), so I had a slight deflation, thinking this would be just another rebus puzzle. But what could fill in MOVIE HA___? Neat realization that something else was going on and a nice a-HA to finally figure out that the "aisle" in each of these places (each of which notably contains aisles) was represented by a blank space.

The grid below explains it better.

I've greatly enjoyed working with Matt on a few puzzles/ideas now, so seeing his byline in a Sunday debut was a pleasure. Sunday 140-worders are so tough, and Matt does pretty well in his execution. I only noticed a handful of crossword glue dabs needed to hold everything together — plural name ANDYS, esoteric TRENTE, some MME, ETES, ETD, BANC, RTE, ENE, etc. Nothing really offense; not too shabby.

It would have been nice to get a little more bonus material — AVALANCHE, ARCHWAY, PIRANHA were the only standouts for me (maybe YODELED and ARIGATO too) — but Matt did have to work with crossing pairs of themers, which took up more real estate than a usual Sunday puzzle.

There were a few entries that felt inelegant, like PRESALE and NOT NEAR, but well, what are you gonna do. Building a Sunday 140-word puzzle is a tough task.

I got a little tired of the concept once I had uncovered three or four of the themers, since they were all "things with literal aisles" except for the US SENATE, which has a metaphorical aisle separating parties. So I think this might have been better as a Thursday 15x puzzle. (Curious to see what Matt originally made!) The theme might have felt stronger as a whole without the awkward AIRLINER (only themer that's one word, and AIRPLANE is so much more common).

That said, it's a fun idea and a nice Sunday debut.

– puzzle by Matthew Sewell

Welcome back, Chuck! After almost a five year absence from the NYT crossword scene, the prolific constructor returns … with his first Monday puzzle. Only a Sunday left to "hit for the cycle"!

PARTY DOWN played upon, synonyms for "party" hidden in vertical theme answers. I liked the extra bonus of all the hidden words boogieing down from left to right, too. It's a party in your crossword, and everyone's invited!

Will has told me in the past that he isn't super keen on hidden words within a single, bigger word, i.e. BASH in WABASH. I tend to agree with that assessment, hidden words much more interesting when hidden across themers, so it was slightly disappointing to have every one of the party types hidden that way. It is consistent — all four done the same way — but the SCHOOL in SCHOOL CAFETERIA seems a little bit like a waste of space, for example.

It's easy enough to break most of the party types across two words, something like LEGAL AID or LIFE STORY, but it sure would be tough to get all four of them done this way while keeping the left-to-right boogieing down. And I sure did like that big-picture effect.

Chuck does so well with his bonus fill, the mark of an old pro. With five themers, there's not a lot of extra grid territory to work with, but Chuck wisely sections off chunks in the NE/SW featuring seven-letter entries. I GOTCHA, NOT THAT!, EPITAPH, CICADAS all helped elevate my solving experience. TOBACCOS is an odd plural, but GOES BALD is a fun entry. To us non-sensitive baldies, that is.

There was some ASA, COL, ESSE, SRA, AHOLD, but only ESSE stuck out to me. (AH SO is icky, playing on old Asian stereotypes, but it is gettable. Okay, maybe I am a little sensitive.) Everything else I think most beginning solvers should be able to grok. Reasonable trade-off, to get the high-ish theme density and all the extras.

Can't wait to see what Sunday concept Chuck is going to give us! I'm rooting for him to join the cycle club.

– puzzle by Chuck Deodene

AT&T themers, ATLANTIC TIME, ATHLETIC TRAINER, and ATOMIC THEORY. Since "initialism" type puzzles have been done so much over the years, I appreciate when there's something extra. Certainly harder to find AT* T* phrases than just A* T* phrases, for example. I particularly liked ATOMIC THEORY, as it's so evocative, making me think of people all the way back to the ancient Greeks trying to figure out what makes up our world.

ATLANTIC TIME is decent. Not snazzy to my ear; more workmanlike. ATHLETIC TRAINER is a real phrase, but how many times have you heard your friends say they're going to their ATHLETIC TRAINER vs. to their trainer? (The answer to both is statistically probably "zero," but you get my point.)

I wondered for a long time if I was missing something. Michael is so prolific, having covered every day of the week over his 52 puzzles, that this one felt thin. Just three themers and a short revealer of A T AND T (I'm souring on these entries that are never written out like this in real life) … why not more?

It turns out that it's not as easy to come up with AT* T* phrases as I thought. There's ATTACK TRANSPORT … ATLANTA TOWNSHIP? Even if that were crossworthy, it duplicates ATLANTIC. ATHEISM … TEST? ATTIC ... TILE? Now I see why Michael stuck to just three.

And I did like the bonuses the extra space allowed for MIKE TYSON, LA-Z-BOY / SPITZ, ZIPLOC, even HOODOO. (I can see younger folks asking, "What the heck is a LOCAL CALL?")

I wasn't hot on the TACIT / LORAIN crossing. I always get TACIT / TACET mixed up, and LORAEN looked equally plausible. SKODA I can take, as the crossings are reasonable, although I would have liked some neat trivia in the clue to make it seem more interesting, just like with KB TOYS. Didn't know that one, but I liked how the clue steered me toward the hard-to-get KB.

Given the low theme density, it was a little surprising to see the OSS, IMET, QTR, APT NO kind of crossword glue from someone so experienced, but I did appreciate all the snappy bonus entries.

– puzzle by Michael Shteyman

I still managed to enjoy this one even after my years of dentist-aversion therapy. (Not surprisingly, it hasn't worked out well for my teeth.) I admit it; I'm an anti-dentite! But I enjoyed the dentist making a good FIRST IMPRESSION (ha ha, remember when the dentist got my nightguard mold stuck in my mouth?), offering a BRIDGE LOAN (and when another charged me for extra procedures I didn't ask for!), and everyone's favorite … YOU KNOW THE (shudder) DRILL!

I'm sure Mark Diehl is shaking his head at me. Sorry Mark, I'm sure you're tons better than all the terrible dentists I've gone through.

BRUSH PILES … what's a brush pile? Apparently, it's … wait for it … a pile of brush! It seems that birds are attracted to them. I have no idea how this works, but now I'm eager to go try it out. With wood-type brush, that is, not dentist-type brushes.

Unique black square pattern, those chunks in the middle odd-looking. They did allow Sam to work in some very nice seven-letter bonus entries, PASSKEY, AIRCREW, WHISKAS, and … RESLIDE. Sam, really?! Sam often takes the "go big or go home" approach, and I don't mind seeing a bit of OYEZ and PLAT to get some very nice CRACK UP, AGILITY, GO KAPUT, OPUS DEI. It's just such a shame to fill a precious seven-letter slot with a baserunner going back to first and trying to RESLIDE back into second. Or something like that.

With some AGRI, ERST, LEK, MUS, TRE in there too, it was too much crossword glue for me overall. But I do like how much snazzy bonus material Sam jammed in. Not sure why WHISKAS makes me CRACK UP, but it does.

Love the SOFA clue — [Loose change "collector"] feels Donaldson-esque. Nice to get a little of a constructor's personality in his/her puzzle.

I still have a long way to go in getting over my anti-dentite ways, and Sam's inspired me to try harder. I know the drill …

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson

Some black squares interpreted as JACK added to themers, i.e. what looks like YOU DON'T KNOW is actually YOU DON'T KNOW (JACK). Nice to pull it all together with both (JACK) BLACK the actor and BLACK (JACK) the card game hinting at those hidden JACKs — both of them in a single entry, BLACK!

We saw a "BLACK hidden in black squares" puzzles recently, so it would have been nice to get more separation between them. But this one did go an extra step, not just a BLACK addition, but a (black) JACK addition.

Nice pairing of YOU DON'T KNOW (JACK) and (JACK) OF ALL TRADES. Fortuitous that their lengths match.

Glad that the themers were starred — I would have glossed over PINE, which is actually (JACK) PINE. Although it's interesting to learn of another type of tree, I would have preferred something more snazzy, like (JACK)POTS. Maybe the (JACK)POT in the upper right could have been (JACK)ALS?

Speaking of the upper right, to have AMOI and MMI in one tiny region is not ideal. I wouldn't mind them as the price for ORTIZ, but with crossword glue already necessary to hold the rest of the puzzle together — O SOLE, WILE E, IN ICE, A CUT — it'd have been great to smooth all the tiny corners out as much as possible.

It's a shame to have four partials, making them all stick out for me. But those four partials are understandable, given all the extras Ed worked in: EMPTY SUIT, TITLE ROLE, TOY STORES. Bound to get some strain when so much good stuff is worked in. And I loved THE CROW. Brandon Lee got cut down in the prime of his life, just like his father, Bruce Lee. It's sad — that dude could have been the leading man that broke the Asian glass ceiling in Hollywood.

As with most of these types of puzzles, I wanted some rationale as to why certain black squares operated as black JACKs and others didn't. Still, an enjoyable solve with some strong theme phrases and bonuses.

– puzzle by Ed Sessa

Love that OVER THE MOON and UNDER THE SUN mini-theme! So appropriately placed within the grid, too.

Jacob uses the max allowable words — 72 — in his grid. Although some constructors pooh-pooh this as not a big enough challenge (I fully own up to this), there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, my local Seattle friend Mike Hawkins mentioned that he and John Guzzetta have several themelesses accepted now, all by going up to 72 words and maximizing the long entries in the four corners (without resorting to crossword glue). Hard to argue with acceptances!

Beautiful triple-stack, OVER THE MOON / CAMERA READY / TIPS ONES HAT. Some ERE, RESOD, TRE holding it together, but those are three great entries. AGE OF REASON / BOWL A STRIKE / UNDER THE SUN are even stronger, especially considering there are no ugly gluey entries needed to hold it together! Standout work down in the lower right.

Since Jacob didn't have many long slots to begin with, he had to work hard at converting every one of them into great material. DC COMICS with a clue hinting at the Flash is great, and SEA SNAKE is fun too. MY PRETTY and ARMCHAIR (quarterback) are good too.

Add in some interesting mid-length material in HANS ARP, FLAGON, the JULIAN calendar, SUDOKU, and there was enough to keep me satisfied.

ODA MAE … I've considered this many times in my own puzzles, especially the oh-so-useful ODA. But this character from a pretty old movie doesn't seem completely crossworthy to me.

Overall, I liked this puzzle a lot. If there had been just a little bit more great material — closer to 15 assets rather than 10 — and/or fewer dabs of ERE-type crossword glue, it might have won my POW!

– puzzle by Jacob Stulberg

SPACE TIME crossing ARE WE GOOD in the center — love it! Themeless that feature mostly mid-to-short entries have to really make their few long entries sing, so it's nice to get these two front and center. WIFI ZONE and IN THE BAG are pretty darn great as well.

I wasn't so sure about WHO WAS IT. Certainly a common phrase, but it feels more ho-hum, something functional in everyday conversation. CAPRICES … not a spectacular entry, but for a one-worder, it's pretty colorful. Not as sizzly as WIFI ZONE was for me, but still nice.

I'm not a fan of this sort of layout that breaks the puzzle up into so many subsections. It's all too easy to get stuck in a single region, making for a stop and go solve. Not super satisfying if there are only two ways into a corner, and you can't figure out either of them.

It sure does make construction easier, though. Once you select those entry words, you can work on that little piece of the grid just by itself, not worrying about the rest of the puzzle. I'd rather constructors avoid this crutch, as the resulting puzzle flow is so stilted and jarring for me as a solver.

That said, I really liked some of the results — it did feel more polished and snazzy than Roland's last use of a very similar grid pattern. Kicking it off with MEAT RUB is awfully nice, and a MASSEUR as [One pressing the flesh] = fantastic misdirectional clue! And I really, really enjoyed the bottom right. The rare J X in NINJAS / JUKEBOX / ROLEXES were neat, and I liked TERABIT and SEDATES with its tricky [Gives a number?] clue. (Think numb-er, as in one who numbs.)

Not as much a fan of the upper right, where PESETAS and PEERAGE takes up valuable real estate. It sure is tough to execute on triple-stacks of sevens crossing other triple-stacks of sevens.

Good workout overall, each of the five mini-puzzles taking a quite while to crack into.

– puzzle by Roland Huget

★ I was baffled for the longest time — was PROSE POETRY supposed to be PROSE ROSE POETRY or something? Headslap moment when I realized it was P. ROSE POETRY. Brilliant! So many celebs go by their first initial and their last name (or part of it), like D Wade (Dwyane Wade), J Law (Jennifer Lawrence … or Jude Law?), etc. Great idea, cluing all these normal phrases as if they were parsed into celeb-ish names.

And the poetry for P. ROSE! "Charlie Hustle is my name / I am banned from the Hall of Fame" = fantastic. Great entry and even better clue, like something Muhammad Ali might have said in taunt. (I didn't know the MALI EMPIRE, but I really liked learning about this historical powerhouse.)

I did find it odd to get Stephen HARPER's first name right in the clue, but I'm the first to admit that I couldn't have guessed who Stephen Harper was, even given eleventy-billion guesses. So I appreciated the hint.

These young guns are two of the best in the new generation. I love me some Agard puzzles — his indies are some of my favorites out there — and Peter Broda blew my mind with a hero metapuzzle a while back.

Sometimes with the indies, I have a hard time getting into the hot / trendy people they throw in; names that you either know or don't, ones that either elate you or leave you shrugging.

So to get fresh, juicy bonus entries that even this old crotchety fella can appreciate was great. VICE UNIT! BEER DARTS! (I didn't know that one, but it wasn't hard to figure out from the clue.) URL HIJACKING! And HARRY HOUDINI with its appropriately confounding clue about when Houdini was buried (for a stage trick) vs. his death = brilliant.

There were a few tough themers — if you never watched "Friends," CHANDLER BING would be rough. And even rougher if you don't know who C. HANDLER (Chelsea Handler) is.

But overall, loved, loved, loved it. Such fun to do the puzzle, and even more fun to analyze why that was. More please, sirs!

P.S. RETCON = retroactive continuity. Even as a writer, I didn't know that — fun to learn!

– puzzle by Peter Broda and Erik Agard

Bed sizes ranging from TWIN PEAKS to FULL HOUSE to QUEEN ANNE to KING COBRA, all tied together with BED HEAD as a revealer. Tidy little theme! (Unlike our bed when I'm the last to get up, much to my wife's chagrin.)

Perfect consistency — each themer has two words, none hyphenated — and an excellent selection of strong phrases. A few years ago, I went out to where they filmed "Twin Peaks," out in the Middle of Nowhere, WA. Eerily creepy place.

Some great bonuses, too. THEY SAY … is awfully fun, as in a conspiratorial whisper. RAIN DELAY and BORN FREE are welcome as well, especially that soaring feeling I get when I belt out BORN FREEEEEEEE! (People in this coffee shop are staring at me, but I don't care.)

Smooth, too. AKIRA and KYRIE are both interesting to me — Kurosawa is someone every educated solver ought to know. KYRIE Irving might not have been crossworthy a few years ago, but after his performance in the NBA Finals last year — helping the Cavs bring home their first championship in forever — heck yeah, he's crossworthy. Still important to make all the crossings fair, and Neville does just that.

One notable blip, though. AIT … I took five years of high school French, but given 100 guesses, I doubt I would have come up with this verb form of AVOIR. (I barely remember what AVOIR means, so maybe it's me that's the problem.) Not sure I'd ever allow AIT into one of my puzzles, even if the crossings were perfectly fair (they are). It did allow for the nice GOATHERD, but I'LL PASS on AIT, especially when it might rankle novice solvers in a Monday puzzle.

Solid Monday fare, with a generally well-executed theme and grid.

– puzzle by Neville Fogarty

Word ladder going from BLACK to WHITE, illustrating an incredibly slow game of OTHELLO / REVERSI. (I can just feel the irritation of the other player as I turn a piece over at a rate of one degree per second!) Neat that OTHELLO and REVERSI have matching word lengths — I had completely forgotten that latter name for the game.

I've highlighted the themers below to show how incredibly constrained the grid is. Eleven (!) entries to work around is no joke. They are all short, but this fact doesn't make the gridwork any easier.

Almost every 78-word crossword has some longer answers (otherwise, you'd go above that max of 78), and usually those longer answers are the themers. So when your theme relies on a bunch of shorties, your fill has to be long. David does well to work in some goodies like CAL STATE and BANK NOTE. EMBASSIES and GENTLEMEN are fine, although they're more filler than assets to me.

But given all these constraints and challenges, it's not surprising to see globs of crossword glue holding the puzzle together. There are just so many places where so many words --either themers or long fill — are fixed into place.

I don't personally mind a LEK (I like my foreign currencies!) or a REBAG (although Trader Joe's checkers do an incredibly good job bagging the first time) or an ENT (huge Lord of the Rings fan here). Throw in a KGS though (kg, not kgs), some EPH(esians), an ERN, a SEV (what? "several" has an abbreviation?), and an AMERCES, and it makes for a less-than-elegant solve.

I don't mind MII at all, even given my shivers at RRNs (random Roman numerals). The fact that personal WII characters are called MIIs … this amuses me probably more than it should. Neat to be on David's wavelength there.

Since word ladders have been done a lot over the years, it's important for me to get a little something extra, and the OTHELLO reminder was nice. It would have been even nicer if there was some game or process involving a much slower BLACK to WHITE morph, as OTHELLO's quick flips felt out of sync with this word ladder.

– puzzle by David Poole

The DOUBLE / HELIX is so ripe for crossword brainstorming. One of Liz Gorski's a while back was particularly memorable, as was one of Joel Fagliano's. Today, Pete gives us something similar but goes with the letters D N A filling out the more-single-than-double-looking (sorry, Pete!) helix.

Nice find that WATSON / CRICK / DOUBLE / HELIX exhibit crossword symmetry!

I did find it inelegant to have to jump across the grid to connect the word pairs, and it was weird to get CRICK before WATSON. Using mirror symmetry would have helped this — both WATSON and DOUBLE could have been in the top half of the puzzle, with CRICK and HELIX at the bottom. (Back to the bottom where you belong, CRICK!)

Some nice bonuses in the grid, ARACHNID and ON THE GO my favorites. NOT A SOUL and FOOTSTEP = good stuff too. Much appreciated to get the extras, given that the puzzle felt a bit theme-thin.

Oh! As a macro econ junkie, I loved seeing REAL GDP in the grid. Except that it was REAL GNP! (Domestic vs. National, don't ask me what the difference is. My macro prof is now rolling in her grave.) That crossing with BRINDISI was a killer. Perhaps a case can be made that it's fair since the Appian Way is very famous, but that didn't stop me from grumbling.

It's so tough to work through that center of the puzzle, with so many D N A letters fixed into place. So the gluey results of INRI, SANI, ENDO, BANOS … not unexpected. And having a theme word fixed into place in each of the four corners, getting more ACOP, TASS, MDLI, ROIS, LIBBER, ERO … again, it's not unexpected, but it doesn't make for an elegant, smooth solve.

Finally, as a biochem junkie, I would have loved to see base pairings of A-T and G-C (adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine), reflecting the actual building blocks of DNA. But I can only imagine thousands of solvers wondering why there were so many of these four letters in the grid. And other thousands in an outcry yelling BUT THAT AT-GC-GC-GC-AT-AT-GC SERIES IS NOT AN ACTUAL GENE SEQUENCE! Can't make everyone happy.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

★ For my money, Joe Krozel is one of the most innovative, interesting constructors out there. Some of my friends have grumbled that pushing the envelope doesn't always lead to great solving experiences, and I can see their point. But I felt that today's puzzle not only broke (pun intended) new ground, but it was an immense pleasure to solve.

Several constructor friends and I have brainstormed concepts with a grid separated in two, but none of us have ever thought of this cool idea. Joe found three solid phrases relating to a separated grid — and separated those phrases! Not only that, but each piece of each broken phrase makes a fine word in itself. BUSTED APART = BUS / TED + APART, BANANA SPLIT = BAN / ANA + SPLIT, BROKEN IN TWO = BRO / KEN + IN TWO. Just genius.

Will has rejected every one of my attempts to use this "up-down" style of symmetry, saying that it just looks odd, and I can usually see his point. But Joe uses a set of heavy black lines that evokes left-right symmetry, maintaining a pleasing visual effect.

And the fill! With some trick puzzles, fill necessarily shows strain to make the trick work. Joe does so well, giving us some excellent IKEBANA, TRANSISTOR RADIO, RAGTIME, THE NORM, SANGRIA, etc., flowing all the way down the right side. Okay, UNTAME isn't very good, but all the great entries overwhelmed that one for me.

The left side isn't quite as snazzy, but it does have a nice TAXICAB, PLANETS, NITWITS, ARMHOLE, without much crossword glue holding it together — just an UNA and a TELE made for a silky solve.

It's not often that I'm green with envy, wishing that it had been my name on the byline, but that was the case today. If I did a Crossword of the Month like Matt Gaffney, this one would be sure to be on it. Loved it.

– puzzle by Joe Krozel

Solid grid, featuring a good number of snazzy entries. I liked how Andrew spread his assets around, from STOLEN BASES to SKATE PARKS to BORN THIS WAY to COSA NOSTRA around the corners, and that beautiful middle triple of BUYERS REMORSE / PARODY ACCOUNT / MUSEUM EXHIBIT. I only counted about 11 assets in the puzzle, but it felt like more because they seemed to pop up everywhere.

COSA NOSTRA is one I love, but I remember my wife looking blankly at me when she first encountered it (in crosswords). I do think this term for the Mafia is interesting, literally meaning "our thing."

Smooth grid, too. There's an editor's STET and a weird TENK (10-K race), but what else? Maybe you could argue that ANN LEE and EFREM Zimbalist are a bit esoteric, but they're both crossworthy in my eyes. Andrew did well to make all the crossings fair, too.

Well, maybe you could say that the MARCH of BETH MARCH isn't fair, crossing EFREM. Hmm. Not having read "Little Women" (I know, heresy!), I did pause at the M. Thank goodness I know EFREM from crosswords! Otherwise, EFRED and DARCH might look plausible. Maybe I'm thinking of Mr. Darcy, from another one of those old British books I was supposed to have read. Bah humbug.

It's rare that I notice a great short entry, but SPANX! I love this, having seen the shapewear brand throughout O the Magazine and other sources. I often pooh-pooh marketing, but whoever came up with this name is a genius.

It's not easy to construct "stairstep" triples (BUYERS REMORSE / PARODY ACCOUNT / MUSEUM EXHIBIT) with both color and cleanliness. And sometimes this type of layout can make it tough to work in a lot of other extras throughout the puzzle. So Andrew does well to work in a good number of assets, plus very few liabilities.

– puzzle by Andrew J. Ries

What a fantastic NW corner! It's hard to intersect triple-stacks together like that. Sure, one triple-stack is easy to do, but when you run another one right through it, there's almost always some compromise necessary. Maybe you have to settle for a meh long entry; maybe you have to glue it all together with a couple of ugly short answers.

But I count six nice answers, and nary a dab of crossword glue. RETRO-CHIC and RAW MEAT make such a great 1-A / 1-D combination. (Was Lady Gaga's RAW MEAT dress RETRO-CHIC?) TIE SCORE isn't as zippy to me, but it's still good. And some might wince at AROAR as one of those A+(something) entries, but it's a perfectly fine word I see all the time in books. All in all, this is one of the best examples of intersecting triple-stacks that I can remember.

The lower right isn't quite as good, showing some of the signs of stress I mentioned above. SLINGER feels partialish, as does OPEN SINCE. RARE FIND makes me cock my head a bit, as does WEEKENDER. The latter does show up a lot in newspapers, so it's possible that it's just not in my bailiwick. The overall effect ... this corner doesn't strike me nearly as powerfully as the upper left. Nothing STANK, except the weird one-L ENROL, but not nearly as much stood out, either.

With this type of grid, it can be tough to work in much of anything else. So I like Andrew's efforts to integrate HARE-BRAINED, GRASS STAINS, and even the shorter IM EASY, NO CARB, THE POPE, BIOGAS, and ICE AXES. All good stuff.

All of this, with very little crossword glue — ENROL being the only sticking point I saw. That's nice execution.

If only the bottom right corner had been as spectacular as the upper left. Especially given the level of construction difficulty of intersecting triple-stacks, that would have made the puzzle an easy POW!

– puzzle by Andrew Kingsley

We get a kooky GRAMMAR LESSON today, phrases from English class getting fun reinterpretations. I liked RELATIVE CLAUSES as relatives of Santa Claus — too bad this puzzle just missed Christmas!

FUTURE PERFECT was almost another perfect one, defined as a utopia. I hitched, though, as PERFECT FUTURE felt so much more utopian. FUTURE PERFECT … the grammar felt too tortured for my taste.

Not being very well versed in grammatical terms, I had a hard time with most of them, since I didn't really know the base phrase. The OBJECTIVE CASE is not something I could identify, for example. Not that I need to know what that is, but being familiar with both PASSIVE VOICE's normal and kooky interpretations made me feel smart. OBJECTIVE CASE, INDEFINITE ARTICLE, RELATIVE CLAUSE ... not so much.

A lot of nice bonuses, as I've come to expect from Joel. Loved DIAMOND JIM, PROP PLANES, DIESEL FUEL (although don't most people just call it DIESEL?), and YELLOW FLAG (cool piece of trivia, that it means "no disease on this ship"!). I don't often think to place long bonus fill in the horizontal direction, and Joel uses this well to shoehorn in more extras.

I also liked IN BAD TASTE (especially pairing that symmetrically with ANN COULTER, ha ha ha ba-BAM!), SEX SCENE, PRO SHOP, SOFT TACO, LIFE VEST, etc. All those bonuses were much appreciated today, given my idiocy with the grammar base phrases.

I did notice a few TOR, RST, SYN, IF WE, A SORT sort of crossword glue. For most anyone else, I'd just shrug it off, but Joel is one of the best gridworkers out there. Still, I felt like they were a fine price to pay to get so many extras.

P.S. LTE = "Long Term Evolution." Not sure why the marketing folks thought that would be a good trademark for a smartphone network.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

Debut! John goes out of his WAY to give us a sequence from ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, TWO WAY RADIO, THREE WAY TIE, to … SIX WAYS TO SUNDAY? I thought long and hard about this one. I wondered, is 1, 2, 3, 6 a real sequence? It is cool that it describes the first perfect number, i.e. a number that equals the sum of its factors (1 + 2 + 3 = 6). Let's just go with that.

John's explanation of 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 does make sense, but I wish it had been more clearly spelled out somehow in the puzzle.

Nice gridwork, especially for a debut. It's hard to work in so much bonus material — WALLSAFE, PINGPONG, TOP SECRET (at the TOP of the grid!) and TREESTUMP with a funny beaver-related clue.

Usually, bonus fill is incorporated in the vertical direction, since this allows for more freedom and flexibility. TEABAGS and GET BUSY (admit it, you thought of the euphemism, didn't you? No? Oh. I didn't either.) are relatively easy to work into the grid, for example. Even though they each intersect two themers, there are a good number of black squares breaking things up in those regions. Easy peasy.

But look up at TOP SECRET. Stacking a long answer on top of a themer is not often done, because it forces so many sets of paired letters you have to work with: TO of STOP, ON of HONE, PE of OPEC, etc. It's true that you can put just about anything in that TOP SECRET slot, but you'll always have all those parallel constraints to work around. So it's great execution up there, what with nary a gluey bit.

The bottom does force the ugly EDUC, but what are you gonna do. It's the price of this sort of layout. Given that there were only a few other gluey bits in TYRE, OTRA, SEL, the overall result was pretty good.

The logic of the progression still doesn't sit quite right with me, but overall, I did like the gridwork execution. Neat to see a noob stretch to spruce up a grid like this, while still keeping all the short fill reasonably smooth.

– puzzle by John Wrenholt

WANKEN OBI has to be the most hilariously awkward phrase I've ever seen in crosswords. Ahem. Hopefully no geishas are doing the puzzle today.

Ah, CARRIE / FISHER. STAR WARS was the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, so PRINCESS LEIA is forever burned into my mind. The image of a strong woman kicking ass and taking names, awkwardly kissing her brother, those CINNAMON BUNS … she's the source of much of my therapy needs.

And it's neat how outspoken and don't-give-a-damn she was toward the end of her life. I'll miss her.

Some neat elements in this tribute. I liked the idea of the ST/AR W/A/R/S "opening crawl" (the prologue disappearing off to a vanishing point), although it sure would have been nice to get more than just STAR WARS in this format. (Unlike George Lucas's terrible opening crawls in Episodes I, II, and III, where I would have been much happier with just the title, no explanations of the senate deadlock and the galactic trade barriers and economic STOOOOOOOP!)

As much as I like STAR WARS quotes, breaking HELP ME OBI / WAN KENOBI / YOURE MY ONLY HOPE was odd. There doesn't appear to be any other way to break it up though, and this was one of LEIA's iconic quotes. Hmm. Maybe if mirror symmetry had been used, at least HELP ME OBI and WANKEN OBI (oops, I did it again!) could have been in the top half of the puzzle (going vertically), with YOURE MY ONLY HOPE at the bottom. That would have avoided the jump all the way to the bottom, then back to the middle.

I did like that CARRIE / FISHER was interlocked into that quote. Neat to see how fortuitously FISHER and PRINCESS LEIA linked together. That did force some inflexibility in the lower right corner, with the odd ALLEE, but I thought it was worth it. Carrie FISHER probably didn't like being called PRINCESS LEIA her entire life, but the two were eternally connected, no doubt.

Some neat ideas. They didn't all mesh together, but I appreciated the tribute.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

I love me some fantasy basketball, so getting a BLOCK to REBOUND to PASS to DRIBBLE to SHOOT to TAKING OFF FROM THE FREE THROW LINE, LEAPING OVER THREE GUYS AND WINDMILL DUNKING TO SMASH THE BACKBOARD was a great FAST BREAK.

That's how it went in my mind, at least.

I loved DRIBBLE GLASS and SHOOT EM UPS as phrases. The former is especially good, since it's not only a hilarious product (that's my middle-grade sense of humor speaking), but it hides the basketball meaning of DRIBBLE. SHOOT EM UPS does that to a lesser extent, but the term "sharpshooters" is used in bball all the time.

BLOCK HEEL … it does appear to be a real thing, but it didn't do much for me. (Not surprising, given my disinterest in fashion.) REBOUND GUY also didn't hit my ear very well. I suppose I can imagine someone being called that. But it felt off. What other REBOUND phrase is there, though?

I did wonder why there was a REBOUND in the sequence at all, but some research shows that whoever collects the BLOCKed shot does get credit for the rebound. So it does belong in the story after all.

One of the reasons I enjoy working with Matt is his relentless drive to make his fill as colorful and smooth as possible. Six longish themers is rarely easy to work around, but Matt still managed to incorporate PALOOKAS, SIDE ORDER, ANECDOTAL, CABARETS, etc. Considering some puzzles with much less theme only have a single pair of bonus entries, this is a great achievement. I enjoyed hitting all these bonuses during my solve.

There were some ESE, NEG, RELET, ELD, RAHS kinds of crossword glue, but they were all minor for me. I thought the trade-off was well worth it, as I like how much those long bonus entries add to the quality of a solve.

I'm six months out from my Achilles tear from playing bball, so watch out for my FAST BREAK! (Not referring to the Achilles, hopefully.)

– puzzle by Matthew Sewell

Politicians' CHECKERED PAST(s) riffed on today, four instances of P-A-S-T circling a checkerboard pattern. I always sit up a little straighter when I see something new in a grid's black squares, so I enjoyed the fun first impression here.

Nice that Jacob put his P at the top in the NW corner, the right in the NE corner, the bottom in the SE corner, and at the left in the SW corner. Sort of looks … cyclical? Don't know what the right word is, but the constant progression is pleasing to this constructor's sensibilities.

I did feel like the puzzle was theme-thin. Once I uncovered CHECKERED PAST, I was able to fill in the P-A-S-Ts, and then that was it. It sure would have been nice to have maybe just one CHECKERED P-A-S-T and a few other literal interpretations of political-related phrases. SLINGING MUD comes to mind, as does ATTACK AD or SUPER PAC? Not sure, but some more variety would have been good.

Given the theme thinness, I appreciated Jacob's effort to give me more bonuses to keep my attention. Such nice entries in THE COMETS, TELEPORT, A LA MODE, and the really long STEEPLECHASES and TOP O THE MORNING. The latter two did make me wonder if they were themers, given the lack of other themers in the grid, but I shrugged that off quickly.

Great clue for TOUPEES: only some are "top secrets," some others quite obvious to everyone. (cough TRUMP cough.) As a founding member of the Triple Bs (the Bad Bald Boys, whatchagonnado?), Sam and Doug and I say the truth shall set you free!

Overall, I liked the trade-off of getting a lot of nice bonuses for minor prices of OFA, HET, AEROS, but it would have been nice to get more meat to the theme.

– puzzle by Jacob Stulberg

★ PuzzleGirl! So great to see her name back in the NYT lineup. That combo of TONY SOPRANO and his TOY SOLDIERS in a HOTEL ROOM being THE DEVIL YOU KNOW makes for such a neat middle of the puzzle. A few other long answers spice up the corners, in particular, the AMEN CORNER. This engineer highly approves of EXHAUST FAN, too.

Angela's layout is heavily dependent on seven-letter entries, and those can be tough to make sing. There are a few so-so answers like SINCERE, NETTLES, MARIANO (sorry, this Yankee-hater can't abide by that), but Angela does well to work in the colloquial MR RIGHT (aka "Jeff Chen"), DREAM ON!, and AFROPOP.

Not only that, but she spruces up some of the entries that don't sing by themselves with great clues. EPITHET as ["The Great" or "The Terrible"] is fun, giving such a huge range. ASTAIRE gets a nice piece of trivia, his book known as "The Man, the Dancer." And TARTANS gives us cool names in "Royal Stewart" and Clan Donald" (the patterns associated with those clans). It's stuff like this that makes me wish my name were MacChen.

Even [Activate, as a wah-wah pedal] for STEP ON and [Chat, across the Pyrénées] for GATO ("chat" is the French word for "cat") help spice things up.

Now, I didn't care for some entries. SAINTE feels a bit of a cheat, tagging on that uber-friendly ending E. The HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) is outdated, although one could argue it's historically important. STD isn't a great abbreviation, nor is PSS. With SEL and the arbitrary TEN AM, it was on the verge of being too much for me.

(KEB and PITTI are tough proper nouns, but I think both of those are both crossworthy and done with fair crossings.)

And this puzzle might not do much for those who haven't seen "The Sopranos." TONY SOPRANO is a toughie — he'll elate some, and cause others to shrug.

But overall, I was personally so entertained by this one, that middle in particular.

– puzzle by Angela Olson Halsted

CATLIKE REFLEXES and I HOPE YOURE HAPPY anchor today's puzzle, both great entries. Interesting choice to have them running vertically instead of horizontally. That made it much more difficult for me to see the CATLIKE part of the first answer; made for a very difficult challenge.

I enjoyed some of the longer stuff, the combination of KICKBALL and USA TODAY really nice. Fun to think about Timothy Parker get KICKedBALLed out of that editorship due to plagiarism. LAPEL PIN was nice, too.

KIND EYES … my first reaction paralleled Will and Joel's: is that a real thing? After some thought, I seemed to remember that Lily Potter had kind eyes. Sniffling, I let it pass.

Chunky block patterns in the middle, indeed. A hidden pentomino mini-theme? I don't mind that central plus sign, but the other two scream EXCESSIVE USE OF BLACK SQUARES! to me ... even though they're also five squares big. Just like James mentioned, there's something excessively blocky about those shapes that makes my constructor's brain cringe.

A note on TARPONS. I used to hate this kind of entry. I remember seeing GALOPS back when I was starting to do crosswords and thinking that it was the worst entry I had even seen in my life and that it ruined the puzzle. But my sensibilities have changed a lot, mellowing with time. Although I still don't get much elation from something-new-but-unexciting like TARPONS, I like learning a little each day ... just as long as the crosses are fair. Sometimes people complain about TERRIBLE NEW THINGS THEY HAVE TO LEARN FROM THAT !%#$@ JEFF CHEN'S PUZZLES LIKE SIRENIA AND MOLDAU AND HE'S THE WORST CONSTRUCTOR EVER!

Haters gonna hate.

And these types of entries are useful to have in one's solving arsenal! Today, I was very glad that I had learned EDESSA / ODESSA (from crosswords). And LYCEUM too. Very tough the first time I encountered it, but glad it's part of my vocabulary now.

Tough solve; some great mental exercise.

– puzzle by James Mulhern

A friend of mine once told me it's incredibly easy to come up with crossword themes. When I asked him (with amusement) to come up with one so we could make it together, he listed off DING-DONG, PING-PONG, SING-SONG … and then he turned red and said well, maybe it's not incredibly easy. (Just easy.)

That sort of repetition alone wouldn't make for a very good crossword, but Dan found a way to turn these types of phrases into an interesting idea. I particularly liked OF THEE I SING SONG, such an apt description of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." And as a fan of the hapless Knicks, I enjoyed NEW YORK KNICK KNACKS, which is sadly an all-too-true description of that motley crew these days. (Remember the days of Patrick Ewing, amirite?)

Took me a while to understand JOINED AT THE HIP HOP as a three-legged race, but it made sense, eventually. See, you're tied up … sort of at the hip (more at the leg though) … and you're hopping (more like loping) … well, if you squint, this clue sort of works.

Some nice bonus fill, STRAW POLLS, RED CAVIAR, RAW DATA and PEGBOARD my favorites. (I'm a huge "American Ninja Warrior" fan and desperately want to build a hanging pegboard in my living room for training, but my wife is surprisingly not hot on that idea.) I was mixed on ONE A CAT — we, unfortunately, see OCAT or ACAT all too often in crosswords. Is seeing the full esoteric game any better? Hmm, not sure.

Dan did a nice job in giving us a smooth grid overall. I picked up a little ETAT, ATWT, SEM, SEMAINE (French for "week") but it wasn't enough to give me an AGUE. I would have welcomed a little more of the gluey short stuff to get some more snazzy longer fill.

Overall, still a bit repetitive-feeling for my taste, but I did like Dan's creativity in finding an interesting way to incorporate these TIP-TOP HIP-HOP FLIP-FLOPS into a crossword theme. Making a crossword is so (incredibly) easy!

– puzzle by Dan Schoenholz

★ Really enjoyed this one. Very nice that Bruce perfectly divided up RUMP EL STILT SKIN into its syllables, sticking them at the starts of snappy phrases. I particularly liked RUMP ROAST and the legend of EL DORADO. I'm more familiar with golf's SKINS GAME than a SKIN GAME, but the latter does appear to be legit. And STILT WALKER … don't they just call them "person on stilts"? But again, the term does appear to be in use, and it's a fun word to say.

I always enjoy a good a-ha moment, and it's tough to get one on a Monday. If the theme is too hard, solvers won't understand (see: Bruce's mom). I thought this one was just about right, hiding in plain sight until I got to the very end and finally put those syllables together. Good choice to have an oblique revealer in FAIRY TALE — I think it would have been too hit-solvers-over-the-head-with-a-hammer obvious with RUMPELSTILTSKIN as a revealer.

And what nice fill! Not a surprise to me that Bruce's puzzles have taken a quantum leap since (warning: shameless plug ahead) he went all in on the XWord Info Word List. I loved getting the bonuses of PASTA BAR / E READER / DAD BODS (I'm trying very hard to avoid the first in order to avoid the third), SOFA BED. That's one great corner.

Bruce's puzzles used to be fairly well sprinkled with crossword glue, but this one is so nice and clean, generally.

I did have some qualms about the SW, though. SAULT crossing ELO is rough, almost making me disqualify the puzzle from POW! contention (given that this is a Monday puzzle). And STRING UP … I know there are a lot of nooses in Wild West movies, but … ick.

But overall, such a fun hidden theme, giving me a solid a-ha, and a well-executed grid. It's so difficult to make a Monday puzzle that's interesting to more experienced solvers, while also keeping the fill easily accessible to noobs. Great job!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

Many different constructors have written to me about a HIDDEN GEM idea, but it's usually with hiding the word as in SAGO PALM. Interesting to see the different interpretation today, gems spread out through a word or phrase. I really liked PAPER AIRPLANE, as it reminded me of the days I was shuttled off to Chinese school on Friday nights. Not sure what my parents were expecting, but I did learn to make some great PAPER AIRPLANES, spitwads, and other prankish devices. Mischief managed!

Will doesn't often take themes dependent on single words, as they tend not to be as interesting as multi-word phrases. Multi-word phrases also help distinguish "good" crosswords from "crapwords" (that's a technical term) in little local newspapers, as those tend to feel dictionary-generated. I did like JEOPARDIZE and PRESUMABLY, but not nearly as much as PAPER AIRPLANE.

I liked John's NE corner, that beautiful stack of AMYGDALA / POSEIDON (love me some mythology!) / AUTOZONE. I typically would use more black squares in a region like this, because it's so hard to execute on it cleanly and with sparkle. John does need a CYSTS (a bit icky) and LTS, ENE, but I thought it was well worth it.

I thought the opposite corner didn't come out as well. See all those answers that have to work through / next to PAPER AIRPLANE and PRESUMABLY? It's a pretty good triple of PARROTED / ANNE RICE / PEASANTS, but all those constraints force an ORA right in the stack. Then a RECTO and ID EST down below. And there's EMS (admittedly more minor) and the outdated ERES TU. All in all, not bad, but not nearly as strong as the NE corner.

Overall, HIDDEN GEM didn't quite resonate with me as a theme rationale here. The circled letters aren't really hiding anything at all, TOPAZ et al. popping right out. That'll play well with some solvers wanting a more straightforward puzzle, but I like having to work harder to get an a-ha moment at the end of a puzzle. I did appreciate that the large quantity of interesting mid-to-long fill helped keep my attention, though.

– puzzle by John R. O'Brien

Fictional swear words = an amusing crossword idea. I knew SHAZBOT right off the top, and that was super fun to plunk in. And having watched every episode of M * A * S * H, I knew HORSE PUCKEY too! Er, HORSE HOCKEY. Dang it. Er, DAGNABIT!

I did find DAGNABIT to be "one of these things is not like the others" though, as I hear it in normal use — not all the time, but it does come up. Not knowing who Deputy Dawg was, I wondered if the word originated from him. But it appears to be a variant of "goddammit." Huh. Dammit.

I was surprised that I needed every cross to get JEEZALOO — given that I've seen every episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond." Huh. I seem to have wasted much of my life, dagnabit. At least I've never seen an episode of "Spongebob"! Although, OH BARNACLES sure didn't come easy. Double dagnabit.

Loved the bonus of RUMOR HAS IT … and SNAPCHAT / OIL HEATERS were pretty good too. With five themers, Tracy could have skated by with just a pair of bonus entries or two, so the extra effort was appreciated. A bit of SYCAMORE, RHOMBI, MENTHOL, and GASBAGS helped keep my attention through the solve.

Nice, clean grid. If a bit of AZO is all you end up with, you can be proud of yourself. ON HIRE was a bit weird — not sure why I love quaint British terms like "lorry" and "anti-clockwise" but not ON HIRE … gor!

LOVED the clue for GIRL, referencing Mo'ne Davis, the Little League star. Able to pitch a 70 mph fastball at age 13? Damn, GIRL! (I once tried at one of those carnival "how fast can you pitch" stations. Ahem … barely broke 50 mph. As a 20-year old. Triple dagnabbit.)

I'm shazbotting glad I don't have a censor today.

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

Debut! Loved the rationale of A LITTLE BIRDIE leading to rebusized birds. I also liked that Hal picked four birds, each with four letters — something satisfying about the symmetry.

I got IN (CROW)D / (CROW)N ROYAL quickly — great corner. Not only were both rebusized phrases strong, but the bird was an easily recognizable one. And the rest of the corner was executed nice and smoothly. If you can fill a rebus corner and with only a TRE as a minor ding, that's an excellent result.

I found the other three corners to be really hard, especially since they played like three separate mini-puzzles. The layout is constructor-friendly — note that there are only two words that let you get in/out of the NW, for example. This makes it SO much easier to section off and fill a grid piece by piece … but it also leads to solvers possibly getting dead-ended in small places. Not very satisfying.

That NW ... although I'm an avid comic book fan, I couldn't place the name ULTRON. And having tried HERB and NAME for [Rosemary, e.g.], the gears ground to a halt for five unsettling minutes. Thankfully the SAPPHO I (was supposed to have) read in college finally broke things open.

Then the SW ... the TE in T. E. LAWRENCE ( the inspiration for "Lawrence of Arabia") also made me sweat. After having been frustratingly stuck for another five minutes in this tiny space, I waffled on P?S. Maybe I follow basketball too closely and count Personal Fouls. Point Guards are on scoreboards too!

Oh, I wish TERN hadn't been the last bird. To me, it's one of those TERN / ERNE / ERN birds I learned from crosswords; a bit too insidery for my taste. A DODO or a SWAN would have been my preference. ASWAN DAM, anyone?

Overall, though, some nice gridwork, especially considering it's a debut. And loved the intersection of HELLENIC / AGAMEMNON, LOOPHOLE — excellent choices for bonus fill. With just a bit of IZE, THO, PTS, it's clear that Hal put some time and iteration into this grid.

– puzzle by Hal Moore

Classic themeless grid layout, a triple-stack of long answers in each corner. I like how John pushed it, though. Very nice to get four additional long slots worked in — 16 long slots give you so much potential for a huge quantity of great entries.

The SE corner resonated with me, Jill and me an INTERRACIAL couple in a STARTER HOME. I asked Jim Horne the other day what he thought made for a great themeless, and his thoughtful reply was: needs a little something strong for everyone. I'm sure INTERRACIAL won't do much for other solvers, and it might even offend. Good thing there are other parts of the puzzle!

I liked that John worked in a good range of entries, from NAVEL GAZES for the introspective, to a TITLE FIGHT for boxing fans, from the OPEN BORDERS of much of the European Union to the ECOSYSTEMS a hiker might pass through as he/she ROUGHS IT.

That last answer brought a smile to my face, knowing that John and Mike Hawkins are hiking buddies. I feel privileged to have made contact with so many constructors, and seeing little flashes of their personality in a puzzle makes me appreciate it that much more.

So many of John's long entries worked well, although I didn't care for LIEGEMAN or PIMIENTO. (Mostly because PIMIENTOs are disgusting.) Not surprising to see that these particular long slots were the ones to sing the least for me, given that they 1.) run through a triple-stack each, and 2.) intersect each other. The more constraints, the harder to make your long entries sing.

A pretty clean grid, with one notable exception: DOGY. This is personal preference of course, but any time the dread "variant" tag is required = no bueno. I tend to gloss over a handful of minor RES, MOC, ETH, ELL crossword glue. Hard for me not to dwell on a DOGY; nice to see John equally thumbs-down now that he knows it is a variant.

Loved the clue for Mary SHELLEY, who wrote "Frankenstein." Created a monster, indeed!

Some strong entries, and mostly minor glue to hold everything all together.

– puzzle by John Guzzetta