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Jobs "framing" themers, split so they appear at the beginning and end of the phrase. Nice finds with ACTUARY framing ANIMAL SANCTUARY and BARBER framing BARBARA BOXER. It's cool to see these longish professions at the ends of these in-the-language phrases.

I always admire C.C.'s inclusion of colorful long fill, and I'm impressed at how many modern entries she chooses. I'm not sure that AMAZON ECHO will last — will it go the way of the AMAZON FIRE phone? — but in Seattle, we hear a lot about what Amazon (and Microsoft and Google) are up to.

WTA TOUR (Women's Tennis Association) isn't as modern, but what a great entry that highlights women's tennis. Serena is such an incredible athlete. SILLY GOOSE isn't modern at all, but it's a fun entry that added to my solve.

At first I thought the shorter professions like MAID and COOK weren't as interesting because the MA___ID or CO___OK patterns are easy to fill. To my surprise, I couldn't find that many on first glance. So kudos for these finds.

Some of the themers felt forced though — PLATE NUMBER and PRIOR ARREST in particular. I see that these are real terms, but they don't feel nearly as zippy as CLEAN AND JERK or MAIL FRAUD. People more write down a "license plate" and talk about "priors," right? I can see a case for PRIOR ARREST, but "he has one prior" seems much more colorful than "he has one prior arrest."

Would have been nice to get a few modern professions, too. Maybe a CODER? A QUANT?

Pretty clean puzzle, although I would like to see C.C. continue to reduce her number of gluey bits like BAR OF, I LET, AS I. REMS and GEDS are pretty awkward plurals too. It's so tough create a super-smooth Sunday 140-word puzzle.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

★ As I solved, I picked up the theme pretty quickly from PADDED and MIRACLE, and I confirmed it upon hitting PUSH UP. I was expecting a ho-hum BRA to be tucked in as a revealer somewhere, so what a pleasure to uncover the great punchline — I laughed out loud when I hit BOOBY TRAP. This is a puzzle where the theme alone (from two female authors) makes it an easy puzzle of the week choice for me.

I'd normally go into detail about how Loren and Acme could have incorporated more long fill as colorful as ODDSMAKER and avoided gluey bits like A STAR and SYM. But the laugh I got outweighed all those little details, so I'm not going to go into depth in analyzing the nits today. Such a fun and amusing crossword, exactly what I want out of my five minutes on a Monday.

It might have been a little icky if a male constructor(s) had made this one, but knowing both Loren and Acme (and really enjoying their senses of humor) made it even better. Great smile on my face after solving.

– puzzle by Loren Muse Smith and Andrea Carla Michaels

A totally gonzo puzzle today, a crossword meant to evoke a KENKEN. It's been a while since I did a KENKEN puzzle, but it was fun to see the idea worked right into the grid numbers. For example, there's a tiny division sign next to the number "2" (look very carefully at the grid below), and that means that TWO (in shaded squares) divided by ONE (also in shaded squares) equals that number "2." Similarly, the multiplication sign by the number "42" in the grid means that the SIX times the SEVEN in shaded squares equals that 42.

Whoo, that was hard to explain. Anyway, a creative use of the numbering seen in all crossword grids.

Even though there are numerous ways to link ONE and TWO in the grid, it's so tough to get them into an arrangement that makes for clean filling. I don't particularly care to see NAZI in any crosswords I do (others disagree, saying that it's fine if clued in historical context or referring to various recent movies), and I was glad for my high school French to recall ONZE as 11.

The constraints get even tougher when you're looking at arranging THREE and EIGHT in a link-up. Oof, that STS over PHU over REE is a pretty gluey result.

It's very unusual to see so many gluey entries in any Fagliano or BEQ grid, but it's understandable given how enormously difficult this idea is to execute on. It's too bad that "crazy ideas week" is over — seems like this one would have fit right in.

I'm not sure it accurately represents the feel of a KENKEN, but I do like the innovation here. Can't say that I've ever seen mathematical symbols next to digits in a grid!

– puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley and Joel Fagliano

I had to read the notepad a few times to figure out what was going on: GAME is hidden within four themers, and four short entries — BALL, VIDEO, BOARD, and CARD — can precede that hidden GAME. Whew!

Normally I'm not a huge fan of one-word themers, but I like Ruth's inclusion of both GILGAMESH and AGAMEMNON. Two epic heroes in symmetrical locations, both hiding GAME = a lot of fun for this fan of the classics. Okay, I skimmed the Epic of Gilgamesh during undergrad. Okay, I only read the first page. But I've come to appreciate how broadly that tale has affected storytelling throughout the ages.

Four long themers + four short ones = a lot of material to pack into a grid. Ruth does a pretty good job of working with all those constraints. I enjoyed the NE, with DOWN UNDER running through VIDEO and MAKING AMENDS, and just DE LA as a minor blight. It's too bad ICE AGE and ACORN weren't cross-referenced — the beginning of ICE AGE (the movie) was so funny, with the prehistoric squirrel questing for his ACORN.

The NW: it gets tough to fill when you place BALL over GILGAMESH with not much space in between. OLIO (the mish-mash, not OLEO, the margarine) is one of those unfortunate old-timey gluey bits that many constructors strive to avoid. I don't mind BOGGS and LILLE, two toughish proper nouns, but everything together might draw some complaints from solvers. To me it's just the OLIO that sticks out, and what else can you do when you fix BALL and GILGAMESH in place?

Well, maybe different options for BALL would have avoided that. There are a ton of "___ GAME" phrases, yeah?

For a "word that can precede X" type theme, I really want some new twist, something that differentiates it from the theme type many editors are no longer accepting. I like the idea here; there's no doubt it is innovative. It sure would have been nice though, to work some revealer into the grid that avoided the tortuous notepad explanation.

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

I always enjoy hearing Sam's voice come through in his puzzles. Today brings us such nice colloquial clues: ["I'm right here, you know"] for AHEM and ["Am I the only one …"] for IS IT ME. Also great to get OH FUN, something I can imagine Sam saying.

Onto the puzzle! Sam interprets HIGHER POWER as "phrases containing NTH; those three letters get raised above the answer." The bizarre-looking ALLIEFAMILY is actually ALL IN THE FAMILY, with the answer turning up, heading right, jogging back SW, and finishing out. Some nice themers, with ELEVENTH HOUR and EVENT HORIZON both strong.

(Minor ding for NTH and ELEVENTH being too similar for my taste.)

Pretty good execution considering the difficulties of filling around those themers. When you fold answers up like this, it creates many constraints in the crossings. The area around ELEVENTH HOUR is actually quite good, with the snappy PEA SHOOTER (I do like NEW SHOOTER as well) and CRIES UNCLE worked in there. Including those parallel long downs makes that region even tougher to fill cleanly and zestily, so only a NEG and an ATCO (and the arbitrary-ish AGE ONE) is a win.

The areas around the other two themers didn't come out quite as well, with the odd ENISLE up top and STOL (short take-off and landing) down below. Still, that's not bad considering how tough it is to work with these folded types of answers.

Some great clues:

• The TENTHS column is indeed beside the (decimal) point! Gold star for this one.
• [Beast of Borden] is ELSIE, Borden's "spokescow."
• FLAGs get waved at the Olympics, but EPEEs do as well. Nice deception.

I did like seeing those NTHs raised one row, but I didn't quite buy HIGHER POWER as a solid rationale for the serpentine path each themer took. I'm probably taking it too literally, but to me, HIGHER POWER might have been NTH sitting on top of SQUARE and CUBE — powers of two and three — or FIRE, WILL, SOLAR and other different types of powers. It was fun to scratch my head as I tried to figure out the trick, though.

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson

Solid themeless from Ian. Fun to see GDP (gross domestic product), as I imagine Ian is taking macroeconomics right about now in business school.

Ian does well to convert nearly all of his long (8+ letter) slots into assets. (He's probably taking accounting right now, too.) The LEGO MOVIE was surprisingly entertaining, WORK VISA is an issue many tech companies struggle with today, and there are SO many nice casual phrases in IM UP FOR WHATEVER, NO BIG DEAL, THAT SAID, FALSE ALARM, and SAME HERE. Reminds me of Ian's easy-going approach to life.

There was only one long slot that I thought could be neutral, TELEGRAPH, but a very nice clue turns that into an asset for me. [Dotted line?] is a bit of a stretch in relation to dots and dashes sent by telegraph. I like the idea, though.

Good use of his 7-letter slots, too. BULWARK is an interesting word, and although I've never heard of PARONYM, it was fun to learn and something I might actually use. CAR BARN was also interesting to read up on, although it did seem less worthy of packing into my memory banks.

A trademark of Ian's puzzles is a very low number of gluey entries, and he delivers again today. Some might consider ORIEL esoteric, but it is a real term in architecture. IRES isn't commonly used, so I'd ding that. Aside from that though, just a minor DEC, AVES, and YSER is pretty solid.

The only real complaint I had was about the grid flow. A rule of thumb is that constructors should try to avoid grid layouts where a single extra black square would section off an area. Here, there are four places where that could happen — the R of ANGRY, the I of HINDLEG, the G of ARRAIGN, and the O of DOSED. As Ian mentions, this sort of layout does make a puzzle easier to construct, since each small area can be tackled one at a time — but it does provide for a more choked-off feel to the solve.

– puzzle by Ian Livengood

Stacking 11-letter answers is a tough task — there are so many crossings that must work out, and too often that results in some ugly piece of glue. Barry gives us one of the best stacked 11s from recent memory, with RADIO GALAXY (I used to love astronomy), ABRACADABRA, and ICE CUBE TRAY, with such clean crossings. Some might think YAYS is a bit iffy, but I tend to let pluralized sounds slide when it's common to hear them in multiples. I can imagine a crowd letting out a bunch of YAYS, yeah?

Okay, some might question OCULARS (a fancy term for "eyepiece"), but OCULARS are a big product for Olympus, which invested in my previous company (Acucela Inc.) so it's fine by me.

Loved USS NAUTILUS too, as it evoked images of Captain Nemo's ship, the Nautilus. Barry does pretty well with all his long slots, even PLEISTOCENE an interesting word, and PARAPHRASES getting a great clue in [Shortens a sentence, say]. I tried to stretch out PARDON in so many ways — dang it!

Interesting clue for MIL, a common measurement in mechanical engineering equal to a thousandth of an inch. A MICRON is a millionth of a meter. Too much engineering-speak? Not for me, but I can understand how some might grouse, especially when you toss in JOULE.

When a puzzle doesn't have a huge number of long assets (I count maybe 10-11 here), it's important to me to keep the gluey bits down. Otherwise, they tend to overwhelm the assets during my solve. -THON is a suffix, ENS and AUTH are abbreviations, LAC a bit of French, JAS is an abbreviation for … James? There's nothing egregious here, but overall, it's enough to make me notice. I wouldn't mind as much if there were, say, 15 great entries, which would stomp down those pesky gluey bits.

Great clue in [it may be written in stone], a quite literal interpretation for RUNE. I also appreciated the modern clue for TESLA, [They charge a lot for their cars]. It's not quite there yet, as TESLA charging stations are nowhere close to ubiquitous, but I really liked the idea behind that clue.

– puzzle by Barry C. Silk

Theme phrases with three letters repeated, thus THREE-PEATs. Hopefully the NYT won't get a legal notice from Pat Riley, who trademarked the "three-peat" term in anticipation of his Lakers winning their third title in a row. (They failed, ha!)

I had seen some of these before, most notably MISSISSIPPI turned into MISS(ISS)IPPI, but Tracy found a couple nice ones. Obviously, CHEN REPUBLIC is my favorite. (My reign of power over the aforementioned country is a bit tenuous these days, what with a one-year old.) I couldn't quite figure out what the base answer was, so finally uncovering CHECHEN REPUBLIC (another name for Chechnya) was a neat moment.

I would have liked more of those neat moments, ones that really disguised the base phrase. It was a real challenge to figure out ENTE(NTE) CORDIALE for example, and I very much enjoyed that struggle. The rest came a bit too easily. I ran a quick query on my personal wordlist and came up with a few that could have been more challenging to uncover:

• BAR(BAR)Y PIRATES
• BEST (EST)IMATES
• COWBOYS AND I(NDI)ANS
• FEATHERS ONES (NES)T
• IT ALL MAKES SEN(SE N)OW
• NEAR (EAR)TH ORBIT
• PICKED UP THE C(HEC)K
• UC SANTA BAR(BAR)A

Some people pooh-pooh the idea of using coding to help with a crossword theme, but I'm all for it.

I liked a lot of the longer fill Tracy used. SMARTPHONE and TOUCH AND GO make a great pair of long downs, and AT LEISURE and RAN RAGGED add color as well.

You might wonder why some short gluey words like ODA, ELENI, OTARU, ADITS, NOLI, and LAH appear in crosswords. They are undesirable to see in modern crosswords, but they're also so useful in building a grid. Note 1.) all the common letters and 2.) the alternating consonant vowel patterns — both of these qualities make it so tempting to use these types of entries in assembling a grid. I wouldn't have minded a little less good long fill in order to cut out some of these gluey bits.

A fun solve, and my defeat of the two themers which put up a struggle was satisfying.

– puzzle by Tracy Gray

A puzzle on the QT: Q T phrases, linked together with the apt CUTIES revealer. Nice choice of themers, QUICK THINKING and QUALITY TIME having real quality. And QUANTUM THEORY is fantastic! Wish I could say I understood the workings of QUANTUM THEORY better, but part of its mystique is its incomprehensibility.

That's what I tell myself, anyway.

QUARTER TONE is an interesting one — I played cello and trombone for decades, but I still had to think about how many semi-tones there were in an octave. Aren't there just seven steps in a C scale? C D E F G A B back to C, right? Yes, but semi-tones are the individual steps in a chromatic scale: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C. Thought-provoking clue / answer pair.

Qs are notoriously difficult to integrate into crosswords. With four of them, many constructors would place black squares such that all the Qs either started a word or were the second letter (AQUA, EQUAL, etc.). I like how Pawel went big with both SEQUOIA and GIANT SQUID. The latter is an especially colorful answer, made even more so by the Jules Verne-related Nautilus clue. Very nice.

Pawel also chose to go with a 74-word layout, very tough when you already have to wrestle with four Qs. Generally I like the results, with some nice long stuff like GORGONZOLA and EBENEZER, but the north and south regions didn't come out as smooth as I think a Monday puzzle ought to be. "Dies IRAE" was unknown to me before I started doing crosswords, and I had been in orchestras for two decades.

And that ETTE / BOIS / GENET crossing GINNIE / EGESTS … as much as I like EBENEZER down there, I don't think it's worth all that glue. It's tough. Once you place that B of EBENEZER, it makes that already constrained south section even harder to fill.

So, a nice concept with great themer choices, executed with POW-level quality … except in two spots. So close!

– puzzle by Pawel Fludzinski

My friends Megan and Dan are going to groan — they've been working on constructing a Sunday-size puzzle with this theme for years. And it features MATTHEW PERRY! That one was my favorite, since both MATTHEW PERRYs are uber-famous. Well, the "Friends" actor hasn't done much recently, but he punched his ticket with the Chandler Bing role.

ANNE HATHAWAY was interesting, as I didn't know anything about Shakespeare's wife. Fun to learn about the speculation regarding her helping Shakespeare write, or even fully writing for him.

STEVE MCQUEEN was the same way — I had no idea who the "12 Years a Slave" director was. Neat to learn that he was the first black director to win a Best Picture Academy Award.

GRAHAM GREENE … I'm sure there are a lot of "Dances with Wolves" and "The Thin Man" fans out there, but I'm neither. Made it tough to appreciate this one. It's fair game; just personal ignorance disrupting my ability to enjoy this one.

Will does a great job with his big NW corner — 5x5 regions are usually tough to fill cleanly and with sizzle. HIJABS is a colorful entry, with the J worked so smoothly into JOUST. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a major ‘60s group, so that doesn't bother me at all.

I like how Will shoots for the moon in incorporating so much long fill in the lower left and upper right. ON THIN ICE and AIR INTAKE are themeless-quality answers, and EUPHRATES sings too. This arrangement forces some compromises like ATA and ECKO (is that brand of clothing popular?), but when these minor offenders allow great material, I'm all for it.

I would have liked a cleaner puzzle overall though. That ENDO / AS NO / RTE over ATH / SSS section especially made the puzzle feel glue-heavy.

I won't give away the other famous names Megan and Dan came up with (in addition to the ones Will uncovered!) in case they decide to try for another venue, but it was neat to see how many they discovered. This is a rare case where I feel like this concept might have been even better as a Sunday-size puzzle.

– puzzle by Will Treece

David is a strong enough constructor that I hitched when I got to the upper right corner. A barely-constrained area with ISR and the bygone UAR is by no means terrible, but I'd usually expect a better quality fill out of David. I hit a few other spots like that along the way — none of them had major flaws, but it made me more and more sure that there was a gimmick.

Sure enough, FORTY NINERS gets parsed as FORTY NINE RS, which I've highlighted below. I was impressed that David was able to get by with only minor clunkiness in this grid, given how difficult a trick like this is to accomplish. I don't care about most records of this sort, but just for comparison, here's the list of record-breaking letter counts. David smashes the old record of 30.

No doubt, there are some oddball words here, but I ended up liking most of them. I had no idea ORRERIES were models of the solar system — that's something I'll add to my vocabulary. I don't know that I'll have the opportunity to toss MAGYAR into a conversation ever, but that does feel like a word an educated person ought to know.

GASSER, not so much. When you have to tell someone how funny something is (twice!) in the clue ...

I liked how well the theme revealer worked. Perhaps it's because I'm a lifelong 49ers fan (I root for the Hawks when they're not playing them), and perhaps it's because karma finally came around and bit Colin Kaepernick in his arrogant butt. Or perhaps it's because the theme actually helped me finish the puzzle — that north section was pretty rough going, and thinking about where Rs might go led me to AFORE. (Yikes, that's quite a glob of glue.)

Nice also to get some good long fill, something often not possible with these stunt puzzles. GUITAR SOLO and BAD PERM are both great. Fun to get MARGARET FARRAR in there too.

All in all, a pretty good job of executing a very difficult task.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

I love grid art. There's something so cool about opening a puzzle and seeing black squares arranged in some crazy pattern. I'm not sure if today's grid looked more like a PANDA's face or a zoo enclosure trapping the PANDA? (I sort of saw the face after reading David's notes, but I had to squint pretty hard.) Even if neither really came through for me, I do like seeing innovative grid patterns. Even inkblot-like ones can be fun.

Speaking of fun, very fun to search for those P AND A = PA rebus squares. How cool is (PA)(PA)L (PA)LACE, containing three of them! I like seeing rebus strings within long answers — not only is this harder to construct around, but it makes for a more challenging solve. The PAs in FLIP(PA)NT, (PA)LIMONY, S(PA)NISH RICE, and OOM (PA)H P(AH) were a blast to uncover.

And I liked how David featured a 16-letter in KNOW NOTHING (PA)RTY — almost all 16s will be new, since few grids go to 16 columns. This one seemed slightly off to me as I know that party as the KNOW NOTHINGS, but I like it either way. SALES DE(PA)RTMENTS as a plural felt like I got cheated a bit since I've seen that answer in singular many times before, but it still works fine.

Stuffing in 11 rebus squares is a tough task. You're going to need some PAs in short answers, and stuff like I(PA)D, S(PA)Y, S(PA)T work so well. It's unfortunate to have some of them in the A (PA)L and AT (PA)R types of entries, though.

Also unfortunate was to get a smattering of SSR, SSTS, APO, LMN, ENSE, TREO, etc. throughout the puzzle. It's all relatively minor, and I wouldn't have even minded them in aggregate if there had been something stronger to make it all worthwhile. But as it is, the visual didn't have such a mind-blowing effect that it overshadowed all the gluey bits. I might have been happier having only 10 or less PAs in the grid if it meant cutting the number of gluey bits in half.

I tend to find straight rebus puzzles a bit tired these days, so it was a relief to have a lot of fun uncovering all these rebus squares today.

– puzzle by David Kwong

★ In an effort to spread around Puzzle of the Week awards, I've recently held Patrick to an impossibly high standard. So many of his themelesses could have been a no-brainer POW choice — almost all of them are that good — but I can usually find some minor nit to pick, some point of critique that us mere mortals can learn from.

Not today. It's a great feeling to be able to gush over a PB puzzle, even as I compare it against his own lofty standards!

What really sold me on this one was those daunting NW and SE regions. Almost no one quad-stacks entries these days, because it's so difficult to fill them cleanly and colorfully. Usually there's some crossing answer which causes a groan, or some answer within the stack which is pretty neutral at best.

Patrick doesn't just use a (quasi-)quad-stack today — he RUNS LONG ANSWERS THROUGH THEM. Not only that, but he DOESN'T SEGMENT THESE CORNERS FROM THE REST OF THE PUZZLE, which usually people need to do in order to pull this off. Such beautiful grid flow.

I never work with these sorts of gargantuan swaths of white space. They're just too hard to execute on. So it's stunning to see all the snazzy material, all pulled off with the usual PB uber-cleaninless. Take the bottom right. SHOULDER STRAP / WHITE FLAG / HONEST ABE / IN ESSENCE is great enough by itself. (So challenging to parse HONESTABE, which I thought was some football player #16, HONES ????) Run IT'S A PLANE through that all, along with no gluey crossing entries = amazing.

Same goes for the upper left. RICE A RONI, BLENDED IN, SAY CHEESE, DEEP SEA DIVERS, with ACEY DEUCY running through them (and no junky fill). Dang, that's incredible.

FILLIP was a tough word for me and I don't know I'd ever use it to replace "bonus," but I liked learning it. AQUIVER doesn't sound as good to me as ALL AQUIVER, but it's no problem.

The only complaint I had was that PB's puzzles as of late have been so wide-open, so difficult to start, that I've found them much harder than any other Friday puzzle. Maybe Saturday would be a better slot.

Some of my friends call PB the Crossword Jesus, and it's puzzles like this that justify that name.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

So much fresh material in this one! Kameron constructs a bi-weekly themeless, which also features innovative entries. I've enjoyed them. I don't know that I'd get such a neat combination of entries like FAN FICTION, WAR ON WOMEN, and SPITS GAME from anyone but Kameron — he presents a unique blend of art, liberal politics, and current slang.

GAYBORHOOD is new to me, but it was inferable and a fun word to learn. SPITS GAME … that one seems like something you either know or you don't, but it's a nice and colorful phrase either way. To me, it's like GOAT RODEO — I had never heard of it before, but am I glad I ran across it.

OLIVIA HOPE was tough. Again, it's either something you know, or you don't, and not being a Scandal fan, I didn't really care. It exemplifies a dilemma Will goes through all the time when a constructor features a proper name that's not ubiquitously known. If you're a fan, it's a thrill to see the name in the NYT crossword ... but there's no challenge to filling it in. If you don't know it, you struggle for every last square, with very little payoff. DON LEMON was the same way for me, filling in the final square with a shrug.

Aaugh, OLIVIA POPE! HOE House and Museum sounded just as good as POE House. Yes, it's my fault for not making the Baltimore / Poe connection, but these crossing entries / clues felt on the verge of being unfair.

There was a great deal of colorful long material — 16 long entries, a great majority converted into assets — but there were also a number of liabilities. Nothing was major — OSO (sorry, Kameron, OSO is worse for me than the much more known-to-non-Spanish-speakers UNO or MAS, for example), BLO, and AMAS had a reasonable save try, cluing to the American Music Awards. Agreed with Kameron on INA / IN A though; that one is totally fine by me. And OPEL isn't major here in the US, but it's much bigger in Europe.

All in all, I felt like the assets minus liabilities was around 10, which makes it a strong themeless in my eyes.

ADDED NOTE: Kameron wrote to me after reading my comments, saying that his puzzle deserves more credit than I've been giving them. After reading up on OLIVIA POPE and DON LEMON, I agree that I missed a level in this puzzle by being too flip about those two names. I personally find it tough to appreciate proper names I don't know, and I tend not to look them up afterward. Unfortunately, my laziness caused me to miss out, as I hadn't realized how popular "Scandal" was, or the ground DON LEMON has broken in the field of journalism.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

Perfect title, HAVING ASPIRATIONS hinting at a W changing to a WH, as if aspirating (producing a sound by exhalation). I liked many of the themers, THE ROYAL WHEE really amusing. GET OUT OF MY WHEY also evoked good imagery, as did WHACKS MUSEUM. I've seen many plays on world/whirled and wales/whales before, so those didn't do as much for me. Same goes for witch/WHICH … which are homophones, yes? That one muddled the theme for me.

Alan is one of the few constructors to take on the ultra-low-word count challenge Will has been experimenting with. It does provide for a wide-open feeling grid; cool to see so much white space in every subsection. It's got a similar feel to a themeless grid.

Going down to 132 words is not something I think is worthwhile just for its own sake, but it can allow for a lot more mid-length and longer entries than we usually see in Sunday grids. The center of the puzzle does a wonderful job of this — a huge bonus to get HOLY COW, IN A WORD, STODGES, and CECILIA with the catchy lyrics. Even TINTYPE and ARCSINE are interesting entries we don't often see.

Check out the perimeter of the puzzle, though. It's chock full of 6-, 7-, and 8-letter entries where we're used to seeing 4- and 5-letter ones. That can theoretically make for a more interesting and colorful solve, especially when you work in such juicy answers as YO TE AMO and SPOILER and … well, that's the problem for me. I don't mind getting a smattering of I THE, ENSE, NEH, GUARE, INRI along that bottom if it means I get a lot of great material. But ENMESHES, OUTRACE, BLINK AT, ESSAYED, etc. = pretty neutral material in my eyes. I'd much rather see a 140-word puzzle with a few more sizzling answers and maybe half of the gluey bits we see today.

So, some fun themers and a good data point in the continuing experiment in ultra-low word count Sundays. I'm finding myself liking them less and less, but I do like the pushing of the boundaries.

– puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld

Answers starting with THREE IN A ROW letters, i.e. a run of ABC, KLM, and XYZ. Thomas Jefferson was one of my childhood heroes, so I've always been fascinated with the XYZ AFFAIR. Code named diplomats + a quasi-war between the US and France = why hasn't anyone made a movie about this? Big opportunity there!

KLM AIRLINES is a solid answer, albeit not as flashy as the XYZ AFFAIR. But ABC ANCHOR … that feels too arbitrary to me. NEWS ANCHOR, yes. ABC NEWS, yes. These both get Google hits in the millions (when entered in quotes). ABC ANCHOR gets less than 100K, and it opens up a Pandora's box to ABC CAMERAMAN, ABC STORY, etc. Granted, it's tough to find something to match length with XYZ AFFAIR, but ABC SPORTS might have been more in the language.

Not a lot of long fill in this puzzle, but I did appreciate the mid-length MANSION, SCONCES, UNTRUTH, and BAZAAR. No multi-word entries there, but all four are pretty interesting to me.

With only four themers and not much long fill, I would have liked the puzzle to be a little smoother. Starting with I GOT in the upper left isn't great. It does make for an easy fill-in-the-blank clue for the beginning solver, but partials in a grid feel so inelegant to me. There's a reason why editors specify that these gluey partials be kept to a minimum.

I don't mind IS TO as much, as it's almost a stand-alone phrase when used with respect to analogies (remember those X : Y :: ___ : Z SAT questions?).

Nice concept, but it would have been so cool to find another themer, as three examples of THREE IN A ROW felt a bit thin. Unfortunately, the only other one I could think of was the QRS COMPLEX, part of an electrocardiogram. Well-established medical term, but it sure would have pushed the puzzle into very late-week territory!

– puzzle by Jim Holland

I always learn a little something from a Paula puzzle, as we travel in very different circles. Things like RAGLAN, ANGUILLA, EDDIE ARCARO, even BRAVA (apparently I've been insulting women everywhere by saying "Bravo!") are unfamiliar to me, and I'm glad to pick up tidbits I really ought to know. I like that I can count on Paula to expand my horizons.

Straightforward "word hidden inside phrases," INNER / EAR describing the word EAR going across two-word phrases. I loved the SURFACE AREA clue, making me really think about that long calculation involving squaring the edge length of a cube. Yay for math! FALSE ARREST is also a colorful answer, and although EDDIE ARCARO was only vaguely familiar to me, it's pretty fun to pair him with HORSE AROUND.

Not a fan of the broken-up revealer, though. Cross-referenced answers force me to jump around the grid, chopping up my flow enough for me to ignore them most of the time. Stuffing in short words is much easier than adding a fifth long themer (INNER EAR all together), but it's much less elegant. Even something like INNER crossing EAR at the terminal R at the very SE of the puzzle ... that would have been harder to do (and perhaps caused some compromises), but I would have much preferred it.

The "parallel down" arrangement is difficult to execute cleanly and snazzily on, and today gives us a perfect example. Paula chooses some great fill in FINE ARTS (ADDED NOTE: actually a themer, I missed that) and ACID HEAD, but what can you do with SD? at the end except SDS? That by itself is fine by me, but when you add in DAHS and NIA (please, do another great movie already so constructors can use you all the time!), it's so close to perfect … but not.

Same goes with the pairing of RHODESIA / BARE ARMS (also a themer I missed). Most of the crossings are easy to work through, but ?SR leaves only ISR or SSR. Again, it generally really strong work, but getting to squeaky clean perfection with this parallel down structure is very difficult.

Nice shout out to crosswordy HELENE Hovanec (who organizes the ACPT) and Jim HORNE, my partner in crime.

– puzzle by Paula Gamache

I used to worry when I saw a new name on a byline — sometimes that meant we'd get a pretty rough grid. Even if the theme was fantastic, I find it difficult to fully applaud a crossword if the surrounding fill is too rocky.

Thankfully, things seem to be changing, and Zach's debut is right along these lines. It's not an earth-shattering grid — a 76-worder without much long fill — but wow, was it smooth. Where it really shined was in the NE and SW areas, both larger than average chunks of white space. Sure, some people object to HST and OTOE in the upper right (they're seen much, much more in crosswords than in real life), but I don't mind them. To work in that X and J so smoothly — without much crossword glue at all — is really nice work.

Similar results in the SW. R AND D will rankle some, as it's never seen as anything but R&D in real life, but I don't mind it much. And love the shout-out to TARO cake, which is delicious when freshly made.

The theme is "exclamations of delight wackily interpreted," i.e. "It's breathtaking!" for ASTHMA ATTACK. I've seen the first three often enough in this usage that they didn't feel very interesting, but the fourth — "It's remarkable!" for DRY ERASE BOARD piqued my interest. It unfortunately feels like an outlier, since it does something very different by twisting "remarkable" into "re-markable," but to me it's far and away the most delightful. I wish Zach had built the entire theme around this idea, going "full punny" on us. Bring it on!

TYE and LOD are tough entries to fill in, but they were given fair crossings … so that I didn't need to re-mark them as I solved.

(rimshot)

Very nice grid execution. And for those of us "The Office" fans out there, how awesome was that clue for JOB TITLE? Dwight K. Schrute, Assistant to the Regional Manager. Not Assistant Regional Manager, mind you.

– puzzle by Zachary Spitz

★ I loved this concept, AUTOCOMPLETE interpreted as AUTO-COMPLETE. Just delightful to scratch my head, knowing that SOLAR PLEXUS had to fit in somehow but unsure how to accomplish that. Great finds in KATHIE LEE GIF(FORD), SOLAR P(LEXUS), HELP ME R(HONDA), ANNO DO(MINI).

I unfortunately didn't care for STRING T(RIO), as it 1.) wasn't a general car make like the others (Kia is the make, Rio is the model — what, no SLOVA(KIA)?) and 2.) I grew up playing cello in STRING QUARTETS. I can't remember ever playing in STRING TRIO — classically, it's so often two violins, a viola, and a cello. STRING TRIO is a valid thing, but to me it's just not nearly as strong as the others.

BELON(G TO) was also weaker in my eyes, as I felt like that entry didn't match the snazziness of SOLAR P(LEXUS) and the others. And as Andrew mentioned, the mix of makes and models felt inelegant.

That said, I still loved this idea and most of the execution. It would be so cool if electronic solvers had the LEXUS automatically filled in upon entering the SOLARP string!

Pretty darn good execution, too. I liked getting FAN CLUBS, SPONGE BOB, and especially TOPIARY. [Clip art?] might be one of my favorite clues of the year. Nice to BEEF UP the puzzle with a dash of long stuff.

Some will grumble about the ENIAC / NOYES and HOLI / ILE crossings. The ENIAC was an important part of computing history, and NOYES is a famous author, so that one feels perfectly fine to me. Having a lot of Indian friends, I'm very familiar with Diwali, but HOLI is tough. I had to concentrate on that one square, wondering what the Marquises were. Thankfully, only ILE looked reasonable, so in the end, I thought it was fair, too.

A few minor hiccups in choice of themers for me, but a huge thumbs up to such a cool idea, well-executed.

– puzzle by Andrew Zhou

I co-construct with ML a lot, and one of the things I appreciate about her is that she introduces me to people and things I'm only vaguely familiar with. Sometimes she proposes an entry that makes me question if enough people will appreciate it, but often times it's pure gold. I don't know that I would personally think to put in Zooey DESCHANEL in a puzzle, but she's famous enough to not be an (unsatisfying) either-you-know-it-or-you-don't entry. Plus, she has a cool-looking last name and is a great actress. This is the kind of proper name I like seeing featured in a grid.

Interesting layout. The NW and SE corners look so gigantic, with four long entries stacked atop each other. But the central staircase is pretty easy to fill, with hardly any long answers in it. It's like ML purposefully chose to concentrate all her efforts on the two super-challenging corners.

Some good work in those two corners. I especially liked the SE, with PAT RILEY (ever hear the stories about how he would dunk his head into cold water to supposedly motivate his team?), MEDIA CLIP, and GO IN PEACE stacked. Even RAMPART is an interesting word. With only MUS and REICE holding the area together, that's strong work. Those two minor blights are the only things that keep the corner from being Berryesque.

I liked the NW too, although CADILLACS isn't as snazzy and colorful as, say, CROWN VICS. OLD FOGIES isn't bad, but I personally prefer my crosswords to be inspiring and/or uplifting — along with USE FORCE, the corner was a bit of a downer. The outdated REN and the odd plural, LAICS aren't great, but I don't mind ALIA, since it's common in Et ALIA, and ALIA Shawkat played a memorable Maeby Funke in "Arrested Development."

I liked getting GABRIELLE / GIFFORDS in the grid, but I couldn't remember who she was. Not nearly the smile I got from DESCHANEL, plus I don't value an entry split across two slots very highly.

So, a good number of long assets, but also some offsetting liabilities in the aforementioned, plus the weirdly spelled AMEBA (amoeba is the only way I knew it before crosswords), another RE- in RELAP, etc.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo

What a cool grid pattern! The triple-stack down the center plus a TON of long entries — a pair of long downs in the NW / SE and an enormous number of long acrosses — made me eager to dive in. The central stack didn't disappoint, with THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G. (I said a prayer of thanks that it was Biggie and not some new rapper I'd need every cross for) next to HATERS GONNA HATE. AMERICAN APPAREL is good, too.

(ADDED NOTE: people have been asking me about the pic of Ruth Bader Ginsberg — she's got one of my favorite nicknames, "the Notorious RBG.")

Neat to see long answers run straight through that triple-stack. YOGA PANTS is not only a great entry, but it becomes stellar when you add a clue like [They may be put on a stretcher]. That's clue of the year material for me — I kept wondering what kind of accident victim the clue was hinting at. ART SCENE / HOP ON POP / SHAKE ON IT / I DON'T BITE also running through the stack? Yes yes yes!

ESNE? And a cutesy clue attempting to beg forgiveness for such a fusty piece of crosswordese? No no no! Along with some very minor stuff like OTO, PDS, SEP, it demonstrates the eternal trade-off of going B.I.G. (and needing to use some crossword glue), or staying more conservative (and completely smooth). I imagine Natan agonized about that corner, with such a great number of long words connecting up in the NE … but also the dreaded ESNE.

RPG is an interesting one. I'm not much of a gamer these days, but role-playing games like D&D are very familiar to me. It's going to be a toughie for some, especially when crossing GUAPOS, a word pretty deep into Spanish.

BOLLYWOOD is a great way to launch a themeless. I liked the misleading plural in [Indian pictures]. I wasn't as hot as some of the other long entries, DOCTRINAL / ETCHED IN / HAPPENED more neutral in my eyes than assets. Still, with a whopping 19 (!) long entries, Natan still converts many of those slots into POW-quality material. It just wasn't quite enough for me to be able to look the other way and give it the award this week.

– puzzle by Natan Last

Sam Donaldson is the man. Excuse me — The Man. (Whichever is the good one.) We finalized the last revisions for this puzzle during the 2015 ACPT, where Sam provided no end of entertainment with his crazy bets. 70-1 odds that he could pick seven names, one of which would win the ACPT? Sure, he'll put $10 on that! (He won.) 300-1 odds that Lynn Lempel didn't write Puzzle #5? Heck yeah, he put $10 on that too! (He won that as well.)

He was able to go back home and tell his wife that he won an easy $20. But man oh man, was he sweating it when 1.) Kiran Kedlaya showed up, finishing fourth and 2.) Puzzles 1-4 were NOT written by Lynn Lempel. I would have paid Will pretty much any sum of money for him to announce that Lynn wrote Puzzle #5.

Writing a puzzle with Sam is almost as fun as watching him squirm. Good times, good times.

P.S. Grid was pretty hard — trying to figure out how to squeeze in all those long, turning answers was a bear. But once I hit on SHOW ME THE MONEY intersecting PAID THROUGH THE NOSE, it was only a matter of (many dozens of) hours after that.

P.P.S. I've fixed up the answers so they appear in the database correctly — SNOOKERC to SNOOKERCUE and CUE to RIGHTONCUE, e.g. Hope everyone figured out that the "RIGHT ON, RIGHT ON!" title was a good hint!

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson and Jeff Chen

★ I have the good fortune of living near Parker, so we meet up every other month or so. Nice to be in an area with many fellow puzzle people! Parker showed me an earlier version of this puzzle, and I remember being impressed by the idea. It's so fun to see FIFTH, FOURTH, THIRD … and then not get SECOND and FIRST! Cool to have another completely natural sequence-completer in HALF and WHOLE; one which was unexpected.

I also remember feeling like there were too many gluey bits in his earlier grid, so it was a relief to see Parker's final product. Not only is the crunchy stuff limited to the very minor LIRE, STS, SGTS, but Parker also worked in quite a bit of long fill. This is important, since the larger-than-normal grid (16x15), must captive the solver for that much longer. Uncovering bonus entries like NICE ONE, ALOHA STATE, STILL LIFES, EDIT MENU, ICE CREAM (yum!), AIRLIFT, even OCULUS Rift (one of the leading virtual reality headset companies) kept me entertained. Quite a nice construction, especially considering just having five themers is hard enough.

As Parker and I discussed his redo, I mentioned that the FIFTH ELEMENT was the weakest themer, since 1.) it omits "The" from the title and 2.) my guess is that it won't reach "classic" status. I thought there had to be something better. Could have been FIFTH WHEEL, FIFTH AVENUE, FIFTH COLUMN, but finding a "WHOLE ___" phrase with a matching length made it tricky. I liked WHOLE FOODS paired with FIFTH WHEEL, but WHOLE SHEBANG does make for a great final themer.

Nice to get a few insider's nods, with MASAI (Parker did Peace Corps in Africa a few years ago) and APP (he recently got a job as an ioS app developer).

A theme that cleverly misdirects + is accessible to novices + a smooth and meaty grid = a beauty of a Monday puzzle.

– puzzle by Parker Lewis

Gary gives us the SPIN CYCLE to accompany Byron's recent RINSE CYCLE puzzle. A strong choice of themers, UP IN SMOKE and HMS PINAFORE my favorites. The latter makes me smile, thinking about Bart Simpson tricking Sideshow Bob into singing the entirety of HMS PINAFORE in order to stall for time.

Given how easy it is to find phrases with INSP and NSPI somewhere within them, I might have liked a bit more diversity rather than two Hollywood men. A bit of searching turned up such fun ones as SHIN SPLINTS, HUMAN SPIDER, GOLDEN SPIKE, or my favorite, THE GOLDEN SPIRAL.

I really appreciated some of the longer stuff like LAY A TRAP, PET SCAN, ARSENAL, OVER HERE. MASH NOTE felt a bit fusty, but even that was kind of fun.

And in general, I think Gary did a very nice job with his short fill … with one glaring exception. Now, I debated whether or not this is way too picky, but I'm a steadfast believer in making early-week puzzles accessible to all kinds of solvers. I'm a huge jazz fan, but OLETA Adams only vaguely tickled my brain. Crossing that with "It's ___ Thing" got me hung up. "It's A MOVE Thing" sounded like it could be a pop/dance song just as much as "It's A LOVE Thing."

On one hand, it's only one square. On the other, I think a puzzle should ultimately set up the solver to beat it for a feeling of euphoric satisfaction. Just one square can leave such a bad taste.

That said, the rest of the puzzle is really well executed. Impressive to have so much theme material, plus a few longer pieces of fill, and only require A TIE to hold things together.

As Gary humbly mentioned, I liked the elegance of Byron's execution better — neat to see the cycling all in a column like it was in a washing machine — but Gary's puzzle still entertained me.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

More additions to the list of youngest constructors! Congrats to Duncan and Clara for having their first NYT puzzle published.

I liked how current the theme is. I've only watched two of the four shows, but they're all popular enough that I've heard a ton about each. It was entertaining to give all of them an alternative and valid interpretation. I was SO sure ["Mad Men"?] was going to lead to PITCH ___ when I uncovered P??CH*. I was confused when I finally turned up PSYCHOPATHS, and figuring out the literal interpretation gave me a nice a-ha moment.

HALLMARK STORE was perfect for ["House of Cards?"], too, the clue being an accurate description of the answer.

MUSICAL CHAIRS was a bit of a stretch, since this one was much less literal than the first two. Yes, a throne is a type of chair, but the literality is lost.

I didn't expect PALLBEARERS. It felt like an inconsistency, the lone themer where you really have to stretch your imagination to think of people who are "walking (the) dead." I'm not a fan of inconsistency.

Impressive grid for a debut. I was surprised to see ETUI, since that's a word that older constructors tend to lean on, but other than that, it's a nice clean product. And integrating six pieces of long fill is something experienced constructors rarely do — well done!

Man oh man I'm hoping that Duncan and/or Clara play bridge. It's making a comeback, I tell you! Bridge is great for the mind, emphasizes logical reasoning, teamwork, deduction … oh fine, I'm never going to convince anyone. Sigh.

(A SMALL SLAM is when you bid to get 12 of 13 tricks, and a grand slam is when you bid for 13.)

A fun idea, where three of the four themers worked well for me. Along with grid execution being well above average, I'm looking forward to more from this pair.

– puzzle by Duncan Kimmel and Clara Williamson

Mispellings! Er, misspellings. We've seen a few puzzles where entries in the grid were actually misspelled, so I liked Ed's interpretation, using Schrodinger squares where both the correct spelling and the common misspelling work fine in the crossing entry. An example: CALENDER, with A (correct) or E (incorrect) is okay either way in GRAY or GREY.

My favorite by far was the second A in PHARAOH. While on the surface it worked exactly the same as the others — BALD-faced lie and BOLD-faced lie are both in usage — it triggered a thought for me. What if another word commonly spelled with either an A (correct) or an O (incorrect) had been the down crossing answer? It would have been such a coup to have every crossing be two tough-to-spell words, both with the same correct letter and commonly incorrect letter!

I liked the execution as it is, but since we've seen so many Schrodinger puzzles now, it feels a bit overdone. Also, while this particular execution is somewhat innovative, it did remind me of another one playing on a common mistake.

Not sure why there were ten misspelled words in the clues, but I suppose that added a little color to the theme. It wasn't enough to make me want to go back and find them all though, and the common gimmick of misspelling the word misspell (as mispell) fell flat.

It is difficult to find good Schrodinger answers — where one entry isn't much way more plausible than the other — so Ed did a nice job there. PATS and PETS a dog, DRAW and DREW playing on "set" being either present or past tense, OHS and AHS both sounds of surprise = good stuff.

Given that Ed needed to fix some of these Schrodinger entries into place in the grid, it's no surprise that there are some rough spots around those crossings. STILLE / ILA / IF AT around that CLICK / DEFINITELY section is a prime culprit.

Loved the clue for UNZIP. [Drop, like (pants) flies], tee hee.

So, an interesting idea which triggered some brainstorming for me. I like it when a puzzle does that.

– puzzle by Ed Sessa

Colorful and clean grid. It starts as a standard layout, with triple-stacked 10s in each corner, but Peter goes one step further by weaving in a few more long answers. As with any Wentz puzzle, there's a ton of strong entries, my favorite being the ones that feel like fresh, grid-seeding ones: STIFF DRINK, AD AGENCIES (both in the same stack!), BREAK RANKS.

Peter does such a great job of selecting colorful entries that are amenable to clever clues. AD AGENCIES is already a fantastic answer, but [They get spots out] makes it stellar. ("Spots" referring to commercial spots.) Makes for a great a-ha moment upon figuring it out.

That top right corner is so beautiful and snazzy. STIFF DRINK / NO SIREE BOB / AD AGENCIES, with FRESHENS and DENTYNE running through it all is so impressive. (If only FRESHENS and DENTYNE had been linked by clue!). Even more impressive is to do it all with just the minor KBS (kilobytes, usually just seen as kB). Love that corner.

I enjoyed this puzzle more than an average Friday themeless, but I have such a ridiculously high bar for Peter (who for my money is one of the top five themeless makers today). I get spoiled by seeing so much fresh, snazzy new material in his puzzles that getting AVERAGE MEN in the SW is a bit of a letdown. AVERAGE JOE sounds so much more snappy.

It's totally ridiculous to nit-pick about a single entry being a bit neutral though. Any themeless so cleanly executed — what other liabilities are there besides KBS? — with great material like AUDIOPHILE, VOODOO DOLL, ENGINE ROOM with its nod to Star Trek's Scotty, READY SET GO with a devilish [Starting line] clue, etc. is way above the general average.

– puzzle by Peter Wentz