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There's a fine line between bold and aggravating, and I can't decide where ZXCVBNM stands. As I type it, that string of characters seems incredible! As I was solving on paper, though, attempting to picture a keyboard was … not.

Peter has such a knack for 68-word themeless construction. I appreciate that he usually tries to do something different, all the while upholding his incredibly high standards. Today, the grid pattern jumped out at me, the S S and pyramid blocks so mesmerizing. Fun to feature MONKEY BREAD crossed with DOUGHBOY, too.

I wasn't entirely sure what MONKEY BREAD was, and PEACE DOLLAR and SEA RATS also didn't register. However, the latter two were easy enough to piece together, both composed of recognizable words plausibly related to Lady Liberty and pirates, respectively.

Peter's themelesses often shine in their clever cluing, and today was no exception. Kicking things off at 1-Across, [First person?] is usually a clever clue for ADAM. Repurposing the phrase in a different way, getting at the first person to finish — the WINNER — takes things to a gold medal.

[Bags one might have when tired?] is the real winner, though. Talk about lateral thinking, making the connection from bags under the eyes to caffeine to TEAbags. Love it.

There was a lot of sparkle, evocative MAO SUIT, interesting trivia that Tatooine was DEATH VALLEY, and PRIDE PARADE. That last one is already a great entry, and making me misguess at June weddings made it even better. Along with his trademark 68-word clean-as-a-whistle construction — something few constructors can even achieve once — it's another solid Wentz offering.

– puzzle by Peter Wentz

(WARNING: impending technical analysis that might ruin your sense of wonder or annoy you even more than Jeff usually does.)

What an interesting programming problem! How can you find pairs of colors, such that combining and rearranging their letters, they form long phrases? Took me a while to hash out a viable method:

1. Assemble a list of colors. There are some sites out there, but you'd want to be selective.
2. Consider each pair of colors. For a list of X items, there will be "X choose 2" combinations, in combinatorial-speak. For 100 items, that's 4950 pairs, which is well within the abilities of a home computer to evaluate.
3. Arrange your master word list into a master list of "letterbanks," i.e. alphabetize MENTALIMAGE into AAEEGILMMNT.
4. For each of the 4950 pairs of colors, alphabetize the combined letters into a letterbank.
5. Compare the pair of colors' letterbank to every one in in your master list. If there's a match, write it into output.
6. You've stopped listening. I don't blame you.

Although it's a fascinating (to me) exercise in computing, this concept didn't strike this solver strongly. Two colors mixed up … into random things? We've had so many anagrams puzzles over the years, that I need more. I did enjoy apt anagrams, number adding anagrams, and more in the past, but this one didn't so nearly as much for me as Paolo's Sunday to kick off last year.

Still, a solid construction, so many delights in PRIDE PARADE, ASTRONOMERS, AARON BURR, AL MARSALA, with a near-perfectly clean grid. Outstanding Sunday gridwork.

Let's find this talented young man a job. Those of you who have been in the corporate world know how incredibly rare it is to find candidates with both technical excellence and people skills. Contact me if I can help connect your company and Paolo!

– puzzle by Paolo Pasco

I was sure I'd crack "Name That Theme" after spotting DREAD in MIND READER. Over the years, I've gotten tons of emotion-based theme queries, so it had to be one of them: FEELING UNDER THE WEATHER? Nope, no weather phenomenon above DREAD.

MIXED EMOTION? No — DREAD isn't anagrammed, and anagrams would be too tough for a Monday.

UNEMOTIONAL? Hey, calm down! It was just a guess. I'm not overthinking things, you're overthinking things!

FEELING DOWN? Ah! DREAD is a form of FEELING DOWN! It would be perfect if it ran vertically, but—

RAGE? Well …

LOVE? Uh. Love hurts?

GUT FEELING is a perfect revealer, expressing that an emotion is hidden within a phrase. HIDDEN EMOTIONS would have worked, too, but it's not nearly as snazzy.

"Hidden words" are commonplace these days, so they have to feature outstanding finds. Length can help — DREAD's five letters is strong, although common letters like A E R take away from the neatness.

Spanning across multiple words can also elevate. PITY in STOP IT YOU TWO (which I unconsciously shout every ten minutes) is a winner.

Wonderful gridwork. You can almost always work in a couple of long bonuses — EGG BAGEL and OPPOSITE would have sufficed, but SETS BAIL, RAIN MAN, BAD SEEDS = YES, LETS! To incorporate all that with only ESTA sticking out on editors' specs sheets is exemplary. There's no trick except hard work: testing a layout, reconfiguring black squares, iterating ad nauseam.

A "hidden words" theme has to have something exceptional to stand out, and while this doesn't have tightness (so many other possible feelings left this one not quite sparking joy), the quality of finds and strong gridding make it a solid Monday debut.

– puzzle by Beth Rubin and Trent H. Evans

Jane Foley, a regular reader, has been delighting Jim Horne, David Steinberg, and me with her corrections and observations about the pre-Shortzian puzzles. She's been methodically working her way through the archives, and her historian-like perspective adds so much color to these older puzzles.

Today's quote is so apt for crossword solvers. It's also great to be reminded that the NYT crossword's first editor was a woman; female constructors are still underrepresented.

The quote breaks up so neatly into mirror-symmetry-friendly chunks, each piece an even number of letters. It's incredibly difficult to build around since any line that requires black squares at its ends eats away precious flexibility.

Breaking the first two lines as YOU CAN'T THINK OF / YOUR TROUBLES (shifting the OF) would have helped immensely — that would have allowed the first themer to go in row 3, thus increasing spacing and gridding flexibility. Although it's more accurate to FARRAR's era to have 10ish dabs of glue, these days crosswords should never have more than five.

I'm not a huge fan of quote puzzles, since they're an all-or-nothing proposition, either the impact a knockout or a swing and a miss. I do love today's sentiment, though, and the tribute to a great woman. With some more Shortz-era polishing, it had the opportunity to be a rare quote puzzle that shines.

– puzzle by David Bukszpan

I'm plus/minus on this one.

These jokes write themselves!

Brilliant seed concept: an OPTIMIST looking forward, crossing a PESSIMIST aptly pointed down. And to have HALF FULL crossing HALF EMPTY, with perfect symmetrical crossings? Screw the PESSIMIST; that's crossword gold! The great goddess Cruciferous is kind and benevolent!

Ah, but those ancient gods love drama.

WAR and PEACE aren't differences of opinion in the same way as HALF FULL and HALF EMPTY. Nor is FEAST and FAMINE.

RAIN or SHINE had potential. A better clue, referring to a weather prediction for a picnic, would have made the pairing shine. (Or rain, depending on your perspective.)

What other pairs would have worked better? People looking at the BEST of times and the WORST of times. Thinking with a POSITIVE vs. a NEGATIVE attitude. These aren't as fantastic as HALF FULL and HALF EMPTY, but they'd do the trick.

Excellent gridwork, given the constraints. Filling around crossing themers is tricky, and five pairs of them can be a nightmare. Damon has put in years of hard work developing expertise and it shows, with a mostly clean grid and even some bonuses. WINE LIST a standout, and TREFOIL HOOPLA aren't half bad either. (I'm not saying they're only half good, I swear!).

The solving flow is a negative since the center strangles the puzzle into more than half a dozen chunks. It's a reasonable trade-off, though, as poor feng shui is much better than poor fill.

Fantastic seed notion and matching pairs — HALF FULL / HALF EMPTY epitomizes the differences between OPTIMIST and PESSIMIST so perfectly that I didn't care about the HALF duplication. If the other examples had been stronger, this would have breezed to a POW!

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

★ Mind-bending concept, three animals replaced by their collective noun. Three CROWs equal a MURDER, three LIONs a PRIDE, and three ANTs a COLONY. I love the innovation within the old-hat rebus genre, making for a memorable debut.

Memorable gridwork, too. Consider how many themers Andrew had to work with. It's not simply four Acrosses, but nine crossing Downs — triplets crammed together! There are so few possibilities containing LION, it's miraculous that any arrangement of SCALLION, PAVILION, A MILLION BUCKS worked.

I especially appreciated the gridwork in the BOLO TIE region, where so many themers interacted. With PRIDE MONTH lacing through CROWD NOISE and MICROWATT, I'd expect globs of crossword epoxy holding it all together. Such smooth results — with so few black squares in that area, allowing for not just BOLO TIE but also BRUNEI. Brilliant!

My frustratingly obsessive brain held me back from giving this an auto-POW!, as it raised a yellow flag, immediately recalling Paolo's Fireball. There are so many similarities. First reaction: ugh.

However, this is almost surely a product of constraints. So many of the themers have so few options, that if you asked 100 experienced constructors to work up this concept, I bet that out of the 10 who didn't stab their eyes out, 8 or 9 would arrive at something approaching this northwest corner.

Should Paolo's prior art take away from Andrew's debut? Paolo's isn't easy to find, the themers not even showing up on Matt Ginsberg's extensive database, and it ran in a different publication with a different target audience. Given the fact that constructors come up with identical ideas independently all the time — just like scientists — I shook off my hesitations.

This is the type of envelope-pushing I love to see in Thursday puzzles. It's a shame that Andrew got there much later than Paolo, but hopefully NYT tricksy Thursdays will continue to push boundaries in even more creative ways.

– puzzle by Andrew Linzer

What I love most about Robyn's puzzles is that they spark so much joy. CHOCOHOLIC, DESSERT WINES, DOZEN ROSES, going in WARP DRIVE? THAT'S SO Robyn!

What I want most out of my crosswords is an uplifting, entertaining fifteen minutes to help me forget about the woes of the world. (Others vehemently disagree, looking for other elements like education and horizon-broadening, and that's fine.) Robyn exemplifies this philosophy, and my world always feels happier—12x rosier, you might say—after finishing one of her beautifully-arranged bouquets.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

You don't know PASCAL'S TRIANGLE? Sigh, I'll deign to explain that it's a CGI term related to Pascal the iguana from "Tangled," relating to triangular shading elements that make his skin change color so realistically. Duh!

TOO TIRED TO THINK is right.

This numberphile loved the top stack, although he may or may not have smugly filled in FIBONACCI SERIES without a second thought, given how amazing it is, plus how many times it's inspired previous crosswords. I'll pretend that I didn't read the "French" part of the clue instead of the alternative. Ahem.

The bottom stack didn't strike me as strongly, with EAT DESSERT FIRST most certainly not SETting A GOOD EXAMPLE. Jill ran an experiment a few years back, putting a cookie on Tess's dinner plate, hoping to lessen the allure of dessert. After a week of Tess eating the cookie and declaring she was done, we don't EAT DESSERT FIRST anymore.

(It also felt strange as an entry; sort of a long partial.)

Incredibly clean grid, Freddie working hard to avoid any short gluey bits. Not a single one — amazing in a 66-word construction, doubly amazing with two triple-stacks.

I did wonder how many solvers would raise the dreaded "that's weird" flag, given TE DEUMS, MUSETTE, RATERS, ANOSMIA? There's a case to be made that each one is perfectly fine. And if you're a singing Christian, small-knapsack-wearing, finance person who can't smell, what's the problem?

Some delightful clues, BALLETS requiring "leaps of imagination," ATLASES as "National geographic books," and my favorite, PH TESTS as "Basic analysis." That last one rates a ten! Maybe even a 14.

– puzzle by Freddie Cheng

There are a ton of elements in this puzzle. Did they all hit you on the head?

• Five types of apples falling onto NEWTON. I love how Tim stood NEWTON vertically, getting at the ROME apple bonking him into the idea of gravity. I didn't immediately recognize EMPIRE or ROME as apples, but given the theme, it was easy enough to figure out. Sadly, there aren't any ways to disguise the common RED DELICIOUS or GRANNY SMITH.
• LAW OF GRAVITY. Apt conclusion to the puzzle.
• Long down phrases employing wordplay. I only caught that WEIGHTY MATTER, COME ON DOWN, and especially FORCE OF NATURE / FREE FALLIN hinted at the concept upon my second look.
• Squint at the black squares in the center of the puzzle. Are your eyeballs hurting yet? No? Squint harder. Do you see an apple? Sorta kinda like the Apple logo? If not, let me just drop these five apples on your head …
• Extras. I can imagine LOOKOUT, NEWTON! (fine, without the S) and I GET IT NOW! (never mind that the clue points more to Archimedes) as appropriate for the NEWTONian event.

There were so many tasty elements, but they didn't all cohere as well as other apple puzzles. Today's was more like an apple pie baked with coriander, chili oil, and chestnuts. (My wife and kids gagged. Only a little.) For a Sunday puzzle, though, you ought to go big or go home, so I appreciate Tim's audacious plan.

(Okay, a lot.)

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

Let's play ... "Name That Extra Themer!" This man could believably have been in BILLY JOEL's We Didn't Start the Fire, his views on CLEAN COAL causing Germans to PIGEONHOLE him, his EXIT POLL numbers leaving him a LOST SOUL.

Oh, and his head looks like a CEREAL BOWL.

Bing bing bing, it's HELMUT KOHL! Someone stop me, I'm on a roll!

Rhyming themes are a tough sell, but Lynn clears the threshold with six rhyming words, all of which 1.) use different spellings, and 2.) are one syllable. It makes for a tight set, with HELMUT KOHL the only other one I could think of. Him being from decades ago (Kohl, not me! Okay, me too) he's falling out of Monday newb-friendly territory.

Newb-friendly grid, as is Lynn's specialty. She took such care in her layout, using those three central black square diagonals so well to separate the themers. It's often easier to pinch themers together when there are six of them — moving BILLY JOEL up one row, for example, can improve gridding flexibility — but the every-other-row pattern is so pleasing.

This one didn't stand out in the overdone rhyming-but-different-spellings genre, but as a whole, even a troll would say it's a friendly Monday stroll. Perhaps not in Seoul, but—

*XWORD INFO BOT INITIATING DAMAGE CONTROL*

– puzzle by Lynn Lempel

COUNTRY STAR is a perfectly punny way to describe celebs whose names are also countries. I enjoyed "Superstore," so AMERICA FERRERA was a gimme. (People might tell you that I both laughed and cried at "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," and I will deny all such blasphemy.)

If you don't know JORDAN PEELE, where have you been? Ah, in lockdown? Right. Ahem. Hopefully, Jordan Poole of the Golden State Warriors gets more playing time because there's a crossword theme somewhere in there ...

INDIA ARIE, our crossword friend! ARIE has been used over 60 times in the Shortz era, because it's so, so, so constructor-friendly. Tip: if you want to get your kid in the NYT crossword one day, consider naming him/her/them ERA. Better yet, help me help you by picking a name like ESS and ENE, which would legitimize these subpar entries for constructorkind!

(Besides CUBA GOODING JR, we could have also accepted CHAD OCHOCINCO or PENNINGTON and GEORGIA O'KEEFFE. Sadly, CHYNA and CHADWICK BOSEMAN don't quite make the cut.)

Not the most memorable of themes, but Ross did well to employ a pretty mirror layout — something mesmerizing about that upside-down T pressing down from the top — and a ton of spicy bonuses to help elevate the solving experience. Delightful entries like DNA STRAND FUDGSICLE, PROTONS, NICE IDEA helped lift my solving experience … BRONZE MEDAL feels about right.

– puzzle by Ross Trudeau

★ Longtime readers know my love of Matt Gaffney's metapuzzle series. It's not uncommon for theme answers' clues to include numbers that hint at something. These numbers could lead to the letter number within the theme answer — KEVIN KLINE [7,9] would return the 7^th and 9^th letters, or L and N — or something completely different. These cryptic hints can be maddeningly difficult to crack, but once you get them, it's magic.

I went into this one with the meta-detective mindset, considering all sorts of strategies on how to use the clue numbers. Clearly, they had to lead to some meta-answer, somehow. Yet when I got to WAR HERO [4,0], I was baffled. How could an enumeration of zero possibly work? Was there a zeroth square hidden to the left of square one?

And when I typed in the last square, I was … done? Adam, this is supposed to be a mid-week puzzle, not one of Matt's deadly week 5 brain-melters!

Oh. I glossed over a long clue, for RHYMING.

Eh?

Ah! AH!

WHHHA?!

GREAT FUN is so apt, those numbers rhyming with their two-word entries. WAR HERO rhymes with FOUR ZERO, that's so novel and entertaining!

It's extremely rare that I run across a puzzle where I can't immediately recall some predecessor or even ancestor on the crosswording evolutionary chain. Along with some delights in GASTROPUB and MCDOUBLES more than making up for gloopy IS TOO VILLE (neighboring town to Whoville), I haven't decided on my POW! so quickly in ages. Bravo, Adam!

(Answer to Adam's bonus: [8, 2, 4] = GREAT SIOUX WAR)

– puzzle by Adam Aaronson

SPOILER ALERT, the revealer comes first! The theme purposefully spoiled by an early revealer? Something so cheeky about that; I love the rule-breaking aspect.

I've seen FINDING NEMO a few times, so I knew that THEY (Marlin and Dory) FOUND NEMO. Something clever about this "spoiler." Although I can't point to exactly what makes it clever, it pleased me.

KILL BILL was shelved further in my mental archives, so I couldn't remember if she (O-Ren Ishii) killed Bill or not. Or who Bill was, for that matter. SHE KILLED BILL, that answers that — but it doesn't answer my question regarding why this is a spoiler.

(Astute reader Julian Blatt points out that the "she" is actually Beatrix Kiddo. No kidding, so much for my mental archives!)

Free Willy was even deeper in the dusty corners of my brain. Was there any question if Willy got freed, given the movie poster? So why is HE FREED WILLY a spoiler?

Someone spoil my questions already!

Theme hesitations aside, I loved the debut of POWER POSING. If you've never heard the term before, it's Wonder Woman's trademark move, adopted by powerful women everywhere. Neat to get GWEN STEFANI in a symmetrical spot — I'd love for someone to send in a pic of her POWER POSING!

Although the SPOILER ALERT theme ironically left me with unanswered questions, there's a delightful seed there. I typically hate it when a puzzle gives away the game much too early, so my constructor radar pinged, wanting to brainstorm more on how this could be developed further. I like when a debut intrigues me to think further.

– puzzle by Karen Lurie

Fantastic clue for the headline entry, WIRELESS CHARGER. [Modern source of juice] ... given that Matthew and Sid are two headliners of crosswording's new wave, I figured it must be some superfood I'm too uncool to know about — a secret menu item that you need to ask for while flashing the Generation Alpha decoder signet ring. Juicy clue, indeed.

EVIL EMPIRE, what a image-laden phrase! This huge "Star Wars" dork hitched, since it was called the Galactic Empire, not the EVIL EMPIRE. Some even argue it wasn't totally evil, but who are we to argue with Wikipedia?

And who could forget Reagan's ominous EVIL EMPIRE speech?

Oh, right. Generation Alpha.

Spotted in the same region as EVIL EMPIRE: WARCRAFT, I DARE YOU, RED ALERT, TELL NO ONE. Difficult to RELAX with such a menacing build-up.

I was much more enamored with the clever cluing that made boring entries like GUESTS sing. I, unfortunately, know many, many people who can be friendly while patronizing. Thanks, but please don't patronize my store!

I tripped on the SAME LOVE / RIMA (tough foreign VERBIAGE) crossing, so I looked up the Macklemore song. (Our local cookie shop features a Mackles'more — the owner is friends with him!) Glad I did, because apparently, this song was groundbreaking for LGBT+ rights issues. I wish the clue had even hinted at this. I fear that some solvers will gloss over the entry as just another song.

I appreciate how both Matthew and Sid have pushed the envelope of inclusiveness, trying to do so in a way that encourages instead of being teachy. I could have used more of their voices today, as the puzzle felt like an average Friday. Still, I'm glad that SAME LOVE is now in my knowledge base.

– puzzle by Matthew Stock and Sid Sivakumar

Sam, the recent(-ish) college grad, is way cooler than me (granted, that's a low bar), so sometimes his themelesses leave me in the dust. Today's solve was pleasantly on my wavelength(-ish), the final entry MMDDYYYY delighting me. It's such a bizarrely vowelless string of consonants, yet I see it all the time in web forms. I bet my Canadian crossword friends are saying "Quoi?" and wondering why it's not DDMMYYYY.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

SONGWRITER, another solid debut entry. It's not a sizzler in its own right — editors usually prioritize two-word entries because they can have so much colour — but that clue elevates it. I imagine SONGWRITERs jot down more than a few notes.

Along those lines, BLUBBER is a neutral(ish) entry. Give it a great misdirect, though, and it sings. "Cold weather layer" had this Seattleite thinking about his parka, not an insulating internal layer.

A couple of blips, KERB more bumpy than other Britishisms we typically see, like more minor OU instead of the God-given correct way to spell using good ol' American O. Ain't no way it's COLOR, that's just durn wrong—it has to be COLOUR, dammit!

(My editor is Canadian, so he better not "correct" the above paragraphs.)

I wondered if DOYOGA related to DOGA, i.e. DOG YOGA? Seriously, this is a thing.

As much as I enjoyed listening to the Ariana Grande song, A WOMAN still looks like a verboten six-letter partial.

REAL TALK = "To be honest with you …"? Just when I'd figured out what millennials meant by "tbh," there's more codespeak for me to decrypt.

Although I hit a few potholes along the way, there was more than enough to keep this POTTERMORE member (Hufflepuff all the way!) happy. Speeding through one of Sam's Saturday puzzles is hardly THE NORM for me, and to do without wondering if every square was right or not — MAHOMES ain't got nothin' on me!

(Okay, maybe he does.)

– puzzle by Sam Ezersky

[UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES] should you let yourself be Rickrolled today.

I had a neat click when I connected THE LADY VANI___ and SHE'S NOT THERE. It's easy enough to see that SHE is missing from THE LADY VANISHES, and the link between a movie and song title felt cool. Not that I've seen the 1938 movie or would be able to sing the 1964 song, but I could at least hum the words of each title.

I enjoyed x^0 = THE POWER OF LOVE too, although that blew the door wide open to hundreds of theme possibilities. It's not as interesting a concept if the songs can be played upon with any sort of cryptic (LETS GO CRAZY = LETSGO "crazily" mixed into LOST, E.G.) or wacky-wordy wordplay, without further constraints.

ENTICEMENT enticed me, though, as it perfectly described COME ON EILEEN. ENTICEMENT is a perfect synonym for COME ON, and EILEEN interpreted as "I lean" is old-school fun. Hopefully, you noticed the italic I, I didn't at first.

Not knowing JUDY IN DISGUISE made filling in the blanks of its clue even harder. I assumed CHAN_E must be CHANCE, so finally sussing out CAR LAND made for a head-scratcher. (GARLAND made a lot more sense!)

I understand that a giant segment of the NYT's solving audience skews older. And if you feature puzzles directed toward a younger generation, why not one highlighting oldies? Aside from RUMOUR HAS IT, none more recent than 1988 … I'm curious to see how this will play with the newer crosswording generation.

I did appreciate the touch of diversity with Prince's LET'S GO CRAZY, but two out of eight is hardly what the NYT should be aiming for, especially when pop music has been more than diverse for decades.

I'm a big fan of Derrick's creative work, most notably an early kangaroo words crossword and a chess problem that blew my mind. He's had some wildly innovative ideas over the years, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

– puzzle by Derrick Niederman

Today's crossword proves that sea levels are not rising, but are in fact falling. If it's in the New York Times, it must be true. Suck on that, climate changeologists!

A DROP IN THE OCEAN is such a colorful phrase, ripe for wordplay. I enjoyed the touch of elegance that IN/DIAN originated IN the revealer. We've seen a lot of one-line-lowering puzzles over the years, so these kinds of touches can help distinguish a theme.

I would have loved all five oceans represented. Then again, we get so much New York-specific material in the NYT crossword, it's nice to get their ATLANTIC snubbed. Take that, East coast elites!

But what have the poor penguins ever done to you, Evan? SOUTHERN's omission is a black and white issue to them.

One-line-lowering puzzles can be tricky to build around, so perhaps limiting to three was a reasonable trade-off. I loved the long theme answers — JOAN OF ARC, SUPER PAC, AS IF I CARE hardly make me RETICENT — but the construction required too much that could easily turn off less-experienced solvers. A single ENOW / WYVERN crossing, and it's easy to imagine a NOOB say enow is enow.

Theme tightness and gridding blips aside, I did enjoy the neat visual of the gray squares dropping. Cool that the black square diagonals mimicked the lowering motion, too.

– puzzle by Evan Mahnken

Such a fun revealer, THE DOCTOR IS OUT helping to elevate a simple DR removal theme. I was such an avid "Peanuts" fan that I introduced them to my kids. However, the old-timey characters baffled them. How does Snoopy sleep balanced on his doghouse? What's with the dust cloud following PigPen? Lucy generated the most questions — a bullying "fussbudget" is funny … why?

AAUGH!

Letter-removal crosswords are so common that you have to generate serious laughs to stand out. UM MACHINE did that perfectly, making me imagine a crazy 5-year old named Jake who invented a device to deliberately annoy his dad. It didn't change the meaning of MACHINE, but DRUM to UM is night and day.

It took me a long time to grasp one of Will Shortz's criteria for letter removals: the end result's clue shouldn't need to refer to both words. For example, ILL PRACTICE fits that bill perfectly, since everyone in the workforce knows all about weaselly practices around calling in sick. Easy and natural to link the words together.

UM MACHINE doesn't address Will's issue since you have to write something in the clue regarding UM and then something else for MACHINE. However, the humor made up for that deficiency.

(Jim Horne didn't find this entry as funny, which goes to show you that I'm the Stan to his Ollie. Or whoever was the funny one.)

A ton of black squares, an extra six in the SW and NE corners alone. This is why 14-letter themers usually can't go into rows 3 and 13. Will is more lenient about this than most other editors, although Erik Agard at USA Today allows it, too.

Great revealer and some fun theme results. This newly-minted-50-year old had some head-scratching moments at KUSH and SO EXTRA (especially crossing SXSW and ADEN), but overall, still an entertaining debut.

– puzzle by Kate Schutzengel

Another addition to our collection of Uniclue puzzles. Exactly like Eric's previous one, this one draws on X AND Y phrases, where the first letters of the X and Y words are the same. This one uses some great phrases, MIX and MATCH sort of meta; referring to the nature of the Uniclue approach. It's a shame that the previous one also used STARS and STRIPES, adding to the "been there, done that" feel.

As with all puzzles requiring crossing pairs of themers, Uniclues can be incredibly hard to grid around. Ori showed some masterful chops, polishing every last region with spit and shine. I've heard solvers complain that CETUS is a tough word to pull out, and if you haven't seen "Parks and Recreation," Leslie KNOPE might leave you with no hope. Fair crossings, though.

I appreciate a new Uniclue puzzle every once in a while. There have been some interesting riffs on the genre over the years, starting with homophones, going to synonyms, jumping to different definitions, even playing on foreign words. Such creativity!

It's unfortunate that this one came only a year after one so similar — it'd have been better if Will Shortz had accepted only one of these. There's still room for new Uniclues, but the next addition to the list needs to be innovative.

– puzzle by Ori Brian

THE VOICE on TV, what a terrifically vibrant find! It lends itself to a perfect clue, [TV talent show], that describes THE VOICE in two ways. I liked FLEETWOOD MAC as "FM band on the radio" even better because it involved some wordplay — "band" can mean a rock band or a frequency band.

MICHAEL CAINE was an Academy Awards MC? Apparently so, back in 1973, co-hosting with a host of other folks! This would have been a much stronger theme answer if he'd hosted it by himself, or more times, or more recently, but it still does work. Ish.

It's a shame that UNCLE SAM doesn't fit into the entertainment vibe. He is a [U.S. symbol], but considering he was named partly because his initials matched those of the United States, this entry had a "one of these things is not like the others" vibe.

Some rough spots throughout, hitting most categories of editors' spec sheet frownies. We score them all at 25 (nominal is 50) because there is so much subjectivity among editors. For example, Will Shortz usually looks the other way for a partial or two (ON AN, OF ALL), but he hates initialisms that aren't known by virtually everyone in the world. If you don't know that EMS stands for Emergency Medical Services and have a tough time with the crosses, you might be SOL.

There are a couple of strong bonuses to help offset the problem areas, MOHANDAS and MAHOGANY echoing in a Wordle-like fashion (clearly, I'm hooked, too). Along with this DJ spinning his DAD JOKEs, there was enough to still make it a pleasant, if not challenging-enough Thursday.

– puzzle by Howard Barkin

BLACK HOLE is not a fresh entry, having been used many times over the Shortz era, but that clue sure sucked me in! So many wordplay angle for this entry, and describing a BLACK HOLE as "one having lots of pull" is so attractive. There's no escaping my humor!

A couple of other wickedly clever wordplay clues, too. As a writer, I use a lot of [Tan writing books], so that had to be MOLESKINES. No? The cover of my dusty old DICTIONARY is tan. Wrong again? Dang it, I've fallen for this "hidden capital" trick so many times, even with AMY Tan, but Kyle got me again. Nice!

I laughed about "finish a nursing program" = WEANS. Jill and I got so much societal pressure to continue nursing our kids until they were sixty-two, though — I wonder if this clue might strike a bad chord with some. Maybe even RAISE some HAVOC.

New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are ... ? I debated, could they be names of Russian MiGs? Last names of famous MEGS I didn't know? Thankfully, I finally recalled learning about AUDRE LORDE through a gentle nudge in a Melinda Gates puzzle. City MAGazineS.

RANGY and SHROVE … not a surprise that I picked those up through working Saturday crosswords.

There wasn't quite as much juice as I expect out of a 72-word themeless, but a couple of strong, long entries in RAT TERRIER / BODY SCANNER, MAGIC CHARMS, SCRAP METAL / THAT'S AMORE helped keep up my interest.

– puzzle by Kyle Dolan

★ MENTAL GYMNASTICS has such a wow factor, anchoring this puzzle solidly in POW! territory all by itself. The fact that it's also 16 letters, instead of the usual grid-spanning length of 15, also helps to distinguish it, because it opens up a ton of innovative possibilities in grid design. Daniel created a pattern of black squares that's not only eye-catching, but novel — nerds like me can use our "topologically similar grids" data (in our "Analzye this puzzle" feature), and it wasn't a surprise that today, there were no others like this one.

I flew through this Saturday much faster than Jim Horne, probably because I'm so much cooler than him. Gentle giant on "GoT"? HODOR! Danish attraction … LEGO HOUSE! "Dune" reference? TIMOTHEE Chalamet!

Jim's not impressed.

*preparing HORCRUX*

Thankfully, there was also more to love in less nerdly topics. FREEGAN might be a foreign term, but it's so fun. More importantly, it's gettable as a play on "vegan."

As if all of this didn't delight me enough, there were two standout clues:

• [Well done, in Italian] had me thinking about Italian food. Being the equivalent of a dull-witted two-year-old pre-hominid in the kitchen, I shuddered, wondering what sort of Italian cookbook term I was expected to know. Such a great a-ha when it turned out to be a general "well done!" term. MOLTO BENE, indeed!
• BRAILLE, so innocently clued as [Words read with feeling]. It should be a requirement that every Saturday puzzle has at least one clue this fantastic.

Some minor dings, like PLOT TWIST feeling oddly clued as a [Familiar soap opera device], but so, so, so much to love. Encore, maestro! (Daniel is a professional opera singer.)

– puzzle by Daniel Okulitch

A simple search pattern, * OF *, turns up hundreds of phrases fitting this pattern. Narrowing them down into those that produce amusing results when the first and last words are swapped — now that's another story. Then, methodically scoring your candidates, using proper sequencing, is critical.

The lesson in all this? Order of points makes a huge difference.

(Point of order, that joke sounded funnier in my head.)

DRAWERS OF CHESTS worked the best since both words changed meaning. It's not LOL-worthy, but I appreciated that it made me rethink both words.

None of the others accomplished this. Fortunately, there were some chuckles: COMMAND OF CHAIN evoked images of dog vs. man struggles, and MAN OF RIGHTS amused as a much-too-predictable boxer.

There are so many things I'll get questions about:

• TUBI. No idea either. Sure, it sounds like a streaming service.
• OBVI. Obvi, this is short for "obviatingliness." Obviously!
• EUCALYPTI. "Eucalytpuses" sounds even more wrong. The plural is clearly best expressed as "that eucalyptus and a bunch of others, too."
• THEOC. Fox's drama about reality star Theo Campbell, who goes by Theo C. (Jim Horne's correction: ignore Jeff mockery. THEOC is actually an ancient Sumerian two-syllable word that rhymes with "me mock.")
• BOTNET. It is just as it sounds, robot network. I'd say more, but the rise of the machines and all. Praise ye, robot overlords!
• ENBIES. All joking aside, this is a great term to learn. Not only is it relevant to important rights issues, but it's gettable. Think non-binaries = NBs = ENBIES.

This isn't the most memorable of themes — the ol' switcheroo has been a crossword standard for decades — but there were a couple of entertaining results, along with some great bonuses like JUST RELAX and best of all, BALD EAGLE with that awesome Benjamin Franklin quote hating on our national symbol. That might not fly so well these days …

– puzzle by Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

All theme genres go through a life cycle, from innovation to growth to maturity to retirement. Initialisms are a tough sell these days, residing somewhere between the third and fourth stages, so getting an acceptance is tough. Three elements helped John win that prized "Yes!" from Will Shortz.

