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Paired literalisms, a solid phrase describing a word spread out within another solid phrase. Some neat finds, especially FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES cluing MATES, which is contained within MOUNTAIN STATES.

GET BACK IN SHAPE is so apt for a New Year's Day puzzle. RECTANGULAR PRISM … it's definitely a shape, but it's more a dictionary definition than a colorful entry. Give this math nerd a KLEIN BOTTLE or HYPERCUBE any day! Still, given the constraints of the theme, it's incredible to find the word RECLAIM spread out within any shape, period.

Seven themers are tough to grid around. Eight is not for the faint of heart. Strong craftsmanship, threading several quality bonuses like ESTROGEN, POUR IT ON, and POSES NUDE, through three themers. It's so much easier to squeeze a full glass of juice out of a long Down that goes through only two themers: COLLABORATE is a nod to the rare triple-constructor occurrence, and ITS NO BIGGIE is my favorite entry in the entire grid.

I'll probably hear from astronomers lobbying for ENCELADUS as the best entry, but this sixth-largest moon of Saturn demonstrates the difficulty of working through three themers.

As much as I admire the overall quality of the themer pair discoveries, it wasn't enough to hold my attention over an entire 21x21. Jumping from the bottom half to the top four times chopped up my solve as well.

I would have adored this puzzle if it had used only the first phrases (the ones with embedded circles) in the grid, with the second halves as clues. Several of the ones the guys mentioned are awesome; super creative! And given that the X IN Y pattern is so broad, there surely have to be even more.

– puzzle by Adam Wagner, Michael Lieberman and Rafael Musa

I stared at the revealer for an embarrassingly long time, wondering why the theme entries had not one but two sets of BUs. Sure, B U are homophones for BE and YOU, but you be damned if there's no rationale to explain … wait … 2 explain! IT HAD 2 B U is a clever reinterpretation of IT HAD TO BE YOU.

There's a fine line between stupid and clever: Jeff the former, Seth the latter.

Seth used a layout that features many more 6-letter slots than usual. Check out the sheer quantity of colorful mid-length material like BOOMER, ESPRIT, ORCHID, SAFARI, TAURUS, TURBAN. Getting WARMER to a snazzy solve!

I would have loved at least a pair of long bonuses, though. Moving the blocks above BABKA to the right would have opened up an eight-letter slot, for example. That might have resulted in lesser fill in the SAFARI and BIG IF slots, but a pair of 8+ letter bonuses offers so much pizzazz.

You could even experiment with removing the black square between NOEL and NIGER to weave in a 10-letter bonus. It would have to go through three themers, but the letter combinations are friendly.

Hilarious ATE clue … now that my daughter has moved past the phase of telling the "seven ate nine" joke 789 times an hour.

I enjoy when a Monday theme offers up something more than usual. Hopefully, newb solvers will jump to the 2 BU conclusion more quickly than I did.

– puzzle by Seth Bisen-Hersh

It's been over ten years since I exited my startup, and I've begun to itch for entrepreneurial action. MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS epitomizes the startup mentality, smashing through norms, creating new paradigms … as well as tweaking your sanity through ridiculous hours and stress.

Maybe I'll wait another year or two.

I enjoyed the novelty of a "breaking" theme using a broken revealer. I appreciated that placing the first halfway up top didn't give away the game, making me wait until the very end.

Will Shortz usually shies away from this type of repeated-circles theme, because once you fill in one set, the rest fall immediately into place — as does the theme concept. Still, Maggie chose three solid phrases that didn't repeat the TH___ word. There are other options for TH*ING, but many of them would have created a repeat with THE, or THAT'S.

I would have loved if the concept had been pushed as hard as a startup team pushes boundaries. Something like breaking up GIZMO and DOODAD in GLITZ AND GLAMOR and DOOMSDAY DEVICE, perhaps? The predictability of TH/ING in triplicate felt more like an established business than a nimble startup creating something jaw-dropping.

I wondered about the mini-theme, trying to figure out what "The Princess Diaries" had to do with startups. Reading Maggie's comments made me appreciate it, giving me a sense of her personality imbued into the grid. I'd love it if the NYT ran a short statement from each author next to their byline.

Not everything worked perfectly, but I appreciated the iconoclasm; Maggie breaking a crossword norm to aptly vibe with her theme.

– puzzle by Margaret Seikel

★ There's a reason Will Shortz listed Joanne Sullivan's LAND FORMS puzzle as one of his favorites in an old collection. Each shape looks exactly like you might imagine, and there's so much variety. Will might consider today's puzzle if he assembled a sequel to that 2011 book. The astronomer in me stared into the night sky of today's grid for hours.

I especially loved ASTEROID in its spotted pattern. Took me a minute to figure out why that was appropriate, but once I remembered their porosity, it made all the sense in the universe.

ASTEROID was doubly impressive, given how hard it can be to fill around fixed circles in diagonal patterns. Working with eight of them in a checkerboard is like trying to dodge a doomsday meteor strike. Smart to isolate this into a corner, where you can shift the entire thing to the left or downward without having it affect the rest of the grid. Such a smooth result, with an OREO THIN treat to boot.

COMET on the opposite side is also tough to grid around, but EPEES, ERAT, NEMEA isn't worthy of an ARG! shout. It's all worth the price of BIG DUMMY, for this big dummy, at least.

I would have loved a spiral GALAXY instead of a circular one. That's too much to ask out of six letters, but maybe two arms out of SPIRAL and GALAXY? Alternatively, an ellipse could have been more evocative.

Puzzles that strike me with their visual awe come around roughly as frequently as Halley's COMET. Stellar debut!

– puzzle by Laura Breiman and Tom Bachant

Dozens of people have approached me with various PLAY concepts: double play, Coldplay, underplay, overplay, play money, play by the book — so many plays on words! Hey, plays on words = crossword radar pinging …

Great rebus rationale today, the sportsball term SQUEEZE PLAY interpreted as "squeeze a play into a single square."

Wait. Are these plays? Or musicals? Are musicals plays? Of course, they can be, Jeff! Who are you to play God? Bringing musicals into play is fair play.

Note to self: is there a play about a World's Fair?

T(HAI R)ESTAURANT is a textbook rebus themer. No splitting hairs about splitting HAIR across the two words of the phrase, hiding that strand in your pad see ew.

Eew.

CURB YOU(R ENT)HUSIASM is solid, too. RENT is broken across two words, and Larry David and JB Smoove still make me laugh after all these years. Will Shortz would often ding a rebus themer like this because CURB doesn't contain any of the rebus entries, but that doesn't matter to all editors.

EVITA in LEVITATE / INEVITABLE isn't as strong since it doesn't span two words. Perhaps a dose of the SUNSHIN(E VITA)MIN could have helped. CATS across CAT SCAN is better, but it's not as surprising as the others, and shorties get lost in the shuffle. Something like WILD(CAT S)TRIKE would have struck thunderous applause.

Solid rebus overall, though, with some great finds and not many short fill missed cues.

– puzzle by Emily Carroll

I love dogs. My next-door neighbors' pooch is one of my best friends — especially since I don't have to pick up her poop — and I'm an unabashedly huge fan of Tucker Budzyn. I'd totally get some FUR BABIES if I didn't already have two snot babies.

This flu / RSV season is killing me.

Everyone take note that when the NBA brings back the Sonics through expansion, COURTSIDE SEATs would be an ideal "big ticket item" for your ol' pal Jeff. That level of clever wordplay alone was worth the price of admission.

I wasn't familiar with JUDITH HEUMANN. Thankfully, my guess of NEUMANN made me ASHEN when ASDEN didn't make sense. I enjoyed reading about her; a TREASURE TROVE of accomplishments. She's genuinely an EYE OPENER — I'm putting her book on my TBR pile.

Stairstack grids are commonplace these days, but they can push their boundaries with long entries threaded through their middle triplet. EPIDURAL isn't a multi-word entry that editors tend to prize, but that clue — "labor relief," indeed!

I'd be curious to see what happens when you take out the black square between EASE and VIET. I'm sure it wouldn't be the epitome of EASE, but with a standard pattern like a stair stack, I love seeing how far constructors can push themselves.

NATATORIA isn't in my everyday language, but it's so constructor-friendly. That perfect consonant-vowel allows for it to be worked in swimmingly.

All in all, a solid amount of color and not much gluey short fill to ding.

– puzzle by Erica Hsiung Wojcik

A themeless rarely contains a handful of entries that weren't already on our XWord Info Word List. Adam went big today, with a whopping seven that Jim Horne and I hadn't already considered! DID YOU HEAR is the standout — hardly an entry for the sheeple.

You'd think that I would have figured out MEEPLE more quickly. Some even look like tiny STAND-UP GUYs. You know it's a Saturday when you don't even get a "in slang" tag to help you.

More Saturdayness: ITALIAN LIT is eco-centric? Even with the telltale question mark, I made wild hypotheses about forward-thinking Genoans from long ago, writing about saving the Earth. Nope, that's Eco, as in Umberto ECO, a favorite of crossword constructors everywhere. Enjoyable insidery nod.

THESE PARTS didn't come quickly. I debated if I liked it or not — does it sound like a partial without "around" or "in"? — but around these parts, I decided that it's solid(ish) enough for THE U and me.

I enjoy BAKED CLAMS every once in a while, although I'm all about quantity per unit price when Jill and I have date night. If that single BAKED CLAM costs 99 cents or less, I might consider it.

68-word themelesses are rarely easy to fill, but Adam packed in a lot of pizzazz with only resorting to a bit of SMEE and SNO. The opening corner was especially colorful; a colloquial GOSH DARN IT (only bettered by "consarn it!") / OUT OF TOUCH / ON A PLATTER. Themelesses are ultra-competitive these days, but a stack like this gets your foot in the door.

I'd have loved more devilish wordplay in a Saturday solve, but getting few spots of [Go green, perhaps?] for ROT was a good start.

– puzzle by Adam Aaronson

Solvers, take a letter! Take ten of them, in fact; each one a part of a phonetic chain that completes a phrase. Sounds good?

I C, U need an example. [Presses CTRL+P + ___ + Easter egg coloring] might seem like cryptic-rebus shenanigans, but it translates into PRINTS + S + DYE = PRINCESS DI. With some phonetic liberties.

The star of the show was [Rug rat + Magic stick + ___], because it broke TAE KWON DO so unexpectedly. It's easy to connect AWL + AXE + S = ALL ACCESS; much more difficult and interesting to link TYKE + WAND + O into the martial art.

It would have been great for electronic solvers to have someplace to write the missing letters. Where, though? Having SOUNDS GOOD as the final answer would have been overkill, but it's better than leaving the door open for solvers to ignore the meta answer or get annoyed by having to assemble it mentally.

The print version had a chance to shine over its 21st-century counterpart. Where can you write in the letters? In the blanks within the clues! However, the pdf is formatted so that column one of the clues produces SOUND and column two gives SGOOD. With a slight shift, having SOUNDS (all in column one) / GOOD (all in column two) would have been so much more elegant.

Although there weren't as many fist-pumpingly awesome breaks like TYKE WAND O, I enjoyed experiencing different; not simply yet another tried-and-true theme type. The novelty alone gets much more an A than an eh?

– puzzle by Wyna Liu

Last night, I LACKED CONFIDENCE as I attempted to get my kids to eat something besides MAC AND CHEESE, so I put on some AC/DC. "Back in Black" pumped me up when I was a kid (for mathletic competitions, but whatever), so maybe it'd make for PEACHES AND CREAM all night long?

I should have TRACKED CHANGES in my list before Big Balls started playing.

Neat to include BACKGROUND CHECK; a sly nod to BACK IN BLACK fans. A shame that black-clad Batman hasn't done a BACK IN DC BLACK spoof album yet. He does a lot of dirty deeds. Dirt cheap.

I appreciated that SACRED COW led things off since CRACK / BACK / JACK would have felt too rhyme-y.

I failed at "Name That Theme" today, but in the best way possible. I couldn't see AC and DC while solving, and when I hit ACDC, I was thunderstruck. Great decision not to circle the letters (sorry, ACME!).

Consistency is usually a blessing, but I was distracted by always having AC in the first word, and DC split across the phrase. It turns out that it's impossible to do otherwise — what words are going to start with DC, except DC COMICS, DC UNITED, etc.? I'd almost rather have A C D C spread out, like in ARCHDUCHESS, but that either requires telltale circles or makes this a mid-week solve, since it'd be much harder to find those letters.

Acme and Kevin need to popularize an AC/KC band! Think of all the theme entries containing consecutive *ACKC* …

I'm GELID on having both COOL and COLD (and GELID in a Monday grid), but solid gridwork otherwise. I bet newb solvers won't get shot down in flames today.

– puzzle by Andrea Carla Michaels and Kevin Christian

Well, HELLO KITTY! How meta to use a cartoon character to tie together four others of the same ilk. All five are so gentle, too. I doubt I'd say HELLO KITTY to Aslan, Rajah, or Bagheera. Even less so for the Black Panther.

Is it strange to have ANTEATER as an Across bonus in a feline puzzle? Maybe, but I laughed at the New Yorker article Jim Horne linked to (below), and I watched a lot of the ANTEATER from the PINK PANTHER show as a kid.

Placing HELLO KITTY in the middle of the grid makes for a tough construction, given that all of Emily's other themers are long. There are so many Down entries that have to weave through two themers. Great work making the solve purr with MOP TOPS / IDIOTIC / MONSTER — that all deserves a treat!

The north and south sections are wider than usual since this is a 16x15 grid, and that extra column makes things tough. A TRAIN is usually fine, and A TASTE might even SCRAPE BY editors. Toss in A TREE, though, and it makes it all stick out.

Similar story for the old-timey PETARD, defunct IPHOTO, and ENOLA, clued as the WWII plane. A fresh clue related to Enola Holmes 2 would have helped.

I loved the YOYO clue. My daughter has lost everything from her HELLO KITTY lunchbox to her HELLO KITTY Tamagotchi. (O, the HELL I'm in.) Imagine losing a $2.5M cello! Great way to freshen up a clue for an average word. Same goes for MONSTER. Tess recently read Coraline. Thanks a lot for the sleepless nights, Neil frickin' Gaiman!

Companionable Tuesday puzzle. So unlike my wife's old cat, who once rubbed her butt on me as I slept.

– puzzle by Emily Rourke

I love making crossword sausage. There's so much blood and guts that solvers never see, words crammed into tight spaces, yanked back out and packed back in. The best sausages come out spicy and smooth, and Victor's was more Aidell's than Kroger's.

Stacking four LIEs under different OATHs isn't difficult when you can work with shorties like GOSH and friendly letters in EGAD, but putting in the revealer opens up a whole can of crossworms. Breaking up LIES / UNDER / OATH makes it so fragmented. I like that a revealer containing UNDER is under everything else, though.

I might have enjoyed something more cryptic: LIES tucked underneath OATH. Maybe that's too tricksy for some Wednesday solvers — the revealer cluing would have to be spot on — but how meta would that be!

Editors usually insist on a max word count of 78 for a 15x15, and that's not just an arbitrary number. Higher than that, and you tend to make sacrifices. Maybe it's colorful bonuses, maybe it's grid connectivity, maybe it's a start-and-stop solve filled with too many short entries. I don't mind Victor's decision to go to 80 words, but the solving feng shui suffered, the two long diagonals of black squares chopping things up.

I'd love to see if removing the block between SAC and ODE was possible. Tough call, though, since there are already some tough crossings like ELGAR / REL.

This type of "stacked literal themers" is more interesting when the words change, so having different OATHs was great. I would have loved a FIB, TALE, YARN worked in for variety, too.

– puzzle by Victor Barocas

Christmas is much simpler now that Tess figured out the truth about Santa. (And then told Jake after we expressly made her swear not to. Sigh.) The only stuffs I had to stock in their stockings were a few pages chock full of Beale cipher-level codes leading to their presents!

A morning full of frustration and confusion builds character.

Speaking of confusion, I was mystified by SAUCING FLYERS, because I thought STUFFING STOCKER was a real phrase. Even now, it seems fine to me, in that we used to stock stuff in their stockings … wait … bah!

Spoonerisms are well-worn in crosswords, so I enjoyed the added layer of always playing on ___ING ___ER phrases. A quick search didn't turn up nearly as many as I would have thought.

Why the ___ING ___ER pattern, though? I appreciate anything that helps a concept stand out from the vast sea of spoonerisms, but it's such a random form of tightening. Still, it ad-libbed better than a winging satyr. Er, singing waiter.

The MIME clue … isn't a MIME acting in (the box), not acting out? Is it because the MIME is often outside, bothering people with their creepiness? I suppose the question mark does cover the word "acting" …

Are there enough "good" MIMES to warrant AGENTRY?

I got a smile from some of the spoonerisms, and seeing something slightly different is always appreciated.

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

I love when Brad riffs — he always cracks me up. I wish all constructors would do something different with their notes, cracking the "I'm so excited to see my puzzle in print!" MIR RORing of each other's comments that make me want to whale with boredom, orca-ll it quits.

Life is all about expectations, and while I enjoy a mini-theme on Fridays, a maxi makes me ROR QUAL dommage! I missed my usual quantity of colorful long entries — not enough IN DUE TIME, NEAT IDEA material — but I enjoyed so many of the unlucky events. Breaking a MIR ROR is what I was hoping for out of an earlier puzzle!

RORQUAL ... not easy to work with ROR starting letters. EMIR / RORSCHACH would have been ideal.

WALKS under a LADDER was the last to fall, given that I wasn't familiar with the slithery SEAL ADDER.

Fine, no more marine humor today.

Great idea to place FRIDAY at 13-Down. The clue didn't land, though — as written, it hints at FRIDAY 13. A more indirect clue would have been better, letting solvers figure out the connection themselves.

I still feel cheated out of my Friday themeless, but if you're going to deprive me of that, this isn't salt in the wound. Quick, throw that SA LT spilled in the upper right corner off the grid!

– puzzle by Brad Wiegmann

★ This kind of themeless typically locks all the long answers together, creating severe inflexibility. David did something brilliant: the black squares between MASCARA / OFFSETS and SEVILLE / NAPSTER make all the difference in the world, allowing much more flexibility in filling the sides of the puzzle.

Themelesses featuring a slew of long entries live and die with those long entries. All six of David's are dynamite, and the fact that they're all ripe for clever cluing elevates them even further. I can't decide whether I enjoyed WHATCHAMACALLIT more or the head-scratching [Word when you can't find the word]. (Mine usually is "consarnit.")

I fell in love with [Dated TV star?] for THE BACHELORETTE. Consarnit, I imagine there were some SLEEPLESS NIGHTS coming up with such a devious clue! Probably some on THE BACHELORETTE, too, but for different reasons …

I was also impressed by the cluing for the short entries, helping them pop. [Places with multiple outlets] so innocently drew me to electrical outlets, so I put in WALLS instead of MALLS. I'd already been stymied by WHATCHAMACALLIT words, and [Words to remember, for short] continued to confound. That's VOCAB lists to remember!

Any themeless of this audacious style will require a bit of Elmer's to hold the long stuff together. AGS is awkward, LAH a partial, and NEC isn't as huge here as in Japan. All minor, thankfully. The only one that held me up was KORS, last used in the NYT way back in 1972, as [Hebrew measures]. Thankfully Michael KORS came along!

Sizzling long entries and snappy cluing in an innovative design? I would never have guessed that this was someone's second puzzle.

– puzzle by David Karp

Some great finds! These can be discovered programmatically — assemble a list of book titles, write some code, sit for a few days while your computer chugs away — but, amazingly, Michael found so many pairs of books that 1.) nest one inside the other, and 2.) are similar enough that a single clue could describe both of them.

HEIDI and THE WIND AND THE WILLOWS both fit the clue so aptly! Incredible that such specifics as "children's classic" and "country dwellers' friendships" are spot-on.

HATCHET is a classic of middle-grade lit. Gripping survival story that I highly recommend. The clue is a bit stretchy to encompass both books, but it mostly works.

There's something so impressive about a long title like OTHELLO inside FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. However, when you have to broaden a clue like describing OTHELLO in "Southern Europe" … that's not as impressive.

Nor is describing DUNE so generically — how many millions of books are about family and free will?

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT didn't work for me. That would have been a perfect revealer if you could find something like LOVE or MORTALITY within FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, or EGOTISM or ALIENATION in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. That can also be done programmatically, but it's a much broader search space that might make your computer beg for mercy.

Is there a better revealer? Or do you even need one? A title like Two-for-one Special of Story Within a Story could have been excellent.

While there were some character development issues, I loved the novel-ty of this concept.

Ow, stop sticking me with those sharp plot points!

– puzzle by Michael Schlossberg

LETTER … STAMP … ADDRESS … the winner of "Name That Theme" today? The ENVELOPE, please …

Michael!

*Jeff sitting down in embarrassment*

Winning revealer in MAIL IT IN, helping to elevate this theme from the first and second times it was done in the NYT crossword.

While not an innovative or fresh take, it does provide a great example of how this type of theme can work. LOWERCASE LETTER and a written letter have similarities, but they're different enough to opacify what's going on. TERM OF ADDRESS is even better since addressing someone verbally is far away from the written address on an ENVELOPE. Newbs who haven't seen this concept before could get a nice a-ha.

It would have been great to keep MAIL / IT IN together, placing it at the bottom of the puzzle. Perhaps it could have been elongated to MAILING IT IN to match RUBBER STAMP.

No long bonus fill, but this Godzilla enthusiast enjoyed uncovering MOTHRA's attack on the upper right corner. GO AHEAD, make Godzilla's day! TIKTOK, ART DECO, and ARABIAN nights helped spice things up a bit, too.

AMOI AMAT is fill that should not have been STETted. TIKTOK is fun, but it's not that fun. Said the 51-year-old who still resists joining Instagram.

Although there were some execution problems, I still enjoyed some of the bonuses and especially the fun revealer helping to create some distinction from the prior art.

– puzzle by Michael Paleos

Such a fresh concept! "Words for DAY in different languages" is novel enough to be noticeable, and the wordplay in LET'S CALL IT A DAY makes this one memorable. Red-letter DAY for Erika!

There's something about DAGNABBIT that makes it so much fun to say. Great themer selection.

TAGS ALONG is better than a lot of "add-a-preposition" phrases.

DENTIST works, although editors tend to pooh-pooh single-word themers.

DIAMOND WEDDING is a valid term — in British English, at least. I don't know that I'd call it themer-worthy, since DIAMOND anniversary is so much more common here. Perhaps DIAMOND JUBILEE would have sparkled more.

While the shaded squares did their job, it would have been more elegant to use theme phrases that isolated the foreign words; entries like TAG YOU'RE IT, DEN OF THIEVES, DAG HAMMARSKJOLD. Entries like these can add so much color, too, especially for us weirdly obsessed with the United Nations.

I enjoyed all the snazzy bonuses in the fill. TESLA COIL is an amusing way to think of the mess Elon Musk has made with Twitter. Talk about SHADINESS.

Although NOT ONE IOTA is great fill, it sure confused me, wondering in which language NOT means DAY. Not one, as i-ota have known. That's a danger with such long Across fill, especially when it overshadows shorties like DENTIST.

I loved the theme concept. With some adjustments in execution, this could easily have been a POW! pick.

– puzzle by Erika Ettin

★ IT'S MY TREAT is right, because this is an amazing debut puzzle.

It all starts with a clever theme that goes one step beyond the "what connects these seemingly disparate entries" genre. PICK UP has enough meanings that it's not hard to come up with phrases that get at different ones. Elevating that to PICK-UP LINEs — with each themer being an in-the-language, spoken phrase — gives this concept pedal-to-the-medal pickup.

That would have been enough to get some POW! buzz, but consider the technical level of difficulty. 11s are easy to work with — you simply place them in rows 3 and 13. A triplet of awkward-length themers in the center is approaching triple double-levels of intensity. Given that they all force black square placements, you almost have to squish them together in rows 6, 8, and 10. And Lindsay stuck the landing, using strategic black square placement to separate enough between themers to fill well.

The upper left and lower right corners are so dangerous because you have to work through three themers. I imagine much iteration was involved to arrive at the clean results, even throwing in THE GOAT and HEY NOW to heighten the artistic score.

Some constructors would be so exhausted after that routine, that the other corners would be an afterthought. I say domo arigato to Lindsay — MR ROBOTO makes me a LOYAL FAN of hers.

I'm frond of the FROND joke, too. Great way to inject freshness into the clues.

Gold medal debut.

– puzzle by Lindsay McBride

Dan RUNs UP A TAB today, four themers turning up through the letters T A B. Several years ago, Will Shortz announced that he would drastically cut down the number of "turning puzzles" he'd accept, but ones with something a little extra still have a shot.

Elegant touch to choose themers whose post-TAB ends are real words. These are easy to find programmatically with a handful of coding lines and a few seconds of processing time, but it helps the concept shine.

Would it have been more or less impactful if the first part had been a real entry, too (like PAST in PASTA BARS, not like FIEST in FIESTA BOWL)? Coding is once again our friend, turning up themers like BETA BLOCKERS, LAMENTABLY, etc. There are merits to Dan's approach. Having the kooky FIEST alerts solvers to Thursday trickery, whereas experienced solvers might think that PAST looks fine in the grid, and they just don't grok the clue, so they move on. Making them all like that might have been neat, replacing PAST ABARS and WENT ABROAD with things like ATLANT ABRAVES or GOTT ABOUNCE.

Turning themers can be tough to grid around. Doubly-turning themers are more than twice as hard, since those middle regions become incredibly inflexible. Dan is such a pro, flashily working TOY PIANOS through that first region. Totally worth the price of AON, especially since "kinderklaviers" flipped me from an indignant "I have to know German?!" to an elated "of course I can figure this out!"

I'm fairly tired of turning puzzles, but I appreciate that Will has spaced them out so much, and I enjoyed Dan's smooth solve, full of color.

– puzzle by Daniel Bodily

Kicking off a themeless with a great clue provides such a lift. Like when they lift up a TARP to cover all the bases in a baseball diamond! I was pleased to get even more right off the bat, with a "bettor better know" the ODDS. The wordplay revved further up with NASCAR as an organization with a "strong track record." So groan-worthy!

Anyone else remember that "Gilligan's Island" episode where Gilligan accidentally changed SOS to SOL? Makes a lot of sense to form something simpler but still noticeable, like an X or a V. Neat trivia.

Neat crossing of HATE TO EAT AND RUN and CHOW MEIN. That's NOT A BAD IDEA at all.

I hadn't heard of YUVAL NOAH HARARI. Jim Horne has given me many great book recommendations over the years, so I'm adding "Sapiens" to my list.

Featuring a long name in a themeless can be tricky. I waffled on the HARARI / OBERON crossing, weighing HARATI / OBETON and HARALI / OBELON. I tend to psych myself out, trying to guess what Will Shortz would do. If it was OBERON, wouldn't Will use a Shakespeare? Or would he try to trick me by making me think that's what he would do?

Luckily, I've built up an immunity to iocaine powder.

Solid debut, with some outstanding cluing. [Part for a balding man?] made me laugh, as my (identical twin) brother is still clinging onto the last of his dwindling hairs.

– puzzle by Robert S. Greenfield

Standard "stair-stack" themeless layout, with the central triplet of SHABBAT SHALOM / PEOPLE WATCHES / NOT DOING SO HOT serving as a solid foundation. A close friend of mine is Jewish, so his crossword-crazy mom will love seeing that first entry today. PEOPLE WATCHES is already a great entry, and its clue makes it even better. That odd hyphen in "tourist-spots" — making it a verb — is brilliant.

And NOT DOING SO HOT is hardly not doing so hot, especially with the funny "on the struggle bus" clue. I've never used the term before, but I sure enjoyed digging into its origins. Do yourself a favor, and don't look up its definition on Urban Dictionary. I wonder if some troll is laughing at me right now.

The layout looked familiar, partially because so many themelesses these days get built on the "stair-stack" framework, but also because there's this anal website that makes it too easy to figure out topologically similar — or in this case, identical — grids. There's nothing wrong with copying someone else's layout, but I appreciate variety.

That's totally a first-world constructor problem. Much more important is how much pizzazz a themeless delivers, and David did well with so many strong long entries. TINSELTOWN is shiny, HALF SIBLING made me do a double take with the [Brother from another mother] clue, and BEST OF SEVEN is loaded with imagery for us basketball nuts.

– puzzle by David Distenfeld

Whenever I see a Sunday title with words like EASE, TEE, or WISE, I get worried. Will it be a simple letter addition? Letter deletion? Sound change or addition? It isn't easy to make a concept stand out these days using these tried-and-true ideas. Well done to Garrett, doing double dut-EE by adding the E sound to both words of a common phrase.

WHINY STORY was my winner, perhaps because I hear many whiny stories involving accusations that the other sibling started it. Neat transformation, too, the spelling change of WINE to WHINY making me work to uncover the base phrase, WINE STORE.

PHONY BOOKIE wasn't far behind, eliciting memories of the first time I watched The Sting. It suffered from being too similar to PHONE BOOK, just as POINTY OUTIE links directly to POINT OUT, and CRAFTY FAIRY is a CRAFT FAIR wearing a fake mustache.

Adding the E sound to both words of a phrase is difficult, so there are bound to be some themers that don't land as well as others.

Great INSTINCTS to focus bonus fill into the long Downs. IF YOU WISH, IT CAN'T HURT, and especially WILD GINGER are so spicy. Garrett Ys-ly did something to Es up on solvers, by making sure that his longest Across fill — the colorful LOG CABIN and STRAY DOG — are shorter than the themers.

These days, my radar is always up for entries that might rile up solvers with a "that's weird" reaction. I'm supportive of using any word with valid dictionary support — as long as the crosses are all unambiguous — but I can sympathize with those who get the FANTODS at something like Y'HEAR (think: ya hear?, shortened even further). Unfortunate to be neighbors.

I didn't get as many laughs as I wanted out of a sound addition puzzle, but the doubly double-E concept helped.

– puzzle by Garrett Chalfin

★ Brilliant fanfare for the common solver today, newbs treated to trumpeting wordplay. I've seen plenty of "disguised instruments" themes before, but nothing as clever as this. I can only imagine the horrible sounds generated by trying to blow into a TAPE RECORDER!

Amazing to find three objects that work so perfectly for this theme. I scoured my memories, flipping through 20 years of orchestras and band experience to find a single other wind instrument that would work. There are some non-wind instruments, like BELL or SNARE, but percussion instruments aren't blown.

Such great use of mirror symmetry, too — it's perfect for these situations when you can't pair your themers in length, but they're either all odd or even-lettered. Lengths of 12, 8, 14, 10? No problem!

Well, not exactly. Mirror symmetry does present different problems than regular symmetry. The trickiest part is often figuring out which rows your themers should inhabit. Note that TAPE RECORDER, SHOEHORN, and DON'T BLOW IT all force black square placements on their sides. Those black squares all have to play nicely together.

You need DON'T BLOW IT as the revealer in row 12, so that restricts your flexibility even further. Stacking TAPE RECORDER and SHOEHORN might seem showy, but with these lengths, stacking two themers is almost a requirement.

Additionally, mirror symmetry sometimes forces long Down bonuses instead of making them optional. Trying to break LOCAL DIVE at the second L causes a cascade of black square problems. Fantastic to end up with a grid that's both smooth and sparkly — LOCAL DIVE is so colorful.

Adrian far from blew it today, giving us a symphony of harmonious delights.

– puzzle by Adrian Johnson

What a shame that there isn't a famous person named JURGEN MAI CHAN. I'm such a fan of genmaicha's toasty notes that I tried to convince Will Shortz that the aforementioned person was a huge baking star in Taiwan.

That almost got us into hot water.

I'm here all week, folks!

Other editors are strict in avoiding long Across fill when all your themers are vertically oriented, so some would call CHEAP SHOT a cheap shot at solvers. Both viewpoints have merit, but in this case, where the circles make the themers stand out, I like having my tea spiced up.

I enjoyed helping Aaron get this one across the finish line. His original submission contained MINT and CHAI, so it was an engaging process of trying to uncover longer options. I TL;DR most everything these days — ironic that the expanded phrase would be so useful.

– puzzle by Aaron M. Rosenberg and Jeff Chen

My annual FANTASY basketball DRAFT is the day I most eagerly await — but also dread. If my co-manager and I bid up salaries for the right players, we're in for five months of fist-pumping glory, celebrating with STAR PITCHERS of ale. This year's results are still in progress, but at least we're not drowning ourselves in PENALTY SHOTS like we did five years ago, when we tried to participate in the draft while simultaneously taking care of naptime, feeding, and poop issues (of our kids, not our own). "Make mine a (triple) DOUBLE" was painfully appropriate.

This puzzle was so meant for me!

Neat that Nancy was able to find four sports terms that could also be applied to sports bars. FANTASY DRAFTS is such a great choice to headline the puzzle.

It would have been great to get more specific with the themer clues. How about FANTASY DRAFT as a sports bar purchase … that Severus Snape might make at the Leaky Cauldron? (Because he's the potions professor at Hogwarts, duh.) PENALTY SHOTS could be slugs of tequila pounded for rooting against the home team?

Okay, maybe this is all too much of a stretch, but something along these lines would have goosed up the playfulness factor.

Fantastic clue for LISZT. Why go with something so boring as [Hungarian composer Franz] when you can obfuscate by pointing to his music being featured in "Tom and Jerry"? Another clever bit of wordplay in [Sugarcoated, in a way] — that's a literal way, with ICED cookies.

Solid gridwork, not the easiest task with themers of the awkward lengths of 12 and 13. And in a debut! More fantastical themer cluing, and I would have called for a round of STAR PITCHERS.

– puzzle by Nancy Serrano-Wu

This puzzle grew on me.

Wait, stay before FORMing your opinion! You might think what I say is SWELL.

Is anyone else getting SWEaty?

Such an innovative rebus concept, one I've never quite seen before. SNOWBALL EFFECT is a perfect revealer to describe G GR GRO GROW, F FO FOR FORM, and S SW SWE SWEL SWELL. Note that GROW, FORM, and SWELL are synonyms for SNOWBALL — swell concept indeed!

Wise choice to separate the three rebus sequences as much as possible. The five-step SWELL is particularly challenging, so sectioning it so only the middle three rebus squares have to interact with each other is excellent construction strategy.

(There's even a TL;DR way to create a dummy grid to fill the south region totally on its own. I tested it to see if I could improve on ETE TYR and the SWEATY / SWELTER similarity, but the best I could do was SWAZI / SWEDES / SWELTER with ADT ZEE ISR crossings.)

That sectioning made the solving process extremely difficult, though. Even after uncovering SNOWBALL EFFECT, I was stuck in the NW and NE corners and even more so in the south region. My frustration eventually turned to awe, but I imagine the rebus-haters out there — and there are a lot — might create a snowball effect in our mailbox today.

While this was several standard deviations harder than an average Thursday, I love the incredible creativity.

– puzzle by Dan Ziring and Quiara Vasquez

The first time I saw stacked, paired grid-spannners in a themeless, I was blown away. Relating it to a "daily double" made it that much more clever. That was over a decade ago, and it's still at the forefront of my mind.

I enjoyed Joe's doublets today, although featuring a movie from the year of that groundbreaking themeless and an album from fifteen years before that took away some shine. JAGGED LITTLE PILL is certainly crossworthy, given that it sold 30+ million copies and was made into a musical, but it would have made more of an impact if this puzzle had coincided with some notable anniversary.

I'm curious who will play Elon Musk in a Twitter movie that's sure to be upcoming. I was blown away by both Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield's performances in THE SOCIAL NETWORK. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE was solid, but I kept wondering when he was going to break into SexyBack.

Wonder how you might find doublets? Free association like "movie title" plus "lead actor in said movie" is difficult unless you go to the trouble of creating a dictionary of matched pairs — a ton of work considering how many thousands of movies there are.

There is a way to find, say, 30-letter entries that can break 15 / 15. OneLook is inconsistent about how it counts spaces, so select sort "by length" in the options and hit OneLook search again. This sorts by "crossword length," i.e., spaces don't count. You'll find entries like

• ABSENCE MAKES THE / HEART GROW FONDER
• JACK OF ALL TRADES / AND MASTER OF NONE
• VICE PRESIDENT OF / THE UNITED STATES
• YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR / CAKE AND EAT IT TOO.

Filling around paired stacks is rarely easy. Solid work, Joe, sprinkling some NBA JAM and CREAM ALE around to add some color.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney