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Great April Fool's joke, gettable for newbs and entertaining for longtime solvers. [Tea set?] is literally a set of 15 Ts, to go with a literal G-string, and a Beeline (B-line). At first I wanted a fourth themer to flesh things out, but the joke might have gotten old if SEA LANE or Prow (p-row) had been employed.

Love the bonuses in the fill. LGBT FLAG isn't as familiar as RAINBOW FLAG, but it's still good. EARWORM, THE THING IS …, RAGING BULL, GAME BALL, EN MASSE — now that's the way to take advantage of low theme density. If you're only going to use three long themers, you owe it to the solver to jam-pack the rest of the grid with greatness, and Joel did exactly that.

My one big pause: GINSBURG / ULEE / EBBETS / BAE. These three crossings could all be iffy for newer solvers; too high a chance of tripping someone up — ELEE (as in Robert) might feel even more correct than ULEE to those who haven't seen the movie.

(ULEE has become an inside joke among constructors, super helpful with its common letters, especially the terminal Es, but not that well known outside of crosswords.)

I get that the adjacent downs of GINSBURG and GRAY BLUE are nice, but I'd have much preferred breaking up GRAY BLUE to smooth out the south section. That might have led to replacing DOGES, too, a toughie for an early-week offering.

That said, the puzzle is overall an amusingly jokey offering, a tough task when April 1^st falls on a Monday. It's so hard to aim at a broad audience including a huge range from newbs to speed solvers, but Joel did well with this theme. If there hadn't been some newb-unfriendly blips in the lower half of the grid, I'd have given this one some POW! consideration.

– puzzle by Joel Fagliano

The NYT celeb series continues! I watched the first season of OitNB, and Nicky was my favorite character. It's a shame that this crossword didn't relate to her, but considering Nicky's … ahem … colorful personality, it wouldn't have been appropriate for the NYT.

ALL / THAT / JAZZ referring to the movie about BOB / FOSSE, the choreographer. These types of "first words hide a saying" themes live and die on 1.) how snazzy their theme phrases are, and 2.) the impact of the a-ha moment when the solver connects the words together.

ALL FLASH NO CASH is a great way to hide ALL.

THAT CANT BE RIGHT is a solid colloquial phrase, too.

I did hitch at JAZZ UP THE PLACE, as I wanted it so badly to be JAZZ UP THE JOINT. Even more appropriate given the setting for OitNB!

I didn't get a fantastic a-ha upon realizing ALL THAT JAZZ was the theme, mostly because I didn't immediately recall who BOB / FOSSE was. It works fine, but I might have preferred a revealer that meant "and related things," like ODDS AND ENDS or ET CETERA or best yet, YADA YADA YADA.

With such little constraints — ALL / THAT / JAZZ and BOB / FOSSE the only fixed requirements — Deb and Natasha had a lot of flexibility in their grid. I loved what they did with YOGA POSE, TZATZIKI, even BROCCOLI and COP OUTS. That's a lot of bonuses to PROFFER!

I wasn't sure about ZUCK, but perhaps that's what the kids are calling him these days? Generally good gridwork otherwise, just some minor dings in CTR ICH MEIN MTA. And yeah, MAHRE.

With this celeb series, I love when the crossword riffs on something specific to the celeb. But overall, a solid crossword with some great phrases worked in.

– puzzle by Natasha Lyonne and Deb Amlen

I thought for a long time about how these four SEARCH RESULTS might be related (other than being results of searches, of course). Aren't there thousands of things that have been found over the centuries? Why these four? Why the RABIES VACCINE, not the POLIO VACCINE, for instance? The search for URANUS and not PLANET X? Why not all the finds in chemistry, treasure hunting, lost manuscripts, etc.?

Theme qualms aside, I liked Ross's gridwork. GOES ALL IN is fantastic. Toss in some TUXEDO AMAZON MOO SHU OR WHAT and it's even jazzier. With only minor gluey bits of the ALII ROI UNE ilk, it's well crafted.

I uncovered GIFT GUIDE pretty early and wondered how it could be a SEARCH RESULT … ah! It's so tough to find presents for my niece and nephew. Of course, a GIFT GUIDE would help that constant SEARCH.

Took me all too long to realize that it wasn't related to the theme. That can be an issue with long fill in the across direction. It's tough — URANUS is such a shortie that any long fill will tend to overshadow it. But GOES ALL IN and GIFT GUIDE are such juicy phrases, they'd be tough for most constructors to resist.

It's usually better to work your long fill into the vertical answers, but that's a tough ask for today's layout. Given the awkward length of the revealer — SEARCH RESULTS is 13 letters, forcing black square placements and pinching all the themers toward the middle — it's hard enough to get the grid to work, period.

In the end, I'm okay with Ross's gridding choices, but I'm curious if long down fill could have been possible. Perhaps GOES ALL IN and GIFT GUIDE could have been broken up, and REF and OR WHAT joined to result in some great piece of long fill, resulting in an equivalent amount of zazz.

"List puzzles" tend to feel too loosey-goosey, and I'd have liked an extra layer to tighten this one up. Could have been all major scientific discoveries, all archaeology, all discoveries with the initials S R, all discoveries in an important year, whatever. Any extra layer would have helped the puzzle stand out.

– puzzle by Ross Trudeau

★ My admiration for this puzzle grew as I studied it. (And as Jim politely nudged me.)

At first, it didn't seem to have enough of a reason to be a rebus. There have been so many of them over the years that you need a great raison d'etre. Couldn't you do the same concept with single letters?

(Well, no. SQUARE ONE is a single square. So if you're going to use repeated words, not letters …)

Ah. Well then. Why those particular phrases? Granted, they are all colorful; jazzy. But there are dozens of them out there.

(Besides the ones Lewis mentioned, what other ones can you think of?)

Huh? LOTS OF THEM! Like … uh … TIME AFTER TIME! Take that, Canadia!

(Okay. What else?)

I have MANY others. I just don't feel like revealing them. What others do YOU have?

(I didn't say I had any.)

BAH, NO WONDER WE'RE BUILDING A WALL!

(You know that Canada is to the north of America, and—)

Double bah, back to the puzzle! I appreciate when rebuses introduce fresh phrases that aren't usually seen in 15x15 grids. Awesome use of a 20-letter one, YOU CANT TAKE IT WITH YOU, to match BACK TO SQUARE ONE. DO AS I SAY NOT AS I DO is something I tell newer constructors all the time. And BOND … JAMES BOND is so evocative.

And great bonuses. SNAKE OIL matching ANACONDA, plus CONEHEAD, ON SILENT, BAIL BOND, YES WE CAN, TWO TERM. I had reservations about the JAMES BOND / BAIL BOND dupe, but they're different enough meanings that I let it slide.

As for KOPF NGO ONEA SALA TRE, they collectively made for not as elegant a solve as I like, but it's a reasonable trade-off for all that sparkling long fill.

A wealth of clever wordplay clues, too. [House rules may not apply here] for the SENATE? So innocent, so wickedly smart.

It's rare that I give a POW! to a rebus puzzle, as rebuses generally feel a bit lazy to me; constructors not able to come up with good single-letter ideas. So it's high praise for Lewis. Strong idea and entertaining solve.

– puzzle by Lewis Rothlein

This type of pyramid pinwheel grid is so tough to work with. Just as with the last one and almost all the ones before it, trade-offs will be necessary. In usual themeless grids, trade-offs often come in the form of short gluey bits. But this type of grid, with not that many short slots, will usually show its strain in the form of mid-length entries that make you tilt your head and squint.

I love so much about that middle section. HIPSTER CRED is so apt for Seattle, a town full of software engineers and BETA RELEASEs galore. How many better team names are there besides the RAJIN' CAJUNS? TRIAL JUDGES as ones "going through the motions" is fantastic.

But IRRUPT ... huh. Sorry, Ryan!

SNERD?

And KNEECAPPING is no doubt colorful. I'd prefer for my 15 minutes of entertainment not to be so red, though.

The assets more than offset the liabilities. But how many times have I heard a solver grumbling, judging a puzzle by its oddest word?

I appreciate that Ryan left his grid wide-open, multiple ways to work into each corner. That does make filling more technically challenging, though. See: AKEELAH SO RARE SICARIO ALINER HEW TO.

Overall, there were many feature entries that made me smile — so many great long phrases in that middle section! And I've learned to tamp down that part of me that discounts a puzzle because of its worst entry/entries. But it does take effort.

– puzzle by Ryan McCarty

Quick! How many of you out there can say the name of Big Bird's wooly friend? I thought so! And doubly quick, how many of you can spell it?

S N U F F … E? A? L?

Drat.

Glad that Ned was careful with his crossing answers. I hitched on the -AGUS ending, wondering if it could be -IGUS crossing FLIM. But that seemed flimsy.

Thank goodness I know IGA from crosswords — I hope others weren't baffled, as IGA seems to be regional. Ultimately, if you're doing the NYT Saturday crossword, chances are you've run into IGA in the crossword before.

One crazily-spelled entry in a crossword, I can handle. Two? On top of each other? Hatchi matchi!

I remembered that LIPPI is a painter, but the guy's first name? FRAFILIPPO? It's as if his parents evilly tented their fingers and roared out a maniacal laugh as they imagined the gnashing of future solvers' teeth. Parsing that string seemed like it should be ___ LIPPO LIPPI. But FRAFI didn't seem right.

(Turns out that he did go by LIPPO LIPPI. A big time-saver when your full titled name is FRA' FILIPPO LIPPI!)

Devious clue for one of the answers running across those two long entries, [Innocent, e.g.]. I had the starting P and ending E, and struggled to figure out a synonym for innocent. Ah! That's POPE Innocent. Such a relief to figure that out and finally nail down those middle two letters.

Another wickedly clever clue in LETS. Think of "reserve" as "re-serve"!

I enjoyed the pairing of NOT A BAD IDEA … BUT WILL IT WORK? I wasn't hot on the latter by itself, but there's something cool about two adjacent long entries, connected. The first time I saw something like that, I was blown away.

All in all, some great feature entries, but this type of grid doesn't allow for much juice outside of the big north and south stacks. For instance, NUTS ABOUT, TWIN PAC, ALATEEN … they're fine, but I wasn't nuts about them.

– puzzle by Ned White

In my early crossword construction days, I was so proud of making an M W out of black squares, hinting at the M* W* theme. But not a lot of friends actually noticed it.

Initialisms have been mined for so many crosswords over the years, including S O S itself. I like that Pete tried to go above and beyond, using a grid pattern that looked like S O S — I'd give it a 7 out of 10 on the recognition scale. If the central O had been more closed-up, it would have been unmissable.

Tough to close up the O any more, though. Perhaps "filling it in" with grayed-out squares, and having those three-letter answers be OOO? [Winning tic-tac-toe line] and [Ghostly moan]?

Amazing that Pete got the visual to work. The S can't get any smaller without creating two-letter words, and you can't move them any closer to the edges of the grid. Fascinating that it appears to be a singular solution.

So hard to fill around the S O S. A lesser constructor might have added black squares jutting off the S's, in order to help break up the surrounding fill. I like that Pete avoided this, working in sparkly goodness like KANSAS STATE, RADICCHIO, EASTER WEEK, OKAY SURE, etc.

There is a glut of gluey short fill — ABT AGRO ASON EDD EEC ENE ETO just to start — but given the technical constraints, it's understandable. Filling a grid like this is as difficult as filling a low-word-count themeless.

I would have liked something less straightforward fpr the theme. It'd have been fun to brainstorm a more clever and fun angle — maybe playing on the Morse code for SOS — DOT DOT DOT / DASH DASH DASH / DOT DOT DOT?

It's a neat grid, and I do like the phrases SNAKE OIL SALESMAN and SAME OLD STORY. But I wish the theme had been as neat. A bit too much like his previous Sunday initialisms puzzle, too.

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

When Tracy mentioned this idea to me, I thought there was no way that there'd be enough DEER synonyms.

And if there were, there surely couldn't be a way to cross them in pairs, through a shared letter.

And if we could somehow make that work, there'd be zero chance that all of the synonyms would be containable in solid phrases.

And if by holy hell all THAT managed to be doable — fat chance, I said — there was NO FRICKIN WAY that it could be laid out in a crossword grid.

As it turns out, we found more than enough synonyms, BUCK the only one we weren't able to use because it shared no common letters with any other synonym. (Sorry, BUCK ROGERS!)

They managed to cross into pairs.

What? All six had solid phrases like FAWN OVER?

BUT. But but BUT! There was no way we'd possibly lay out the crossing pairs — plus DEER XING — in a grid.

The great goddess Crucivera is cruel! Gnashing of teeth!

I hate giving up on an idea when it's that close to working, so I tried dozens of arrangements using normal symmetry, and then dozens more with mirror symmetry. Finally, I hit upon this layout, which seemed to be the only one possible one.

Forgive my blasphemy, oh great and glorious Crucivera! I will sacrifice many pencils to you.

Tracy did a wonderful job of filling, especially in the SW corner. We had pegged this as a Monday theme, accessible to most anyone, so we wanted to make the fill as newb-friendly as possible. In some iterations though, I had put awesome (to me) material in the big bottom corners, proud of all the juice. But looking back on it, much of it was too tough for newbs. Tracy helped us dial it back, favoring smoothness over going gonzo. I learned a lot from her Monday approach.

– puzzle by Tracy Gray and Jeff Chen

★ Whoa! I've seen tons of puzzles with backward entries. Puzzles with dual clues. Puzzles with all the across answers having something in common. Puzzles with words reading one thing one way and another thing another way.

But I've never seen anything quite like this. Elements of all of the above stitched together brilliantly.

Such a clever idea to give the solver two clues for each across entry, leaving it up to them to figure out which applies in the forward direction, and which in the reverse. I've seen most of these "emordnilap" words before (emordnilap = palindrome backward), but the notion of clueing both the regular word and its emordnilap is a great out-of-the-box idea.

My solve was much slower than for a regular Tuesday, and my enjoyment flagged through the middle, as the trick got a bit old. But after finishing, I had to sit back and admire the concept and construction. So, so, so difficult to get every single across answer to work this way.

There were plenty of gluey spots, not just ANART EPT SSS REPUT DIALLED, but backward stuff like RETAR. The overall impact was so strong that I was easily able to brush those aside. Heavy crossword glue in the service of a great theme is fine by me.

It's so rare that a puzzle stands out as something entirely new. This is one of them.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

There was a guy on my Ultimate frisbee team we codenamed "binary fingers." You'd hope that there would be a better story behind it, but it was because he loved showing everyone how to count in binary on his fingers. Thumb is the 1s digit, index finger is the 2s, middle finger is the 4s, ring finger the 8s, pinky the 16s. For instance, you stick up ring finger (8) + index (2) + thumb (1) to make 11 (8 + 2 + 1). See?

Then he'd joke about giving you the number 4.

(Think about what that would look like …)

Man, we were dorks.

I liked how Alan combined some tried and true ideas to make something a little new. Phrases starting with numbers + homophones + doubling, through a good revealer in DOUBLE HEADER? That works.

The grid had some nice material in it, too. Some COLD ONES, the UNIVERSE, BITMAP, DO-GOODER, SEQUIOAS. Strong bonuses!

That almost made up for all the gluey bits and the odd longer material. Almost. I can let some NFLER ERG OVO VUE slide. Add in EGESTS though. S-CLASS. IN AN HOUR?

The problem — all too common these days — stems from too low a word count. Not a surprise to find out that this one clocked in at 70 words, much lower than usual for a weekday puzzle. I'd like some DO GOODERs to help me do good by encouraging constructors not to do this anymore. Think of how much smoother, how much more elegant the SW / NE corners would have been if they had been broken up.

A stellar grid can help elevate a theme that's just run of the mill. But it's all too easy to go astray and have the opposite effect.

– puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld

I like it when a puzzle makes me feel smug. Of course, the poet who wrote "Walden" isn't pronounced with a long O in the first syllable! Nor is "collide"! Of course, Clyde Barrow is the guy from Bonnie and Clyde! Of course, the sound added into these phrases is the "schwa"!

Ahem. Did I sell it?

Four consistent sound additions, contrary to my initial impression. Not sure why I imagined COLLIDE pronounced as in "colloid." Looks like I've taken too much chemistry for my own good.

Looks like I've also been pronouncing "colloid" wrong all these years. Sigh.

Here's a case where I'm okay with a constructor going down to 72 words in attempt to make the solving experience more interesting. A low word count allows for a whole lot of long slots, and that can mean "fresher" feeling fill. It's not every day that you run into DRAFT CHOICE, HAVE IN STORE, HORSE CAR. And since BEQ managed to keep his crossword glue to a minimum — IRAE, RTE, maybe MEADE too — it presents a not-your-every-day solving experience.

It's still not my preferred style, though, as "draft pick" sounds so much better than DRAFT CHOICE, and HAVE IN STORE is more neutral than exciting. Also, RELEARNS. I bet the grid would have been more colorful and fun at 74 or 76 words, each of the long slots used to more of its potential.

I enjoyed BAROQUE BREAD and THOREAU SHADE (from "throw shade"), but the other two didn't do much for me. PARADE FOR RAIN sounds so bizarre, as does COLLIDE BARROW. I did appreciate the consistency BEQ applied to each of the sound additions, even if that wasn't immediately obvious to this dunderhead.

– puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Breath of fresh air to hear Howard's approach. "What was your seed entry" is the question I get asked most often about my themelesses, and I can almost always recall the seed immediately. I can't even imagine how Howard used this freewheeling style — maybe it's like when people tell you to "be the ball" in baseball or golf (and you nod politely and then strain as if you were pooping so that you look like you're working hard at following their unintelligible instructions.)

He ended up with some great long fill, EXTRA CRISPY (yum!) crossing I HATE TO ASK … the highlights for me. I'd happy seed a themeless with either. STREET FOOD was a treat too — I'm a huge fan of bars that have rotating food trucks outside.

There were a lot of single-word entries, which often don't get much love from editors — it's so much easier to inject bursts of color using multi-word answers. Things like OBSESSES and RESORTS aren't often going to do much for the quality of a solve unless there's a wickedly clever clue that accompanies them.

But what a fun fact about CHIPOTLE peppers. I had no idea that one of my favorite tastes originates from a smoked jalapeno.

One with many hairy legs? Come on, we all thought of Europe, didn't we? Zing! Not that there's anything wrong with that! Okay, it's the TARANTULA. (Excuse me as I shudder — tarantulas are creepy.)

And it's not always the case that multi-word entries are more colorful than single-worders. I'd take SHOWPIECE any day over AT THE MOMENT.

A couple of clues elevated the solving experience. Best one was "19th-century author whose works are still read word for word." As in ROGET's Thesaurus! I'm not entirely sure if that means his editions have never been updated, or there's clever wordplay about words being substituted for synonymous words. But either way, I like it.

Overall, a bit more crossword glue than I like in a 72-worder — ANAS BAHN ILES RNS — and not as much color. But still, a good effort.

– puzzle by Howard Barkin

It was just a couple of years ago that Debbie wrote to me, asking for advice on creating NYT-quality crosswords. Look how far she's come! Great to see her second Saturday puzzle — it's so rare for women to land that Saturday slot these days, given 1.) the intense competition, and 2.) the sheer number of men submitting themelesses. Well done!

I loved so many entries in this one; so colorful. TRANSYLVANIA as a place where you might go out to get a bite. The NOTORIOUS RBG. (She's a serious badass!) A refreshing-sounding drink called a SEA BREEZE. And literal color in the GREEN GOBLIN. I don't know that I'd call him Spider-man's archenemy — I'd go with Doc Ock myself — but there's no doubt that Gobby is right up there.

I appreciated the care Debbie took in avoiding crossword glue. AMAS was the only one that I noticed, and even that is becoming more recognized — Reddit seems to do a ton of Ask Me Anythings these days. (Cluing it to the Latin seems so Maleskan, unfortunately.)

The one area that made me hesitate was proper nouns. It's fine to use a couple, but let's count up the tough ones:

UZO GITA ERTES APGAR AZIZ BIZET

That's starting to feel more like a trivia contest than a crossword. I'd have favored a bit more crossword glue, maybe a partial or something, in order to reduce this count. The AZIZ / UZO crossing was particularly tough. Not sure it's 100% fair; too easily setting up the solver for failure.

But overall, a solid and entertaining Saturday offering, with even some extra bonuses in quality shorties like GONZO, BUSHWA, and ENNUI.

– puzzle by Debbie Ellerin

Back in 2016, I built a 15x15 puzzle using the exact same L/R idea, except with better pairs. Will (Shortz) quickly accepted it in early 2017.

It had been sitting in the queue until a few weeks ago when he sent me a message: Will (Nediger) had recently submitted a Sunday 21x21 version that they couldn't say no to, so they were going to pay me $300 to kill mine. (Normal print fee is $750.)

I was irate at first — what kind of messed up business practice is that?

But then I thought about it from Will (Shortz)'s perspective. Last time he gave an inventory count, he only had 4 Sundays on file. (For other days of the week, he had about 30-50.) That's shockingly low — especially considering that the Sunday puzzle is the NYT's flagship puzzle.

So I figured it'd be better to let it drop. In the long run, I enjoy having puzzles in the NYT. I reasoned that Will and Joel might give me enhanced consideration in accepting future submissions, given today's bitter pill.

Back to the puzzle. When I created my version, I had three things in mind:

1. I wanted long entries, with multiple L/R replacements. I found hundreds of pairs where there was only one L/R difference, so that felt too easy.
2. The concept would get too repetitive over a 21x21, so a 15x15 was 100% the way to go.
3. Pairs had to be clueable as opposites — that's essential to the "mirror" concept. (I'm an identical twin — the evil one, of course.)

One example: COLONELS [Ones at the start of wars] and CORONERS [Ones at the end of wars].

I ended up also using MOLASSES and MORASSES (my only pair with a single L/R difference), but I clued them as [Causes of some good sticky situations] and [Causes of some bad sticky situations]. Much more interesting than today's clues.

I do like one of Will (Nediger)'s pairs a lot: GO TOPLESS and GO TO PRESS features a fun parsing difference. The rest didn't do much for me.

And I did appreciate the gridwork challenge. I had a hard time working with a 15x15 using no other Ls or Rs in the grid. Big kudos to Will (Nediger) for his smooth fill today.

My puzzle recently got accepted by the WSJ, if you want to compare and contrast.

I've worked in corporate America for a long time. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's just business, nothing personal.

– puzzle by Will Nediger

This puzzle belongs in the NYT's celeb series, and given a high ranking within it.

No wait, hear me out! Jill and I recently worked with an estate planner recommended to us by Sam. Everything was going normally until the planner asked us how we got his name.

"SAM DONALDSON?!" he said in a fanboy squee. "THE SAM DONALDSON?"

Then he got up and did a little happy dance. And screamed, "THAT GUY'S A ROCK STAR!"

He proceeded to tell us all about how Sam commands rooms, turning dull material like tax codes and legal loopholes into Vegas-like performances.

When he finished, Jill and I looked to each other in awe. It was like finding out your friend is secretly King of some not-so-small Polynesian island.

The celeb series works best when the featured person does a puzzle related to their profession or something they're well-known for. This one was perfect for a tax professor, the letters IRS reformed into the five other possible configurations. Solid wordplay.

Patrick and Sam did a great job selecting colorful themers, too, with all six possible combinations breaking the I R S sequence across at least two words. Perfect.

Not so perfect was some of the fill. Not a surprise, given the theme density. Stacking two themers in a theme-dense puzzle often makes the layout easier, but in today's case, I think it wasn't the right choice. Check out how GANGES RIVER sits atop TENNIS RACKET, for instance. With the black squares in the middle forcing a big NE corner, we get ERE and the audit-worthy SSR, just to start the puzzle.

Toss in SSTS EINE SRTA LBO (leveraged buyout), and I couldn't give it POW! consideration, no matter how fun the theme or its connection to Sam. Especially on a Monday — newb solvers shouldn't be forced to stare at both SSR and SSTS, wondering why crosswords hate normal people so much.

What a shame. Loved the concept, the themers, and the perfect timing / perfect person to pull it off. A bit more finesse and it woulda been a POW! contender.

– puzzle by Patrick Blindauer and Samuel A. Donaldson

I misspell SOBRIQUET all the time (for some reason, "sobrioquet" looks better). And now it turns out that I‘ve been mispronouncing it too. I was up in arms at first, because Bing's dictionary gives an audio, rhyming with "etiquette." But I think that's just Bing.

Zing! (Apologies to MSFT Bing! workers everywhere, who work so hard to make such an inferior product. Double zing!)

Google's dictionary pronounces it with an ending K sound — matching the written pronunciation in both dictionaries. Ahem. BING!!!

That's all a long way of saying that my early-week "Name that Theme" game took an unexpected turn. I guessed the theme in two themers. Then I hit my ridiculous SOBRIQUET tangent.

ARE YOU OKAY, Mary Kay? How about you, SIR KAY, from the Arthurian legends? How does it feel to be passed over by some guy named MURRAY THE K? If it helps, SPECIAL K and VITAMIN K are lodging similar protests.

I'd have been okay with just four themers, since 1.) the K rhymes get old pretty quick, and 2.) five themers strained the gridwork.

Now, I did like a lot of Gary's mid-length stuff. NEURONS / TAPIOCA, BEQUEST, NO SIREE, ATHEISM, all solid bonuses! RACE ME is a price to pay for that BEQUEST, but I like how it was clued, in a "race me" way that newbs could figure out.

Check out the south region though, where MURRAY THE K and ARE YOU OKAY overlap. Tough to find a four-letter entry that works in between them, and O SAY isn't great fill to begin with. Then, that forces RYANS, another dab of crossword glue. Top it off with ENE / SSW and I'd look to try a different grid layout.

Rhyming themes / different ways of spelling out a certain sound have been done so many times that it would have been great to do something fresher here. How about riffing on SPECIAL K — and having that K as the only K in the entire grid? Not sure how to clue that, but a twist like that could have raised the theme to a new level.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

FIX BREAKFAST = make breakfast … or repair it?

In my household, it's usually both. Jake (age 2) has a thing now where he rips a piece of food apart and then gets upset when it can't be rejoined.

This is my life.

Fun fact: in Canada, FIX BREAKFAST isn't a thing, as much as "make breakfast." Hadn't occurred to me until our resident Canadian Jim said, "Eh?"

There might be an additional layer of cleverness that I'm missing here, but I did appreciate that Alison and Erik found four staple(ish) breakfast foods that have an in-the-language phrase associated with them, all meaning "food that's been marred in some way."

(Do people eat healthy APPLEs for breakfast? Fie on you, says this unabashed BAGEL-eater. What was that doing in the middle of the puzzle, BTW? That makes me feel even more strongly like I am missing something I'm not smart enough to grok.)

Such beautiful gridwork. Five themers, with one of them a central 11, usually is a recipe for crossword glue. Not today. I didn't run into a single dab, and what with OCTAGON, TUNA FISH, PATELLA, AVATAR, and WOKEST (what the kids say these days about being socially aware, as it would seem), the product is both clean and colorful.

Note the careful use of cheater squares, before NFL and after ALSO. I wish more constructors would deploy these types of black squares. Rich Norris over at the LAT calls them "helper" squares — that's so on point. The NW region is at least three times easier to fill (with color and cleanliness) with the assistance of that one extra black square.

Fantastic craftsmanship, but the theme didn't do that much for me. I'm going to keep thinking about it — that BAGEL in the center has to be purposeful.

(No? Just the best available fill? Bah.)

– puzzle by Alison Ohringer and Erik Agard

Liz Gorski used to do so many beautiful "connect the dots" visual puzzles that Jim wrote a JavaScript function to automatically connect the circles in alphabetical order and animate the fades: it's called "GorskiDraw." Take a moment and enjoy the pretty picture below.

(Liz has stopped submitting to the NYT, instead focusing on her successful subscription service. Please consider subscribing! It's great to see her entrepreneurship pay off. Makes me consider going that route, too.)

As a solver, I don't usually appreciate fortuitous themer interconnect — at least, I usually appreciate it less than the constructor. But today, I had a moment of admiration when I realized how nicely BUTTERFLY and CHRYSALIS interlocked with CATERPILLAR.

Jim pointed out afterward though that the ordering was odd. Why BUTTERYFLY -> CATERPILLAR -> CHRYSALIS? What are we, Benjamin Button-terfly?

It's a great observation. Hitting BUTTERFLY so early in my solve gave away the game, too.

This could have been fixed by "flipping" the grid on the NW to SE diagonal, so that CATERPILLAR ran horizontally across the middle, with CHRYSALIS in the NE corner (vertically), and BUTTERFLY in the SW corner (also vertically). That would have been perfect.

Connect the dots puzzles are so tough to construct. I had a tough time working with one that didn't have to be symmetrical, and that nearly broke me.

I imagine Alex tweaked his positions over and over, with one side working out but the other not cooperating. Unfortunately, a lop-sided BUTTERFLY … well, it just wouldn't fly, would it? Alex also had the luxury of starting / ending the pattern anywhere — and going either clockwise or counterclockwise — but still, it's no joke.

Overall, the grid is decent. A bit of toughness in entries like AVANTI, BONTON, PINKOES (not PINKOS?), but that's expected in corners as big as the NW / SE. I might have considered putting a black square at the E of ÉCLAIR to facilitate filling, but that would have cut that corner off but good. So I think he made good decisions all around.

It's not Gorski. But it is Gorski-esque.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

GEODESIC DOMEs are so elegant. Anyone who says that math isn't cool, I yell, GEODESIC DOME! And then drop the mic.

No wonder people look at me funny.

ICE CREAM CONE is another great feature entry. It's a shame that the clue was so straightforward, though. Might have been fun to use the word "pastry" in there to misdirect, or to toss in a "penny lick" reference. Sometimes an interesting term or bit of trivia can make a good entry great.

Case in point: NOSEBLEED. It's pretty good if clued as NOSEBLEED seats, but using the medical term "epistaxis" entertains, too.

On the flip side, I like LION TAMER as an entry, but its clue dragged it down. I applaud the attempt at wordplay, in "whip-smart," but whipping animals — seriously? Please, no.

There aren't many long slots in this grid design (8+ letters), and some of them left potential on the table. OVERCOME, MICHAELS, WE'RE OPEN, COLD ROOM are fine entries, but not as good in my book as REAL TIME or even ECLECTIC.

And some of the mid-length slots were used well — see ONE LOVE, MWA HA HA, RIMSHOT, HOT RODS — but it was hard to SEE PAST the untapped potential of the spaces that could have held better than AEROSOL, ALTERED, RAN LATE, SCENTED, etc.

I loved one clue: TETRIS as a game in which you don't want to reach the top. Had me confused for a long moment. (You lose when the blocks hit the top of the screen.)

Good construction work, overall — a 68-word puzzle with some AMO CEN IDE SKAT is decent. But not enough juice to make it stand out.

– puzzle by Caleb Madison

★ I have a love/hate relationship with ultra-low word count themelesses. On one hand, you're bound to get a bunch of made-up sounding (and actually made-up) words. On the other, I've picked up some solving tricks, making them doable. They used to seem impossible — now I feel like a genius!

Pro tip: keep prefixes and suffixes in the forefront of your mind, particularly the ones using "Wheel of Fortune" free letters (RSTLNE). So often, RE- UN- E-(as in electronic) or -ER -EST -S will be your best friend. "Most" in a clue should point you to -EST, for example. Similarly, "remove" ought to get you thinking there's an UN- in front.

It could be that I have very low expectations for these puzzles, but wow, did I enjoy this one. Let's tick off the usual traits of ultra-low-word-counters, and how Kevin bucked the trends:

1. Groany words. Huge surprise to see not many made-uppies, REALER and ROADER the only ughs. And ROADER could have been salvaged by something like [Off-___ (sport vehicle)].
2. Surfeit of common letters. It's so rare to get rare letters — these low-word-counters are usually jam-packed with RSTLNEs. But four Vs in one corner? All neatly lined up in a diagonal? Two more Vs, a K, and a Z? Color me impressed.
3. Mostly neutral fill. DECREE, SENT OVER, PEELED, YELLER — these aren't going to win awards. But MEGASTORE. DOG TIRED. ON PAROLE. BOYS CLUB. Fantastic stuff.

Add in some great wordplay clues:

• How could [One after another?] possibly mean ELEVEN? Think of it as 11 … one 1 after another 1. Brilliant!
• [Top stories], so innocent. No question mark to give away the deceit, misguiding away from ATTICS. Literally, top stories.
• Same for [Make sparkling, say]. It had to be USE DESCRIPTIVE WORDS, said this writer. Nope, bubbles in AERATED sparkly water.

I would have loved something to connect the four segmented mini-puzzles — even something as thin as the compass points: N in the square marked 8, W at 29, etc. But overall, this gem wildly exceeded my expectations. And after all, isn't life all about management of expectations?

– puzzle by Kevin Adamick

MINICARSONS is genius. Not only is it funny to think of Johnny's progeny as mini-me's, but what a discovery, that CARS inserted into MINIONS forms an amusing result. Perfect example of how PICTURE IN PICTURE can work beautifully.

I enjoyed C(RAY)ON TACT, too. It's a big issue at my house, where crayons are often bartered between my two kids. They seem to use them in the same way prisoners use cigarettes. And again, a delightful wordplay find.

PETITER PAN was good too — I liked the artsy sound of PETITER. Although, it's too easy to insert IT into another word to form a new word.

The rest didn't do much for me. DOCTORS WALLET RANGE is an interesting wordplay find. But what a bizarre phrase.

GET SCREAM OUT, too easy to insert SCREAM into a two-word movie title. Similarly, putting TED into another picture must have dozens of possibilities.

Grant's grid was decent — not too much crossword glue. Just some IF AT / I EVER / ACU / API / ESE etc. isn't bad.

I would have liked more color, though. It confused me — there should have been more long slots that could be mined for pizzazz. FRONT LINES, CITY PLAN, that kind of thing.

A-ha! At 145, this one clocks in with many more words than average for a Sunday NYT (140 words is the usual maximum). I don't mind at all if a constructor bends the rules to 142, as long as he/she produces a colorful, clean grid. But the difference between 142 and 145 is noticeable when it comes to color.

I'd have much preferred for Grant to pare down his themers to a smaller set that had more bang for the buck. I'm sure he didn't have a lot of choices, but IT, TED, ET all should have allowed for some flexibility.

All too often, I think Sunday puzzles should have been shrunk down into a 15x15 weekday grid because the theme isn't strong enough to hold solvers' attention. Today, I liked how PICTURE IN PICTURE and some of the long titles demanded a Sunday grid. Could have been a standout puzzle if more of the themers had been as strong as MINICARSONS.

– puzzle by Grant Thackray

My feeling toward this puzzle can be summed up by part of the final entry: LOVE.

Now, is that the "adore" meaning, or the "zero" one?

I landed well toward the former, amused by the theme phrases as interpreted by a tennis nut. I grew up in the John McEnroe era, so CONTEMPT OF COURT gave me a big laugh.

Solid gridwork, as always with Bruce these days. I appreciate the care he takes in putting together grids that are both colorful and clean. INSERT COIN + ACT NATURAL — virtually no crossword glue = admirable craftsmanship.

Only two minor nits today:

1. I could have done with just one cross-reference. SARA / LEE works well — who doesn't LOVE her? (Pretty sure the marketing team was going for the "adore" meaning.) But BACK / NINE confused me a touch, as a golf cross-reference inside a tennis puzzle was a touch confusing.
2. I'd have liked Bruce to push himself, to go down to 76 words (it's at 78), so he could add in another pair of great bonuses in the fill. Even with five themers, it's usually possible to get a long bonus worked into each corner. One great player in each of the four corners ... sort of in the vein of a doubles match!

(Sort of. Okay, that was a stretch.)

Newb-friendly Monday offering, I like it. Not quite LOVE, as I'd heard some of the themers or their variants before, but like. Let's say, like like.

(Darn it, doesn't "like like" mean love? Who invented this kooky English language?)

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

PET SOUNDS indeed, common household pets making themselves heard today. Amanda and Karl found four solid words-hidden-in-phrases, TATTOO INK my favorite. Great discovery.

Probably not a lot of solvers will notice this, but it was elegant that Amanda and Karl picked four PET SOUNDS that were all four letters apiece. There's no rule that says this is important or even desirable, but it pleases my constructor's eye to see the consistency.

It could have been that it's tough to find a longer sound hidden within a phrase — try it with SQUEAK or CHIRP or (what do hamsters sound like?) — but still, all-four-letter-sounds was a nice touch.

I would have liked some rationale for why the sounds were hidden in phrases — at least, more than just "that's a good way to insert them into a crossword." It does work, but it's not as fist-pumpy as if there were some spot-on revealer like PET SOUNDS IN THE MIDDLE.

The gridwork … not my favorite of Amanda and Karl's products. ACRO SOTO TES XERS LARAS MUFTI clumped up, leaving me with a sense of inelegance. A shame, as the themers were interesting enough to warrant some POW! consideration.

Tough layout, what with the central TATTOO INK forcing big corners. Then you have the ??F?I pattern forcing MUFTI and then ROTI. Both of those are generally fine, but not desirable in early-week puzzles — especially crossing each other. I'd have tried moving TWO OF A KIND and THIS SIDE UP each one row away from the center, which might have helped with better spacing.

But some nice bonuses in FACE PAINT, KING TUT, HAMSTER (which muddied the theme a bit, but not so much as to be distracting) to liven up the solve.

– puzzle by Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Jim and I had a long debate over this one. I love the idea here — it can be surprising to see just how many films were adaptations or loosely based on Shakespeare. WEST SIDE STORY provided a great click, as it reminded me of the parallels between the plots. Capulets : Montagues :: Sharks : Jets, that sort of thing.

But something was missing. Took me a while to figure out that there were two factors:

1.) Some of the movies were unfamiliar. That's partly due to my knowledge gap in movie trivia, but SHES THE MAN hardly seems like cinematic gold. For this theme, it's less than ideal to use a movie where the plot isn't immediately apparent.

I found two lists right off the bat of movies inspired by Shakespeare. THE LION KING and STRANGE BREW both based on Hamlet? Now that's a cool point of trivia!

Ooh ooh! I would have loved a theme where all the films (you could open it up to musicals, plays, etc.) were based on Hamlet. Now that would have been a stand-up-and-clap a-ha!

2.) It would have been great to more strongly hint at the parallels between plots. Crossword clues generally can't be as long as [Movie in which the Jets and Sharks go to battle, kind of like the Capulets and Montagues, and then people get stabbed or otherwise maimed. And the main woman and man still try to pursue their forbidden love, but end up dying tragically].

But why not [Movie in which two star-crossed lovers defy their household blood feud, to tragic end]? And then you could clue SHAKESPEARE PLAYS directly to the ones referenced: [The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, and The Taming of the Shrew]. That would have provided a better click.

Great clue for ARCADE. I used to bring a stack of quarters down to the local ARCADE (Donkey Kong was my jam), and my MBA self was tickled by the "computed quarterly" terminology.

Bold attempt to spice up the gridwork, Evan leaving himself large corners in the NW / SE. It didn't completely fly for me, as the price of ESS + ALII wasn't worth the longer material in the NW. But STAMPEDE / ARCADE / MY SIDES were decent bonuses in the SE ... so, a reasonable decision, albeit not one I'd have made.

Overall, a strong idea whose execution didn't generate an equally strong a-ha moment. Some structural changes and it might have been POW! material.

– puzzle by Evan Mahnken

★ Many moons ago, I submitted an EMOTICON puzzle to Will, using a double O rebus for EYES, an I for a NOSE, and a U for a MOUTH (the three squares on top of each other). It sort of looked like a HAPPY FACE if you cocked your head and squinted. And if I paid you ten dollars. Needless to say, Will politely rejected it.

OO

I

U

Yeah, that doesn't work.

Even having spent umpteen-fifty hours doing that, AND today receiving what seemed like hit-me-over-the-head hints in COLON HYPHEN and PARENTHESIS, I still got stuck like a duck in the center. The timer ticked away as I sweated, wondering why DOT DOT or COLON wasn't fitting at the start of 39-Across.

Delightful a-ha when I realized it was EYES! Clever double-interpretation, using COLON in one place and an EYES rebus in another.

Good gridwork, especially for a debut. I wasn't keen on A HAND NOICE (I think that's what Jake Peralta says on "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," stretching out the word "nice"?) or SSR, but that's not much for a grid with so many things going on.

(NO ICE makes more sense of course, as a different meaning of ["Neat"]. But I do love me some Jake Peralta.)

HORST was also a baffler, but I could more easily excuse that in the service of the center, a strong triplet in EYESORE / PIANO SEATS / PLYMOUTH.

There was even a little VIP ROOM and TIP JAR to spice things up.

I'm suffering from a touch of rebus fatigue, having seen so many of them, but I appreciate when a rebus does something fresh. For that great lightbulb moment when I finally broke open the center of the puzzle, I'm giving out something rare today: a POW! on a debut. Well done, Jon!

– puzzle by Jon Olsen

Finally, the NYT allows HARDASS! Some longtime solvers frown upon the NYT crossword becoming the NYT crassword, but I'm personally hoping BADASSERY will soon see its debut.

Neither Jim nor I were fooled by the CLINTON ERA clue, but both of us stopped to admire it. Bushes are found on either side of it … as in GHWB and GWB. Great way to innocently hide the capitalization of Bush.

On the other hand, Jim and I had opposite reactions to PEACE TOWER. XWI's resident Canuck got that wonderfully delightful sense of smugness, able to drop it in almost immediately. While XWI's resident Ameriboor struggled for each letter.

That pair of entries epitomized my experience in solving this puzzle.

YAY! GRAD SCHOOL = great entry, plus a fantastic clue — I got my "third degree" at UW.

HUH? PORT SALUT. I wondered if it might be PORTS A LUT. Apparently not.

YAY! SAUSAGE DOG, they're so awesome.

HUH? IT BURNS? Does that open the door for IT ITCHES? ITS CRAMPING? Speaking of doors, PICKS A DOOR … as much as I love the Monty Hall Problem, PICKS A DOOR feels a bit arbitrary as a stand-alone phrase.

Along with some HOLO APIA PICT MAIA (anyone else drop in GAIA and never think to correct it?), it wasn't the cleanest of grids. 72 worders are the easiest of themelesses to build, so I put them under the highest scrutiny.

But overall, some solid feature entries and two fantastic clues to help see me through to the end. Sometimes it just takes a handful of mind-blowing clues to make a themeless stand out, so I wouldn't be surprised if some solvers adore this one.

– puzzle by Kyle Dolan

Many moons ago, I submitted a puzzle to Will with GAIMAN in it. He said he wasn't sure if NEIL GAIMAN was well-known enough.

NEIL GAIMAN?! Winner of the Newbery for "The Graveyard Book," writer of "The Sandman" series, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards?

I was kvetching to a friend about it, and he said, "Neil who?"

Huh.

Maybe Will knows what he's doing.

As much as I admire NEIL GAIMAN's work — "The Graveyard Book" is fantastic — I like feature entries that are more widely accessible, like EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA. The iconic photograph inspired generations to think beyond their limits.

And TULIPMANIA — those crazy Dutch! It may be urabn myth, but I love the story of the guy who accidentally ate a tulip bulb worth a fortune, thinking that it was an onion.

Now, you might say, are EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA things most everyone knows? And you might even have a good point. These are subjective calls — there will undoubtedly be people out there who think the moon landing was faked, perhaps even by the Dutch, who spread TULIPMANIA rumors to disguise their secret agenda of taking over the moon.

(That's the plot of NEIL GAIMAN's latest book.)

But there's one big point of difference: EARTHRISE and TULIPMANIA are made up of words that most everyone knows. If you hadn't heard of GAIMAN before, it'd be a tortuous struggle.

This is all a long way of saying that I liked a lot of Joe's feature entries, but I wondered how many would feel foreign to many solvers. See: LEAF PEEPER and ALL IS TRUE. I was able to fill those in in because they're composed of words I knew. But neither did much for me.

JOHN CLEESE wrote "A Fish Called Wanda"? I'm already a "Monty Python" and "Fawlty Towers" fanboy, but this fact impresses me even more.

I appreciated Joe's gridwork, nary a dab of crossword glue to be seen. If there had been a few fewer feature entries that felt divisive — either you know it or you don't — it could have garnered POW! attention.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney