Thumbnails

As with most all of Ryan's puzzles, I thought there was some amazing gridwork. He's an up-and-comer in a space that few constructors dip into — the ultra-low-word-count grid. It's so darn hard to fill a grid like this one with color and cleanliness, yet Ryan worked in BOTOX INJECTION, FITNESS CENTERS, with INK BLOT TEST, SOCCER STARS (head shots, ha!) and BATMOBILE running through them. Lovely!

And I love STICKY RICE (usually with condensed milk and mango), and AIRPORT BAR. That last one made me laugh with its clue, "craft" beer referring to aircraft. Didn't totally work, since there aren't any actual crafts in an AIRPORT BAR, but who's counting.

Impeccable gridsmanship, nary a gluey bit to be found. That's an amazing accomplishment for this level of construction difficulty.

Although ... I've been thinking more and more about why Patrick Berry is so highly revered by so many people. A big part of it is that he's so careful to stay away from entries that might seem TOO fresh, potentially alienating large swaths of solvers.

Doing and analyzing Ryan's themelesses has opened my eyes to a point I hadn't considered before. In one of his previous puzzles, I heard many gripes about DANK MEMES, seeming to severely sour some people's perspective on what I thought was a pretty darn good puzzle. It baffled me that a single entry could have such an overwhelming effect. It's at least gettable, so you can ignore it if you don't like it, yeah?

Judging a puzzle by its worst entry doesn't seem fair to me, but I can see how a lone entry might alienate some solvers. Maybe it makes you feel dumb, or out of the loop, or like the puzzle is trying too hard. Like Ryan, I wondered about BROGRAMMER in that vein.

Now, I think the term is amusing, having first heard it on "Silicon Valley." (It refers to dudes bro-ing their way in tech start-ups heavily dominated by 20-something men.) It also seems gettable, a mash-up of BRO and PROGRAMMER.

But I think these days, I'd personally try to avoid it. Such a tough call — would you rather go extremely memorable for some solvers, while alienating others? Or try to aim for the middle, risking losing your color?

Not sure what the right answer is. Tell me if you figure it out!

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

Reminds me so much of rebus puzzles in GAMES Magazine, visual gags that I loved as a kid. PUB next to PUB = PARALLEL BARS? That's groan-worthily fantastic!

PER SPIRE reminded me of an element within a friend's clever word puzzle — he mused that a steeplejack (a chimney cleaner) gets paid "per spire."

Groan!

Double groan (in a good way), that PER SPIRE is literally BREAKING A SWEAT.

To Paul's point, there have been hundreds (maybe thousands) of these visual interpretation puzzles in various publications, so today's theme felt too loose for my taste. There were the standard ones, like LONG (OVER) DUE and BREAKING A SWEAT.

Then there was won — er, one — using homophones, (two) BIG (two) IGNORE.

Another involving parsing, FRANKS IN ATRA?

(ODDS AND ENDS is so apt!)

FRANKS IN ATRA was my favorite of the bunch, having never seen that spacing change before. I would have loved a full set of six or seven themers that worked in this way.

Pretty good gridwork, only the bottom with ESTA / SRTA and SWARD / SLUE making me hitch. I could have used more colorful long bonus fill though, in the vein of ADAM AND EVE and ONE DAY SALE. I'd be interested to see if Paul could have removed the black square between TED and TILL and gotten something great out of that 8-letter slot. Or worked the NE a couple more times, to get something stronger out of one of the BEANERIES / SALT MARSH slots.

Wrapping up with a standout clue: [All you can eat] baffled me. Great a-ha, realizing that it was a factual description of EDIBLES. Almost qualifies as another themer!

– puzzle by Paul Coulter

Anyone else humming "Strangers in the Night" right now?

Tight set of homophones, DOO DEW DO DUE DEUX.

I bet fans of Hüsker Dü (the band) or Hūsker Dū? (the game) will be shouting THAT'S NOT A TIGHT THEME SET YOU JERKY JERK, HOW COULD YOU FORGET TO INCLUDE THE BEST BAND / GAME IN THE HISTORY OF BANDS / GAMES?

(You'd think I was joking, but I do get emails like this every once in a while.)

At the risk of enraging fans more, I like the decision to not include HUSKER DU, as this theme is so straightforward that it had to be run on a Monday. It'd be a rough ask to expect newer solvers to fill in the bizarre-looking HUSKERDU string. Hu skerdu?

It's tough for me to get excited about such a straightforward and simple theme. But the set is tight, the grid is solid, with just a bit of WOOER (is the other person the WOOEE?) and LECID (could be a turnoff for newer solvers). Along with solid bonuses in STONETOOL, STATE REPS, AVENGER, BIMODAL, it's a friendly offering for newbs.

– puzzle by Lynn Lempel

I've heard anecdotes that the average crossword solver doesn't even notice themes, just mindlessly filling in squares until it's done, then wiping their butt with it.

I kid!

At least for the e-solvers. That'd be messy.

While I do give the NYT solving population much more credit than the average crossworder, I wonder how many people will miss some of what's going on today. It might be too easy to shrug at what seems like a S* S* phrase theme, which we've seen many times before.

I've missed parts of themes enough times that I'm hyper-aware of it these days. Not that I needed it today! Of course, there's more! I didn't miss another part of a theme yet again!

Okay fine, I did.

Peter takes this tried and true "initialism" theme type a little further, mixing it with the also tried and true "vowel progression" — using A E I O U (and sometimes Y), in that order. It's a creative blendification, although I wouldn't say it was exciting.

I *think* I liked that Peter went the extra mile by including the sixth themer. It's not easy to find phrases starting with SY* SY*, so kudos for taking on the challenge.

Although, I'm a big jazz fan, and SYLVIA SYMS was only on the periphery of my knowledge base (admittedly, I'm not nearly as good with jazz singers as with instrumentalists). I wonder if SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS would have catered to a wider audience? Not sure.

Also, six themers nearly always strains a grid in all sorts of places. I'm not a fan of using entries like ENERO, LTYRS, ERLE, that seem like they could stymie newer solvers. I'd much rather stick to lesser glueys like ASSN, PPS, PRES, SSE, UNI, which seem much more gettable.

I liked some of the bonuses, SARTRE, AU REVOIR helping keep up my interest. And I don't quite remember this particular mixture of theme types, so bonus points for novelty.

ADDED NOTE: Gerry Wildenberg says, "I pioneered the same theme that Peter used today."

– puzzle by Peter Gordon

★ So clever! This one reminded me of another change-of-spacing puzzle I loved. Not sure if I ever would have come up with the idea of:

1. Sticking countries together
2. Parsing them for kooky results
3. Tying things neatly up with the perfect UNITED NATIONS revealer.

MALI ESTONIA becomes MA LIES TO NIA? What a fantastic find! And PERUSER BIAS PAIN doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but still, it's the type of discovery I wish I would have made. PERU SERBIA SPAIN … wow, what a change those spaces make!

Sometimes I feel like I'm too harsh on Alan's gridwork. You could easily go to town on ELL ONT OPEL SHUL TNG ULEE. Another day I would, rambling on at length in gruesome technical detail about how to fix these issues — there are dozens of ways for this particular set of themers.

But today, I'll shut up and just enjoy. This theme shines so brightly that the flaws in execution are easily overlookable. Just like Jacob's puzzle, this one will stick in my memory. That's a rare and lovely occurrence, indeed.

– puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld

Debut! Sophia got in touch with me earlier this year with a bridge (the card game) related theme, and we ended up working together on a Sunday puzzle (still in progress, but Will, I think it's a really good one!). Then I found out she lives just a few blocks away from me, here in Seattle! I love how crosswords can bring people together. Hopefully one day she and I can play some duplicate bridge together (apologies in advance for my inevitably horrible blunders).

Today, Sophia riffs on KITTY CORNER, placing kitty CATs in the four corners of the grid. I wasn't sure if LITTER BOXES was that good, thematically, but I suppose cats do tend to have their LITTLE BOXES placed into the corners of rooms.

(I wondered for an embarrassing amount of time if I had missed some sort of double rebus, with CAT in one direction, and POOP in the other.)

It's unusual to go above 78 words, the max for 15x15 puzzles (this one is at 80). Will rarely allows this, because it tends to mean that there will be too much short stuff in the grid, and not enough longer snazzy fill. Sophia did work in some good long material — ALAN ARKIN, BEACH TOWEL, CALIFORNIA, DON'T PANIC — that's pretty good. But there is a huge amount of short answers, making my solve feel choppy.

And don't get me started on ITER and ILLY. Oofly.

I also would have liked a couple of long CAT answers, like CATTLE DRIVE or CATTYWAMPUS or BELLED THE CAT or THE QUEEN OF SCAT, etc. That would have been much more difficult, calling for giant corners, themeless-esque in design. Tough, but doable.

As part of our collaboration in process, I noticed that Sophia had some difficulty with certain types of grid areas, so I gave her a copy of my word list. It seemed to have helped, as the grid is now in a state that I like a lot — she did some strong work.

Knowing that, I'm curious to see what she could have done on today's puzzle if she took another stab at it now, what with better tools allowing her to be more ambitious.

– puzzle by Sophia Maymudes

I had to rub my eyes when I counted out how many long slots Sam worked into this themeless. For a 70-word puzzle, 12-14 is about average. This one has … 18? Wow!

And Sam is so good at transforming potential into actual. Rarely is one of his long slots left with something neutral or dull — he's so careful about making it all count. Out of all 18 slots, I could only find one (!) that was a bit meh: REGALEMENT. Some might even like that one, but it did feel a bit odd in the noun form.

AIDES DE CAMP, PATRON SAINT, SEED OYSTERS, SKI LESSONS, CAMERA SHOP — NOT A CHANCE that this is boring, DO YOU HEAR ME?

I did wonder if there was a bit too much niche material overall, though. I personally enjoyed DECEPTICON (Megatron always got a bad rap), RACE BIBS (I've had many pinned onto my shirt over the years), SHEEPLE (sheep + people portmanteau), UZO ADUBA (I watched some "Orange is the New Black" until I couldn't stand Piper anymore), WIIMOTES (Wii + remotes = wordplay!). But that's a lot that might potentially turn off a solver for one reason or another.

It's a tough call. Is it better to go safe, with entries that most everyone will recognize, or push the envelope? These days I tend to favor the former, as a single entry can sour a solver's impression of an entire puzzle. I don't think that's fair at all, but it sadly does seem to be a real phenomenon.

Along with what seemed to be an enormous number of short entries — you do have to pay the price for having so many long entries — it wasn't quite up to Sam's usual for me. Still entertaining though.

– puzzle by Sam Trabucco

Something so pleasing about this grid design. I couldn't put my finger on it during my solve, but I think it's a simple factor: most of the long slots are oriented horizontally. There's a reason why most crosswords feature their longest answers in the across direction — it's so much easier to read left to right, compared to up to down.

Easier said than done! Themelesses usually have an equal(ish) number of long entries across vs. down, because the "four corners" approach makes construction so much easier. I like what Trenton and David have done, stacking a long answer in each of rows 1-5. Makes for such a pleasing presentation.

I wondered though if that meant they'd had to make some compromises in their long slot selection. OONA CHAPLIN isn't a star in real life as much as she is in crosswords, and THANKS OBAMA is … what? Ah, a sarcastic meme blaming Obama for all ills. Feels a bit dated now that we have others to blame. Ahem.

PG THIRTEEN is another potentially polarizing one. I did enjoy the game of first putting in PGT and then erasing it, thinking that it was impossible for anything to start with that sequence. I've come to like these only-in-crosswords entries less and less, but I can see the appeal.

Favorite clue: [Really clicks with a partner, say?]. TAP DANCES are full of clicking, ha!

Least favorite: [Honey] for DOLL. Do people call their partner DOLL these days? If I called my wife "Doll," there would be ... repercussions.

A lot of strong feature entries, CHILL PILL, DETOX DIET, PEACE SIGN, HUSH PUPPY, TAP DANCES my favorites. And SKIP ASS! Er, SKI PASS. But given the super-high standard I hold these two to, I didn't feel this one was quite POW! material.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson and David Steinberg

I'm a tremendous Harry Potter fan, having read/listened to the series roughly eleventy-hundred times. (Sadly, I'm solidly a Hufflepuff.) I haven't gotten around to FANTASTIC BEASTS / AND / WHERE TO FIND THEM — also sadly, I'm still in my post-HP hangover, not willing to read anything past the seven-book canon.

Did I really call it "the canon"?

Now that's sad!

Good set of finds, three fantastic beasts matched with their locales. It's too bad that they're not matched symmetrically in some way — I had a moment of wondering what THE KRAKEN was doing in the HIMALAYAS — but just finding a set of six length-matched entries is pretty good.

One of the many reasons I love HP is that there's so much fantastical imagination in play. For me, this crossword didn't have that element, more a literal interpretation of a title that led to a straightforward listing.

I had fun thinking about how that playfulness could have been implemented. Perhaps beasts outside the grid, YETI on top in the northern hinterlands, KRAKEN underneath as if in the sea?

There's the ol' hide-the-word trick, yet I can't think of a phrase hiding YETI. Gives me an eye tick that I can't figure out anything real!

(I'm probably the only one who will ever notice the two hidden YETIs above.)

Anyone ever notice that there's a magical OWL flying straight through JK ROWLING?

The possibilities are endless!

The great thing about having a constructor's mindset is that even if I'm not into a theme, there's always something to enjoy and admire. Today, I appreciated the care Ross took in stacking his revealer --it would have been all too easy to spread them to opposite ends of the grid. Stacking them tightly makes the cross-referencing much less painful to deal with as a solver, and there's some super-clean gridwork what with LEBARON TENET ROAD TAR running through all three parts.

– puzzle by Ross Trudeau

I love the creativity in this theme. As a writer, I hear THE PLOT THICKENS all the time, yet I've never thought about it as a plot of land literally thickening — from bare DIRT to some GRASS to a BUSH to a full JUNGLE. I wasn't able to figure out what was going on until I hit the revealer, and even then, I had to think about it. I enjoy when a Monday puzzle makes me work a little.

I did wonder if it was a "proper" order of growth. I'm not enough of a botanist to know if all the themers coexist in one region? BUSH made me think of African or Australia climates, whereas JUNGLE felt different.

Some research shows that there are indeed areas where all four are found. So my initial reaction was likely due to my cultural bias (read: being a dumb American).

I would have loved some smoothing in the gridwork. Monday ought to be super-newb-friendly, and I have doubts about RIATA, MTIDA, UANDI. I'd expect an educated solver to know what a lasso or a lariat is, Mount Olympus, and perhaps I LUV U too. But any of these toughies in the grid might trigger that "I have to know trivia to do crosswords?!" reaction we want to avoid.

Moving the black square above UANDI could have helped — the U?N?? pattern doesn't have nearly as much flexibility as ?U?N?? (TURNER, PUNNED, LUGNUT, GUNNER, etc.)

Overall though, I appreciated the originality of the theme, as well as the great bonuses in CARPOOLER and WENT ROGUE.

– puzzle by Alex Eylar

★ Loved this one. I had no idea what was going on until I hit the COMPOST BIN revealer. Ah, of course, that's what SHELL / PEEL / GROUNDS / PIT have in common! Each of those four were so well disguised (in such colorful phrases, too!). What a nice experience; the veil of confusion being lifted to great effect.

Such standout gridsmanship, too. FILE CLERK, OREGON TRAIL, BIRD ON A WIRE, MAIN MAN, APE SUIT = great quantity and quality of color.

I especially loved NEGAWATTS. I hadn't heard of it before, but what a fun term.

I wondered why my reaction to this was different than BROGRAMMER. I think it's because NEGAWATTS makes immediate sense (to me at least), but it might not be apparent to the general solver that programmers sometimes have a "bro" culture.

Also sounds like something we energy-conscious Seattleites brag about. You better believe I'm going to start working NEGAWATTS into daily conversation whenever I can!

All that and minimal crossword glue? I rarely use the word "perfect," so it's a tremendous pleasure to be able to use it with glee. This pair of constructors is quickly becoming one of my favorite duos.

– puzzle by Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

My embarrassing first reaction: OH NO, FREDDIE MERCURY DIED!

Sad, but true.

(Both my stupid reaction and the fact that Mercury died. In 1991.)

I think this puzzle is a tribute for the Freddie Mercury movie, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY?

What, you say that it came out over a month ago?

Okay, I'm confused. Why not publish it on the release date?

I'm also confused as to why BO HEMI AN and RH APSO DY were broken up. I know most of the lyrics by heart, but am I missing some hidden "breakup" that the song implies?

Speaking of confusion, why place the four 7-letter themers in FREDDIE / CONCERT / BENEFIT / MERCURY order? Why not FREDDIE / MERCURY / BENEFIT / CONCERT?

Perhaps there's some gridding-related reason, that this particular order helped smooth things out. But already with APORT LEROI ENRY ETYMA YSER just to start (not even mentioning NAZI yet), I'd much rather have accepted that pain and at least have gotten a proper set of connected themers, one half right after the other.

I'd understand the decisions more if today were a big anniversary of LIVE AID ... but it's the 28^th anniversary? Huh.

I love FREDDIE MERCURY, QUEEN, and BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY — one of my favorite songs of all-time. I did enjoy being reminded of the greatness there. And I thought it was an interesting finding how BOHEMIAN / RHAPSODY could be broken up as David described. But I think the puzzle would have been more enjoyable if it had been made simpler, with a smoother grid.

– puzzle by David J. Kahn

I imagine I'm going to get a lot of confusion-laden emails today, from people who missed the giant black X in the grid — four representations of X: NEW YORK (TIMES), MALCOLM (X), (KISS) GOODBYE, (CROSS) SECTION.

It's not the first time we've seen the idea of using a letter made out of black squares, or a symbol representing a range of words, but John did a fantastic job in executing this one. Four themers that start or end with a 7-letter phrase makes for beautiful symmetry, and all four themers are super-solid. Great decisions.

What was truly standout was the gridwork. This is a 72-word puzzle, qualifying it for themeless territory, so it's already tough to begin with. And with four 7-letter entries locked into place, so much flexibility is taken away. Given that, I would have expected there to be either a lot of gluey bits to hold everything together or for the long slots to be filled with neutral or subpar entries.

Not so! Man oh man was there greatness all around. From SAUTE PAN to HOME BREW to CRIME LAB to HUMANITY to ANECDOTE to IM BATMAN to NERD CRED to MCGREGOR to ALL IN ONE, this would compare favorably to many 72-words themelesses. Stellar work.

Smart decision to leave himself with a ton of 8-letter slots. Some constructors would have favored more symmetry, by breaking up each side 7/7 instead of 8/6. While I can see how that might have been visually more pleasing, I'd much rather have all the snazzy fill that the 8-letter slots opened up.

Very well done. I gave the puzzle serious POW! consideration based on superb execution alone.

– puzzle by John Westwig

I thought all six of the longest answers were great. Just for kicks, I'm going to rank them. (Warning, subjective analysis ahead!)

TOP TIER

1. NASAL STRIPS. It's a fantastic entry on its own, and recognizable even if you've never used one (they used to be advertised on TV all the time). Even better, the clue is pure gold! [Things used on bridges to ease congestion] so innocently deflects to medians, lane-dividers, etc. I loved the entire puzzle based on this entry/clue alone.
2. TUPPERWARE PARTY. Again, sizzling entry, sizzling clue. Such a funny image of a bacchanalian party with people belching like airhorns. Nope, burping your Tupperware!

MIDDLE TIER

3. AIRPORT CODE. Nice phrase, and some misdirect potential. JFK might have made you think about the President first?
4. SO FAR SO GOOD. Solid entry, colloquial, fun. As a phrase, I like it better than AIRPORT CODE. But here's the thing: there's not a lot of potential for clever cluing. "No issues yet" is equivalent, but there's not nearly the click I got from the two top-tier clues. For this reason, I put AIRPORT CODE above it.

BOTTOM TIER

5. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed these two a lot. But WAYNES WORLD is over 15 years ago. Is it a classic? I think so — this fan calls it ex-cellent! But I'm not sure for how many others it causes the same elation.
6. NED FLANDERS. Again, I'm a Simpsons fan, so I'm more than hi-diddly-o-kay with this one. But there are plenty of people for whom this one won't do much. Jim for instance — I think he'd be able to fill in the letters, but never having seen the Simpsons, what does it do for him?

I started making xws about 10 years ago, and my views on what's "good" and "not" have changed a lot — interesting that my evolution mirrors that of Andrew's. I would have put WAYNES WORLD and SO FAR SO GOOD on top back then. Go figure.

Overall, solid work, with the additional bonuses on SOCIAL IQ and GONDOLA (part of a cable network, ha!) balancing out SASE, SDS, SHA. I appreciated that the juicy middle of the puzzle gave me an opportunity to do some thinking about why certain themeless feature entries shine, and others don't glow quite as brightly.

– puzzle by Andrew J. Ries

Talk about CHUTZPAH! Few constructors dare to dip into quad-stack territory; those 4x10 regions in the SW / NE are so daunting. Triple-stacks are hard enough to get snazzy and smooth. Adding that fourth entry makes them so much harder. Maybe even an order of magnitude.

There are almost always trade-offs necessary to make these quads work. I think there's a case to be made that certain "neutral" words like UNDERSTOOD and SUPPRESSED can be made great via clever clues, but to me, it's hard to compare them to stuff like BEER COOLER, which is both a sizzling entry in its own right, and also has the potential for a great clue.

I'm hesitant to see PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) or worse yet PBRS in a grid, since if you've never had one, you might feel like it's a total guess. But I liked the crossing of PBRS and BEER COOLER.

ULEE not so much …

Similar trade-off in the NE, with BIOL and ATTA holding everything together. I like the balance that Erik struck, both corners showing two gluey short entries and a neutral long entry or two = a very reasonable price for such greatness in CIGAR SHOP / SEASON PASS, and PIED PIPER / CHUPACABRA.

I also appreciated how Erik didn't stop with the two big corners but continued to weave in a lot more long entries — HOTEL BAR crossing MUST BE NICE crossing RENT A COP, for example.

I used to think the SIT N SPIN was a universal thing — I spent much time on one as a kid — but I've had enough people give me head-scratching reactions that I'm not so sure. I wonder if CD DRIVE will elicit similar responses from the kids these days.

Hey dad, what's that shiny circular thing?

(sigh)

I'm generally not a fan of 4x10 constructions because of the trade-offs they require, but today's is one of the better ones I've seen.

– puzzle by Erik Agard

Before you go sending that angry THIS F'IN PUZZLE MAKES NO SENSE! email to me, look at the fixed-up answers below.

Go on; I'll wait.

Get it? [Casting doubt on] isn't CALLINGINTSTION, but CALLING IN(TO QUE)STION, with the TOQUE "dropped" down.

(We've taken the liberty of highlighting the hats below, just in case it's still not clear.)

The first one I hit was THE BOOK O(F EZ)RA, and I embarrassingly thought that THE BOOK OF RA was some Egyptian offshoot of the Bible.

A Bible scholar I'm not!

We've seen plenty of these drop-down themes before, but I liked the discovery of TOQUE in CALLING INTO QUESTION and BERET in CYBERETHICS. Impressive to find five-letter strings within snazzy phrases.

I debated whether this was Sunday-worthy, or if it felt like a weekday puzzle outstaying its welcome.

WHY IT'S BETTER AS A SUNDAY

• I liked what Sam did with some of the crossing answers. Hiding TOQUE in ADD TO QUEUE was fantastic. FEZ in SAFE ZONE, too. Those types of long crossers would be much harder to pull off in a 15x15 weekday.
• A weekday puzzle would need AT THE DROP OF A HAT in the grid as a revealer, and since each themer requires something dropping down, you'd only be able to fit in three hats (or risk causing serious compromises). Nice to have the diversity of five hat types.

WHY IT'S BETTER AS A WEEKDAY

• Once you figure out what's going on, the trick might feel repetitive.

Ultimately, I think it would have been better shrinkified to a 15x15 grid.

Even though the theme itself didn't hold my attention throughout the entire solve, I enjoyed enough of the bonuses, a ton of stuff in ASTROPOP LEGO BLOCK CRAB LEG IMPOUND LOT BUNDLE UP. Helped keep up my interest; well worth the minor prices of ENCE ESTE SABE etc. It's a very tough technical execution, and Sam did it well.

– puzzle by Sam Ezersky

★ Now, this is what I call a gateway puzzle! Interesting and easy to comprehend theme + nice extras + smooth fill = oh so accessible to newer solvers. I'd happily give this one to people just getting started doing the NYT crossword.

I've seen the JACKS theme done in other venues, but I couldn't find it in the NYT archives. Plus, the HIJACKS — or HI, JACKS! — revealer is so much fun. It elevates the concept from the other implementations I've seen.

Hopefully, you aren't doing this crossword on a plane, though …

I had a slight pause with Jack RUBY, given his notorious place in history. But I couldn't find any other JACKs whose last names are so easily disguisable. Like Brian, I might have gone with Jack FROST — Jack SPARROW is a fictional character so there's no perfect consistency with Jack LONDON and Jack BLACK anyway — perhaps FROST / NIXON as a fourth themer?

Ultimately though, I respect their theme set choice. Plus, who doesn't like RUBY SLIPPERS!

I like what Brian and Andrea did with the grid. It's at 78 words, the max allowable, but they still managed to work in LATIN LOVER, EXTRA EXTRA, SURE CAN, ATHLETE, without making the grid feel chock full of short answers or too sectioned off.

Superb work. It's nearly everything I want out of a Monday puzzle.

– puzzle by Brian Thomas and Andrea Carla Michaels

Ha, the FASHION POLICE imagined as fabulous clothing for criminal investigations! HOLDING TANK as a tank-top worn by a "Village People" style cop? I love it.

I hitched on the grammar of the others, though — the ING of HOLDING TANK makes it perfect. Not so much for DUST JACKET. If the real-life phrase had been DUSTING JACKET, it'd have been equally perfect. But alas, books are covered by DUST JACKETs, no ING.

FOLLOW SUIT … because I think about contract bridge a ridiculous amount of time, the phrase was immediately apparent to me. I'm not sure what percentage of solvers will understand this base phrase, but I'm almost positive that it's lower than for HOLDING TANK or TRAILBLAZER.

In the end, though, I put my grammatical qualms aside, because the notion of cops going down the runway as they run in baddies is so much fun.

Given that this is a Tuesday theme, fairly easy to understand, I'd have preferred going up to 76 or even 78 words. Ross's 74-word grid is wide-open enough that he was bound to need some trade-offs to make it work. In general, I think educated solvers ought to at least recognize ALONZO Mourning, Chrissy TEIGEN, the RARITAN river. And maybe they should be able to figure out that a sub could experience EMERSION (out of the RARITAN)?

But so much in one grid might create some solving frustration. Along with AARONS, ATA, ALEE … I might have chosen to break up the SW and NE corners a bit.

I did so much appreciate TRUE SELF, BAD OMEN, D STUDENTS, and COCKATOO, though. Along with a hilarious clue for RODE UP — referencing underwear making its way north — there was a lot to enjoy.

– puzzle by Ross Trudeau

We've seen a lot of ANAGRAM puzzles in the NYT, including ones where the anagram describes the entry, but these particular ones were fresh and new to me. "Bag manager" is apt for a GARBAGEMAN. And a SYCOPHANT sure can be described by "Acts phony." It's too bad that the "a" is necessary for "A trails nut" being a NATURALIST, but that's minor.

I did hitch on THE HILTON. "Hint: hotel" is apt, yes. But how does it fit with the other three? I'd have much preferred a fourth "profession," or at least a word that describes a person's behavior, like SYCOPHANT. THE HILTON gave me a jarring feeling of "this one is not like the others."

Some great clues helped elevate the solving experience:

What could possibly measure miles in meters (besides people demanding that we switch to the metric system)? Ah, CABS have meters for this. Great misdirect.

[Mother that might have a beard] is definitely a GOAT. I couldn't have possibly first thought of the mothers that I know. Ahem.

Why can't I have a place where people yell "JEFF!" when I enter, a la NORM from "Cheers"? Funny to think about NORM being the "norm" of average guys.

Some nice bonuses to offset crossword glue — GOGO BAR with OENO, SPREAD EM with IT AT and TAI. I prefer slightly cleaner gridding work, but I can see Seth's perspective. IT AT and TAI are at least easily gettable for solvers; why not pay those prices for the colorful SPREAD EM?

Solid idea to use anagrams to describe their entry. It would have stood out much more for me — especially considering how many of these there are (calling Anagrammatron!) — if the four themers had been more tightly linked.

– puzzle by Seth A. Abel

I love it when constructors break crossword rules, for a purposeful reason. Having two-letter words is a big no-no, so I laughed when encountering the two two-letter words today — NO and NO. Wait! Duplicating words in a grid is another big NO NO. Ha, that's doubly clever!

Humor is so subjective. Removing the NOs from famous phrases wasn't quite a LAUGHING MATTER for me, as the results weren't different enough from their base phrases. I get that they are opposite because they're missing the NO. But MAN IS AN ISLAND was the only one where meanings vastly changed. I liked Ruth's original themers much better, especially ROOM TO SWING A CAT!

(There have been two recent puzzles riffing on NO MAN IS AN ISLAND, so I would have loved to see more space between those and today's.)

I'm not a huge fan of trying to go down to low word counts for Thursday puzzles. I get why Will encourages this — it makes the puzzle much harder to solve, which is appropriate for a Thursday — but the price of ANCY ALEE ANON SST NHRA SYST YSER ROOD … no laughing matter, indeed.

I did appreciate the bonuses of SCENIC AREA and FINEST HOUR. RACE DAY and ON A WHIM, too. But breaking up FINEST HOUR at the S might have been a finer choice, allowing for cleaner gridwork. I bet it'd also allow for some more jazziness in the AMOUNTS and LARGEST slots.

It's a neat concept, breaking not just one but two crossword rules, perfectly. I would have liked more audacity in the theme though — perhaps taking out NOs from middles of entries in more surprising ways? And a little less audacity in the gridwork.

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

I'm a big fan of two feature entries: UNION CARD and WHERE'S WALDO. The former got a lovely clue playing on "labor party," making for such a nice "click" when I finally got it.

The latter might have hit me more strongly than others, being a children's book writer. I've read close to 1000 middle grade / young adult books in the past ten years, and yet it was the ubiquitous WHERE'S WALDO that I couldn't locate in my memory banks. How appropriate!

72-words, the max allowable for themelesses — not daring, but still fine if executed very well. Standard triple-stacks-in-each-corner … except for one major difference.

Look at the NE vs. the SE. Both are sort of choked off from the rest of the grid, so they might seem about as easy to fill. But see how the SE has to "turn the corner" with BELLI / ARDEN / GEORG, and then keeps on going with BODY BAG? Makes it much, much harder than the NE.

Not surprising then, to see the killer cross of HULLO / UREY. I couldn't remember the spelling of Harold UREY (okay, this physics nerd sheepishly admits that he didn't know him), so HALLO / AREY seemed like the best option. A constructor's job is to set up solvers for a win — I think this is a fail.

I think solvers ought to at least hear of POLSKA kielbasa, but I'd be sympathetic to complaints about that UREY POLSKA BELLI GEORG concentration.

The NE came out much better, although Steve VAI = whoa. The entry hasn't been used since the Maleskan era in 1979, and every time back then, it was clued to the effect of "Liberian native." Huh.

Some nice moments in my solve, the clue for HANDS in particular — [They operate around the clock] had to be PARENTS OF TWO TODDLERS CLINGING ONTO MY LEGS, right? But overall, I would have liked a smoother grid, especially given the mostly standard themeless layout.

ADDED NOTE: I read Pete's note with curiosity. After studying the grid, I asked him if his wife's name is Dorothy? Nope. An hour of searching later, I finally saw LIONS, TIGERS, and BEARS — OH MY! Fun mini-theme, although I think the effect would have been much stronger if DOROTHY had been in the center of the grid, not unlike another of Pete's hidden themes. I would have forgiven a lot more of the grid trade-offs, too.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

I like joon's layout. Most themelesses using sets of long entries interlocking in the middle have problems, either

1. Not having much oomph in the corners, or
2. Restricting the solving flow around said corners to work in extra pizzazz.

Note how joon kept the four corners wide open, answers flowing around, and still managed to work great stuff like ADULTING, ZOOTOPIA, YOSEMITE. Takes a lot of skill (and time) to make this happen.

I also appreciated the trio of SPLASHY TRASHY MEATY. Felt like a spoof ad for Arby's. We have the meats!

With the very difficult-to-fill grid, some trade-offs are expected. I'm glad that joon avoided almost all crossword glue (EOE, GRO, YSER pretty minor). But with a tough name in each corner — NADINE / EVONNE / ARNESS / PEIRCE — it felt like a lot of what some people will call "trivia."

Along with some tough vocab — INCEPT SUBORNS ESPIAL — I think this one is well placed on the hardest day of the NYT crossweek. It's all fair, but it's certainly not easy.

Not a ton of SPLASHY entries in the middle, BEER GOOGLES and GOING STEADY the exceptions. But I like how the clues elevated the otherwise boring NEGOTIATION and CORRECTIONS. The former is perfect, no telltale question mark to give away the game. Who doesn't know some dullard who talks about their job on and on? In this case, "talks" is the noun form. Perfect!

The question mark in [Slip covers?] did alert me right away that something was up. But the fantastic repurposing of "slip covers" was well worth it.

– puzzle by Joon Pahk

I haven't been so enthralled by a piece of fill in a long time — PASCAL'S WAGER drew me in to the point where I stopped working on the puzzle to go read up (and up and up and up) on it. How is it that this math and sci dork only vaguely remembered it?

Makes so much sense that a rational person ought to strive to believe in God. Probability theory doesn't lie!

I also enjoyed today's revealer; UNIONIZED parsed as UN-ION-IZED. Great way to hint at removing the ION strings from base phrases for kooky results.

Tough to figure out how it applied to the themers where ION was added, though. I get that the clue is trying its hardest to *sort of* make sense of how UN-ION-IZED isn't applicable to the ones in the top half. But it's not spot-on, not by a mile. Too bad ADDION isn't a real word. ADDITION so nearly works!

Given how many words can become other words by removing ION, I would have preferred for all of the themers to be UN-ION-IZED.

Then again, I can see how David might have wanted to do something more interesting than a simple letter removal theme, especially with easy to work with letters like ION.

Perhaps the best compromise of all would have been to remove the confusing UNIONIZED "revealer" in the middle and just go with the other six themers. A title riffing on both removal and addition could have explained it all, with much less confusion. Maybe something like IONIC MOBILITY.

(In case you didn't know what WITH ONE ACCORD meant, like I didn't, it's "in a united way.")

(No, not inside a United Way building.)

(*rimshot*)

– puzzle by David Alfred Bywaters

Day 1 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For.

What, you were thinking something different?

Puzzles add so much to my life. Sometimes I worry that in my anal desire to microanalyze puzzles from a technical standpoint, I come across as too negative. So I'm going to forgo that this week and simply tell constructors what about their puzzle made me happy.

Today, I loved BEQ's choices of themers. With hidden word themes, especially ones using the same word, you have to do something special to make your puzzle stand out. Three fresh, snazzy theme answers will go a long ways toward that. HYBRID ENGINE, KALAHARI DESERT, GENDER IDENTITY? Yes, yes, and yes!

I also appreciated how BEQ progressively moved the location of his word split. RID/E to RI/DE to R/IDE is beautifully elegant. It even echoes the theme, with the RIDE sort of moving, as if it were hitching a ride.

Great revealer, too. You need to have some entry explaining what's going on. Otherwise, a Monday solver could easily miss the cleverosity. RIDE literally hitching a ride in the themers is perfect.

– puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Day 2 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For.

I'm thankful for the solid products that Bruce has given us over the past year. He's become so good with his gridding skills, never afraid to put in the time to work, rework, and polish his grids, to the point where I'm often just nitpicking at minor faults.

It's been a pleasure to follow his journey, all his hard work paying off in spades.

Also great to get such a pleasant theme, O TANNENBAUM also known as "Oh, Christmas Tree." Get it, a Christmas tree festooned with GARLANDs, (candy) CANEs, an ANGEL, and a STAR?

Love that clue for ADULTHOOD, too. It's a rare treat that we get such a clever notion this early in the week. It had me thinking about a step above the minor leagues in baseball for a long time.

And that clue for WENT SOUTH! It's referring to Santa heading south from the North Pole, but it made me smile, thinking about various Christmas movies where things go south for Santa before the hero steps in. Now I'm going to have to rewatch "Elf"!

And to all, a good night!

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

★ Day 3 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For

Howard gave me such an easy job today. Let's start with the theme — so clever! Of course, Nicolas CAGE should have starred in ANIMAL HOUSE. Why didn't the casting folks consider Tom CRUISE to headline FANTASTIC VOYAGE?

And my favorite, BEETLEJUICE. It took me a second to figure this one out, but of course, some VW Beetles run on diesel fuel. It's an outstanding set of leaps, to think about BEETLEJUICE to Beetle juice (gas) to diesel to Vin Diesel to THIS IS A GREAT CROSSWORD THEME!

Stellar gridwork, too. This is nearly everything I want from a technical perspective. When you have five themers, it's usually best not to go wild on the grid, keeping it at a conservative 78 or perhaps 76 words. Make sure you have a couple of strong bonuses — ADULTING along with PATENT, HANGAR, EMOJI, GINSU all help that cause — and don't let your short fill trip up solvers with weirdness. Check, check, and check!

Bravo, Howard, and thanks for the huge uplift today!

– puzzle by Howard Barkin

Day 4 of WTF? Week at XWI! I love having the chance to tell people What I'm Thankful For.

Today I'm thankful for ML's perseverance. She comes up with some of the toughest concepts of any collaborator, and she doesn't give up when they prove to require dozens of hours to iterate. Never say die!

This grid was one of the top ten hardest 15x15s I've ever worked on — maybe even top five — and I nearly threw in the towel on four separate occasions. Rebus squares are easy to work with, but two in close proximity is asking for trouble.

Five?

FIVE?

I almost said no right from the get-go after I heard that number!

It's so satisfying to have worked through the grinding process and come out with a grid that we're both happy with. I'm so glad that ML included me in this concept — it's a great feeling to have all that hard work lead to a publication.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Jeff Chen