Fantastic revealer. STARTING QB is a perfect way to describe that the first letters of the two words are Q and B. It's also such a catchy phrase for one of the skill positions hardest to fill in all sports.

Rare letters. I doubt there's room for another initialism along the lines of SS because it's too easy to come up with dozens of phrases using these common letters. There's a reason why "Wheel of Fortune" gives them away for free.

Top-notch execution. Gridding around a couple of Qs can cause problems. Jack that up to five, and you're nearly guaranteed to require some compromises. Building around a central 11 made his task even tougher. To escape with OBE ILO BUR (variant of BURR) is a reasonable result. Not perfect, but that's about as good as it gets, given the constraints. Compare and contrast to another recent initialisms puzzle.

To accomplish all this while sprinkling in some lovely mid-length material — SQUALLS PURSUIT QUANTIFY in the lower-left alone — made it an even stronger solving experience. I can see why Will decided it was one of the few he would take. Well done, especially given John's horrible, pitiable affliction.

(his delusional blindness to the fact that Tom Brady sold his soul to the devil)

– puzzle by John Guzzetta

Charles Nelson Reilly of the Match Game demands his respect, Ray and Ellen!

We've seen a lot of "combine two elements of a set for kooky results," including some featuring games — one even using SORRY OTHELLO — so my long memory made it difficult to enjoy any humor in today's. I wondered if it'd have been more interesting to aim for all real-sounding phrases. I can see the Department of Justice using the phrase MONOPOLY RISK, for example.

Where Ray and Ellen shined: their cluing, I can't remember another early-week debut with such a memorable mix of clues that entertain, pique curiosity, and shine in their wordplay:

• I had no idea all those folds in a chef's toque represented the multitude of ways to cook an EGG. Excellent way to make a boring ol' short entry sizzle.
• "Kiss-fist" and "shaking L"? That's the way to spark interest in learning! I might even take an ASL class now.
• It's so rare that we get a stumping wordplay clue on a Tuesday. Sure, a punny [Make oneself heard in a herd] for a cow's LOWing. But [In which head shots can be taken]? Perhaps a studio? Photo shoot? The answer is ... SOCCER? Ah, as in a header! Brilliant.

Not a standout theme. However, the solid gridwork — nothing flashy, but minimal gloopy short entries — and uncommonly strong cluing made for a fun debut.

– puzzle by Ray Brunsberg and Ellen Brunsberg

I couldn't wait to see what the pyramid of circled letters would spell. This had to be some awesome Pascal's triangle or peg-jumping theme.

E … F P?

T O Z?

More like W T F. But that made me even more curious.

L P E D …

P E F C D.

O K ... Y Y Y?!

Ah! There are repeated Ps and Es. Is "mind your Ps and Es" a thing?

Oh, right. I should read the message … I passed my EYE TEST?

*squinting like I do at the optometrist's office*

I'm usually the one to play the "this would have been awesome if" game, but Jim Horne beat me to the punch today. He had a similar suggestion to Mike's, starting with a 3x3 square of nine Es at the top, with 2x2s of Fs and Ps after that. That would have been fantastic, getting much more at an actual eye chart.

I kept the ball rolling — how about if the lowest line of five letters was fuzzed out in gray! Better yet, what if it contained nonsense characters, a la Hans Moleman?

Jim, the Simpsons infidel, reacted much more with a question mark than a smiley face.

Although the EYE TEST gag didn't land for me, I enjoyed the attempt at something different. More importantly, Michael did a wonderful job of incorporating enough interesting fill to keep up solving interest. BANYAN TREE and PROM QUEENS are top-notch. UNADORNED is kind of unadorned, but along with YAPPED SNEERS there's a lot of sass.

– puzzle by Michael Schlossberg

Lewis and I are both musicians, so I loved his idea of presenting these repeated letter strings as if they were within repeated measures of a score. Choosing ones that are four letters long — to mirror four quarter notes in 4/4 time — seemed perfect!

Then I waffled. Would non-musicians figure out what those dots were all about? I imagined non-musicians trying to erase what they thought were printing errors, flecks of ink that had dripped onto their crossword. I talked Lewis out of it, seeing if we could come up with a different, non-musical revealer.

After a few days, Lewis convinced me back to the repeat signs. That is, until I thought about the poor electronic solvers, forced to read a note to the effect of [The grayed squares are meant to have pairs of dots on their ends as if repeat signs in a musical score]. Blech!

Thus, I persuaded Lewis away from the concept again. It took some doing, but we agreed it was for the best.

Until Lewis convinced me back!

Shows who's the brains in this operation.

Finally, we agreed to a compromise: incorporating a revealer that would make things clear, even if you didn't see the pairs of dots or had never picked up an instrument. REPEAT isn't the most cunning revealer, but it at least gets the point — or points, get it?* — across for non-musicians.

Jim Horne probably thinks that Jeff, the former trombone player, should be sackbutted for that dotty pun.

– puzzle by Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen