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Let's set the stage: you're the main character in today's play, searching for what connects each pair of words in four phrases. And … action!

Get it? Connects … as in LINKING? And action … as in a verb's job?

Perhaps I'm TOO CLEVER BY HALF.

LINKING VERB nicely describes what's going on. You can use our Finder to see other possibilities (the question marks ensure that VERB will never be at the start or end of the phrase). This doesn't eliminate false positives — it's no SILVER BULLET — but if you BEND OVER BACKWARD, you'll find a slew of goodies.

Speaking of goodies, Bruce worked in so much great fill into the corners. FACES IT / DID TIME / ARSENAL is a bit too "Sopranos" for my taste, but I enjoyed the optimism of I HOPE SO.

Can there be too much of a good thing? Will Shortz gave me useful feedback a few years ago, that my puzzles were tending to have too much stuff like ER NURSE. I love that kind of entry as a solver, so I was taken aback. However, he had an excellent point. Today's bonus fill took center stage with its sheer quantity, distracting me from the theme. OVER BUDGET on the bonuses, perhaps.

I loved the clever cluing touches. [Coffee in the milky way?] is a delightfully kooky way to describe a LATTE. Linking ADELE's "Rumour Has It" to I HEARD's ["Rumor has it"] is a fun "clue echo."

Straightforward "hidden words" puzzles are a tough sell, especially when the hidden word repeats repeatedly. I appreciated Bruce's efforts to pack in an enormous quantity of bonus fill, but I would have liked something else to provide added lift — a metaphorical HOVERBOARD.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

★ Regular readers might be surprised that I picked today's as the POW! Not only is this rebus-weary solver wary of the genre, but having one on a Wednesday, when no one expects it?

That's NEITHER HERE NOR THERE. I had so much fun solving this one that I declare WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER.

I found today's solve so entertaining that I spent an hour figuring out why:

• Great starter rebus. Right from the get-go, something was up. It's easy to pick out the common letters E and R, so along with the straightforward theme clues, things like ROGER FEDERER came easily.
• Snazzy phrases. I recently got hooked onto a YouTube embiggenator show, after being rapt at the creation of the world's largest FERRERO ROCHER. Maybe nauseating, but also drool-worthy.
• Solid rebus rationale. BOX ER = shove ER into a box. Yup.
• OH HELL YEAH, those bonuses!
• Themeless-level wordplay in the clues. This bball superfan loved describing a LAY-UP as an "underhanded move."

I have reservations about any sort of rebus on a Wednesday. I hear a lot of grumbling from rebus haters who say that what they like about crosswords is the simplicity of putting a single letter in a box, and I sympathize. However, rules getting broken is the price of creativity, and that's something to which any art form ought to aspire.

I'm not wild about featuring boxing, given the severity of the head injuries and even deaths. That said though, there was so much to enjoy here that it made it easy to throw in the towel of my hesitations. Knockout POW! debut.

– puzzle by Ethan Zou and Tomas Spiers

How could we resist building a puzzle around a KICK IN THE PANTS resulting in a PAIN IN THE ASS?

Yes, Chase and I are a pair of LOST SOULS. And that's the way we like it.

Searching for themers was not an easy process. Chase had originally discovered KICK IN THE PANTS = _ N _ _ _ E R S, which I loved, but we agreed that the others he'd found were just so-so. Some had loose synonyms, like UP IN ARMS = [EQ _ I _ MENT]. ARMS can be a kind of EQUIPMENT, but that smelled like we'd receive a kick in the pants from many solvers. Others felt too easy and/or the phrases weren't colorful enough to be featured as themers. LIE IN WAIT = _ _NG _ R … meh.

Surely some coding could help narrow the search space? Not so much. Maybe if there were a database of linked synonyms, but even then, it would take a lot of detailed code, and I'm sure you'd have a ton of false positives to sift through. There's probably some elegant way to refine this problem, but I had no ace in the hole—

Hey, ACE IN THE HOLE!

HOLD IN CONTEMPT does break the X IN THE Y pattern, but we figured that it could serve as a curveball for those getting too complacent. Heck, when I test solved, I put in AENEAS and PSST and immediately wrote in INTHE in the surrounding squares.

Did I enjoy getting duped? I probably would have if I hadn't convinced myself that [Some time ago] could believably be INCE.

Talk about HOLD IN CONTEMPT.

– puzzle by Chase Dittrich and Jeff Chen

Did the puzzle enTAUNT you? I propose calling an entente then because there's a lot of clever thinking going on. This theme isn't simply "add two common letters (EN)." It's not a fusty old sound change, either. Michael combines these two overdone genres into something better, adding the "än" sound but also employing homophones. SQUARE ROOT into SQUARE EN ROOT en route to SQUARE EN ROUTE.

I wasn't sure about the marquee central entry initially — it's the only one that fudges in an added space, but the sheer audacity of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY to EN GARDE, IANS OF THE GALAXY! made me snort. Consistency be damned, this was a lot more entertaining than something like EN GARDE HOUSE [Chez The Three Musketeers?].

Delightful result in THE ROYAL ENNUI, too. ÄN + WE = ENNUI is fit for a queen, and there's a reason why monarchs employed all those court jesters. THE ROYAL ENNUI amazingly gets at a real phenomenon.

Not all of them landed as strongly. HOW EN SUITE IT IS … not quite a two-flusher, but something's not fully going down. MAKE UP ENTRÉE gets dinged on Will Shortz's criterion that you shouldn't have to clue each part of the entry separately — there's nothing that naturally connects a replacement and a food entrée.

If these two are your weakest themers, that's still a lively set.

The more I studied the themers, the more my admiration grew. It's not easy to come up with EN___ words or phrases where the EN is pronounced with the "ÄN" sound. Heck, that entente / enTAUNT joke — which doesn't even make much sense — took me half an hour to figure out. That gave me even more appreciation for the work Michael put in.

– puzzle by Michael Lieberman

Half a themer at the start, half at the end? The revealer in the middle instead of at the end? Such things FLY IN THE FACE of convention!

It bugs me that it took an hour to think that up.

Great theme set; three phrases in the form of (type of bug) IN MY (body part). Three elements create buzz:

• Consistency. Never using anything but IN MY in the middle lends elegance.
• Completeness. Like a complete set of rare stamps, a Pokemon deck missing not even the most legendary of cards, or a database containing 100% of puzzles, there's something so satisfying about completeness. Can you think of another bug phrase that might work? I couldn't (as if that wasn't clear enough from my terrible joke above).
• Perfect revealer. WHAT'S BUGGING YOU so aptly describes these three phrases, each one expressing existential angst.

The themers miraculously pair up for symmetry? Praise the great goddess Cruciverba! But as always, she demands a sacrifice. 11/13/15/13/11 is Sisyphus-level torture, constructors doomed to fill the grid nearly to the end, only to discover a fatal flaw that unravels all their work, letter by letter, until they're back at square one.

The middle three themers create a devious challenge. It's smart to space them out as Jill did, but starting a puzzle fill with BUTI, leading to ENTO and then IONO is not a great kickoff. The B??I pattern is Hadean.

It's a tough challenge for a veteran constructor, and I give Jill a lot of credit for managing to cross the finish line. I'd like to see what she could do with the PAR of PARADED blacked out, though — it would open up some great possibilities cascading into an easier-to-fill middle.

– puzzle by Jill Singer

AYE, I, AI, AY … hey, who are you calling four eyes?

Neat that Enrique managed to use every possible homophone of EYE. Ai-yah, I couldn't think of any others except those that were part of another word, like EIDER DOWN.

Great revealer, too — EYE OPENERS aptly describes that the first words are all EYE sounds. I did pause, wondering if I had an ear problem since EYE OPENERS has nothing naturally to with homophones, and—

AY CARAMBA, Jeff!

I appreciated that AYE and AY aren't "dupes," since they don't share an etymology. AYE means yes in sailor-speak, and AY is an exclamation of surprise or despair in Spanish. I vote AYE for both their inclusions.

I recently got a revision request from an editor asking me to replace AREPA. I enjoy food, and I love South American cuisine, but I understand the feedback. Crossing AMANA, that first letter might be a total guess. Toss in a DOLMA, and my college friend who only eats brown foods (toast, plain chicken, etc.) might be writing in today.

Probably doesn't help that there's both an AMANA and an OSTER blended into the grid. I'm no chef, so I'm thankful that we picked up a broken OSTER food processor a few weekends ago for $4, which I repaired back to its original $100 value. I love a bargain, so OSTER was top of mind today!

It isn't easy to make a homophones puzzle stand out these days, but the cleverness of the revealer and the completeness of the set helped.

– puzzle by Enrique Henestroza Anguiano

"Letter banks" are a standard for word nerds, challenging us to discover words or phrases using a fixed set of allowed letters. One example is the NYT's Spelling Bee. I enjoy finding the pangram, but more than that is too much for me.

Crosswords have tapped into letter banks time and time again. One notable subgenre is the full grid letter bank. I loved Peter Gordon's Hawaiian language-themed puzzle, though the successive ones have felt more like constructor one-ups-man-ship than solver fun.

One notable feature of today's characters echoes my obsession with finding the Spelling Bee pangram. These pairs of titles — clever usage of "characters" as roles vs. "characters" as letters, by the way — share exact letter banks, not loosey-goosey subsets. For example, "Californication" and "Fatal Attraction" both use ACFILNORT.

That might be an incidental point to some solvers, but as a constructor and recreational programmer (the coding problem isn't difficult, but it's a useful exercise), I enjoyed that constraint.

This mechanical engineer heavily into codes adored the wordplay in [Cyb-org.?]. That's the kind of delight that staves off the ennui; prevents your puzzle from being assimilated into the collective of crosswords that lack character.

Get it ... sigh Borg?

Sigh.

– puzzle by David Tuffs

A NINE … hit!

N TWO … Bingo!

You sunk my battleship?

My gaming PLOT arc is all bent out of shape.

Using the coordinate system (shown in the grid below), N TWO = column N / row TWO. That square is occupied by the letter P. Following the process with A NINE, D ONE, and K SEVEN, you get P L O T.

P + L + O + T = the PLOT thickens!

PLOT is appropriate because the four letters are indeed PLOTted out on the coordinate plane. I would have loved some additional layer of depth, though — something like PLOT POINTS would have contributed to a stronger a-ha moment.

Great find in STUNTWOMAN, an excellent headliner for this theme. Note how NTWO breaks across STUNT and WOMAN, making it much more interesting than a one-worder like NETWORKING. Editors stress the importance of multi-word themers since they're more colorful as a whole than single-worders.

It would have been great to swap out either CANINE TEETH (Will Shortz would point out that TEETH doesn't contribute to the theme) or INDONESIANS (one-worders). There are many options with TEN, like JET ENGINE, and multi-word options with ONE, like PABLO NERUDA or LEMON EXTRACT.

Not all multi-worders are fantastic, though. One could easily argue that INDONESIANS is way better than the misery of HELL ON EARTH.

The "hidden words" genre is overdone these days, so an extra layer is always appreciated. Although today's didn't grab me as strongly as if there had been something more than simply PLOT at the end, I appreciated the novelty.

– puzzle by Dan Caprera

Erik has given me a lot of great book recs over the years, so seeing FANTASY SERIES made me a smile. That clue was equally fantastic, "invented language" making me think of Klingon dictionaries. Qapla'!

The symmetrical entry jumped off the page, too, DREAM SEQUENCE is so evocative. I wish it didn't get such a dictionary definition, though. Specialized or freshly coined terms need this treatment, but for such a common term, I'd have loved to see what these two wordplay superstars could have come up with. Qagh Sopbe'!

I'm not sure why it's rare to have a 16x15 themeless — I'd love to see more variety in layouts. One extra column may seem trifling, but it carries so much potential. Any small variance can help distinguish a themeless from the sea of same-old, same-old layout patterns.

Here, it opens up the possibility for an even number of letters for the middle entry. WISH LIST is pretty good, and that "present perfect indicative" cluing makes for a gleeful unwrapping.

(I hadn't noticed the mini-theme of FANTASY, WISH, DREAM, but that's fun.)

I would have loved a greater quantity of long (8+ letters) entries — that extra column could allow for maybe two extra feature entries. I like that Brooke and Erik took full advantage of their 13 long slots, but pushing that to 15 would have added extra sizzle.

I wasn't familiar with SMOKEY EYE, but it's easy enough to infer. Not as easy to figure out why it's not "smoky eye."

Although this one didn't stand out as much as I hoped, given these two powerhouse constructors teaming up, I loved so many of the clues. I'll never say NO THANK YOU to brilliant reinterpretations. Passwords to "pass words?" … such wonderful wordplay makes me never pass up my Friday themeless solve.

– puzzle by Brooke Husic and Erik Agard

★ The hilarity in [What might prompt a run for congress?] is worth a POW! all by itself. There wouldn't be such a huge divide if there was more LIBIDO in Congress!

I miss the days when Sam used to live close by. Always so warm and funny, Sam has such a neat variety of interests. Inspired by his baking birthday cakes for his nieces and nephews, I bake my kids' birthday cakes. For some, I've declared I NAILED IT, and some are worthy of Nailed It! Frankenfood is right.

I enjoyed the dual revealers, both FRANKENFOOD and BUMPER CROPS hinting at the interplay between pairs of foods. Each one uses a different element of wordplay, too. BUMPER CROPS was my favorite, since in an alternate universe, I spend all my time hustling in pool halls. I enjoyed seeing the foods bump into each other and carom off.

FRANKENFOOD was less direct since it needed the word "crossings" in the clue to show relevance, but forming those six crosses was still cool.

One ding that may make you say I'm a ding-a-ling: it's easy to find these sorts of crossing food possibilities since there are so many foods to choose from. Additionally, BEET and CORN are easy to incorporate, not nearly as impressive as SQUASH. I'd MOVE MOUNTAINS to feature some longer ones like PLANTAIN.

It's usually best to avoid big ol' honking corners — few enjoy working hard only to uncover SMUGGER DYAD EDESSA, and SNERT is no comics ETOILE these days. I'd have been fine losing GIFT HORSE, breaking it at the H, thus making the SW and NE much more tractable.

Sunday 21x21 puzzles are so time-consuming that you have to work to keep solvers engaged. That doesn't have to be through an amazing theme, since great bonus fill or a-ha-inducing clues can also achieve that goal. Today's puzzle is a great example of sheer quantity of cluing wordplay making for so much fun — NFL TEAM as a "hiking group" is worthy of a touchdown dance.

Great puzzle for casual Sunday solvers.

– puzzle by Samuel A. Donaldson

Who doesn't love a PIZZA PARTY? I'll tell you who: two certain kids who refuse to eat anything that a molecule of SAUCE has touched. They will also snub the CRUST if it's too crusty. Or not crusty enough. And they'll only SAY CHEESE to a singular brand of non-dairy, vegan (read: outlandishly expensive) cheese substitute.

Talk about WEAK SAUCE.

What, no toppings on today's pizza?

Oh, right, my kids won't eat toppings on pizza.

I had a laugh/cry with the grid's vibe of TIME BOMBS EXPLODES ANTIMATTER WHAP.

I usually love loads of bonus fill, but I had to weigh its effects today. On one hand, I couldn't easily figure out the theme — were BOMBS and LEAVE thematic? Muddying up a crispy pizza theme isn't great.

On the other hand, I couldn't easily figure out the theme. For such a simple concept, where CRUST SAUCE CHEESE are tough words to disguise, hiding them in plain sight among distracting entries extended my "Name That Theme" game.

So all the Across bonuses gets to the age-old computer science / mechanical engineering question: is a feature or a bug?

Let's go with feature today.

I used to roll my eyes at "directive" clues, but I've come to enjoy them. You'd better believe it! As in believing a DOGMA. Accessible wordplay fun on a Monday is much appreciated.

I'm sure some boomers will say BLECH to GENZER. On an unrelated topic, I might point out that GEN ZER is one letter away from GEEZER.

All in all, a debut with a touch of spice. To which my kids will say BLECH.

– puzzle by Taylor Johnson

Crosswords have tapped animal themes so many times, that you need something special to prevent an editor from saying BAAAA-humbug; to encourage them to yoink your puzzle from the slush pile. (Bad animal sound puns won't accomplish that.) At first glance, I couldn't give a quack about three animal phrases, but the revealer made me shout EEE, I owe I owe this another look!

Hopefully you noticed the three pairings, MUUMUU under cow, NAE NAE stacked with HORSE, and BABA tucked below SHEEP. Great additional layer (different from how a hen is a "layer"), disguising the OLD MACDONALD sounds so neatly. And nae, it's not simply a single NAE, but the doubled NAE NAE echoes the classic children's song lyrics perfectly.

That in itself would have been strong enough to make the theme stand out, but to stack the noises directly under their respective animals is a tour de force, especially for an early-week puzzle. This touch makes it much less likely that a novice solver will miss what's going on (although we have highlighted them below, just in case).

Sandy brings up a good point about HSBC and IERE. One hundred percent of editors will cringe at the latter, but I don't mind the former at all, as HSBC is huge in the finance world. It is critical to give ridiculously simple, unambiguous crossing answers, and Sandy delivers.

I've seen so many animal / animal noise themes over the years that it's nearly impossible for one to stick in my brain. Kudos to Sandy for making it happen.

– puzzle by Sandy Ganzell

This puzzle is a lot like parenting — no ME time. Trying to remember the trick was frustrating (also like parenting), but I resolved to find each and every one of them (warning: Dad Joke alert), even if it killed ME.

Perfect puzzle for haters of the ME generation; ME removed from regular entries to form equally valid entries. Twelve times! I like symmetry, especially for thematic entries, but that's near impossible when you're trying to pack in such an immense quantity.

ME is a common bigram, and there are a ton of possibilities (try our Replacement Finder). Crosswords should genreally feature long theme entries, but there isn't much to choose from that's both long and surprising. Something like ARE YOU KIDDING ME to ARE YOU KIDDING … I'm sure many solvers would ask, are you kidding me?!

Because the base phrase isn't clued, it can be confusing to use a multi-word entry. I love CON GAMES to CONGAS and COME HERE to COHERE because of the space changes, but I can see how some solvers would stare at the unclued CONGAMES and never understand how the wool got pulled over their eyes.

Splitting up a revealer is a reasonable choice, especially when it can be perfectly halved. I don't mind LEAVE ME and OUT OF IT not residing in symmetrical spots, especially since they're at the bottom of the puzzle, delaying the revealing moment. Putting the second half first is so inelegant, though. I'm sure it worked out best this way due to the fortuitous intersection of OUT OF IT and IM HOME, but there are better presentations available.

Although the overall solving experience came across as somewhat haphazard, there are a lot of interesting finds, like MENORAH to NORAH and IM HOME to IMHO.

– puzzle by Hoang-Kim Vu and Jessica Zetzman

TRASH PANDA is so hilarious that it could earn a POW! all on its own. This is the kind of delightful entry that makes me smile with every sighting of a Robyn Weintraub byline.

There weren't as many joyful grid entries as I've come to expect out of a Weintraub production, but that's more of a matter of my sky-high bar for her. Still, phrases like ALL OVER THE MAP and HERE WE GO AGAIN are the foundations of a fantastic CARE PACKAGE.

Even with my unreasonable expectations, Robyn managed to wow me with the sheer quantity of delightful wordplay clues. How many times have I seen the word "toy" played upon for "small dog"? Yet I still fell for it today, because of the mystery created by [Toy from a place that no longer exists]. No longer exists ... Atlantis? Abyssinia? Austria? (I once swore that Austria had dissolved back in the 19th century. I also once confused Wyoming and Wisconsin. Sad, but true.)

Such mastery over the "hidden capital" trick, too. [Superior dwellings, say] obscures the capital S at the beginning of the clue, misdirecting from LAKE HOUSES. Robyn also pulled it off in reverse, with [Spent some time in the Outback, perhaps]. That's a Subaru Outback, not the Austrian Outback, of course.

Most themeless constructors spend way too little time on their cluing — an order of magnitude — and this is a great example of where all of Robyn's cluing efforts elevated the solve to a whole 'nother level. As with most Weintraub puzzles, I could have easily given this one the POW! That was my first instinct after hitting one amazing clue after another, but I figured I'd follow Robyn's example of spreading around the joy.

– puzzle by Robyn Weintraub

I love seeing innovative themeless grid patterns. This one not only has striking visual appeal — sort of an hourglass with vampire teeth — but those strategic black squares in the middle make this layout much easier to fill than many traditional themeless layouts. Note that the "racetrack" is only four or even three squares wide most everywhere, simplifying the task.

Themelesses like this focus heavily on the limited number of long entries, and Benji did a great job creating vivid imagery. What kind of cowardly themeless constructor DIALS IT BACK and still hopes for an acceptance, right? Check out the stories of the top and bottom stacks:

• CREATES A MONSTER crossing GOES MAD, near OK SHOOT — such MAGICAL imagery! Funny to juxtapose all that with AT ONE WITH NATURE.
• I've been transitioning into more plant-based eating over the past year. Hopefully it's not a DIET FAD, and if the next new thing is a RATLIKE MEAT ALTERNATIVE, I'm out.

Given that the "racetrack" is only four squares wide most everywhere, I'd have liked fewer dabs of INI HTS SYR. CETE is an oddball, too, though I'm sure zoologists would disagree. Although the racetrack is narrow, it still has to mesh into itself in the end, which can be surprisingly challenging, requiring many more iterations that one might think.

It's tough to make your NYT debut with a themeless, because the competition is much more fierce than for any other day of the week. Kudos to Benji for coming up with something eye-catching and evocative.

– puzzle by Benji Goldsmith

★ There's no secret that I've been giving NYT Sunday puzzles the STINKEYE over the past five years, not so gently trying to encourage the editorial team to step up their game in finding better ways to attract fresher, more creative ideas. At first glance, today's theme — seemingly yet another "first words are synonyms" — hardly justified the large Sunday canvas, and I was ready to launch into the usual diatribe. To my surprise, I dug, fancied, went for, and even loved the concept!

At a basic level, it's impressive that Joe managed to incorporate almost all the possible "like" synonyms that are disguisable. The only other one I could think of was TAKE TO (the slopes or the cleaners).

Digging deeper, the meaning changes are so profound. GET OFF ON as in "start" vs. as in "like" is stark. Same goes for DIG, especially when you're talking about DIGging your OWN GRAVE. That is one hilariously curious obsession.

And the theme clues! "Dextropodophiles" broke the record for how long I've ever stared at a word. Then "Autotumulophiles" broke it again. Both are words I can parse and make sense of by etymology, and what a hilarious moment for each when I connected them to RIGHT FOOT and OWN GRAVE.

Sunday puzzles take so long to do that it's critical for constructors to offer something refreshing, engaging, and ideally providing multiple levels of solving pleasure. Appropriate that Joe featured so much LOVE, PRIZE, FANCY, GET OFF ON, DIG, GO FOR LIKE, as these all fit my admiration for his puzzle.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney

Like many Americans, soccer hasn't captured my attention as much as other sports, but I've recently been fascinated by Welcome to Wrexham. Now, I want to sit in the Kop and cheer on Paul Mullin and Ollie Palmer — in a Deadpool costume, of course. It's fun to see my ex-pat friends catch WORLD CUP fever, rooting on their home country teams.

At first, the OLE x5 repetition felt like a cheap way to create a 15-letter grid spanner, but then I realized there's a real chant that uses exactly five OLEs. Neat!

The excessive Os in the next themer also got my OO (eyes) rolling. YouTube to the rescue again! There's something so endearing about announcers' enthusiastic elongations that I'm OOOOOOOOOOOOO-K with it.

VUVUZELA — banned in many venues for over a decade, thankfully — is a tough word to spell correctly, and expecting newer solvers to figure out the ZELLE crossing is a Zinedine Zidane head-butt. (SMAZE crossing LLANO is more like a cheap slide tackle.)

There's nothing like some personality injected into an early-week clue. FLAW is a common entry, and I'm crying GOOOOOOOOOOOOAL with this perfect shot: [Having a thermal exhaust port lead straight to the reactor of your Death Star, e.g.].

The SW and NE corners are so wide-open — even more "go big or go home" than pulling your goalie. There can be some incredible bonuses, like RUN WILD and THIS WON'T DO, with EYE CONTACT and GOOD ONE. However, OATERS STYES and Kevin NEALON make me so thankful that Michael Che and Colin Jost have freshened up "Weekend Update."

Although there were some offsides penalties and yellow cards, I enjoyed the celebratory feel of today's puzzle, foreshadowing all the excitement ahead in the upcoming weeks.

– puzzle by Brandon Koppy

I aced "Name That Theme" today! 7-Down, long revealer clue … easy! CUTTING THE DECK.

Wait, that doesn't fit. CUT!

Let's redeal. Clearly, it has to be SHUFFLING THE DECK.

Would you believe BURNING THE TOP CARD?

There's a term in poker called the "big blind" — appropriate for me today.

I enjoyed the visual of CUTTING THE CARDS cutting through types of cards: PICTURE card, GIFT card, NOTE card, DANCE card, CREDIT card. It's so difficult to get so many themers to intersect each other.

It's a shame that the first Across themer is the least recognizable; Merriam-Webster defining PICTURE card as a Britishism for a FACE card. Something like CAT SCRATCH FEVER might have sharpened the a-ha moment.

Any time you weave five themers through a backbone revealer, there are bound to be challenges in the intersection regions. The strains showed right away at the first crossing, with LYIN / LAC (and LIS not far away). I also paused at GINO crossing XIANG, but thankfully my ancestors didn't have to come haunt me when N felt like the most likely letter.

Well done overall, though, the grid not showing much more stress after that.

Typically, something like PRESORTED feels less like a bonus than a necessity. Finding something that would work in that ridiculously constrained slot is a triumph, though, and there's also a bit of an echo back to the notion of "cards."

CUTTING THE DECK isn't as strong as CUT THE DECK (oops, I meant CARDS) since the cutting action is so brief, but it served its purpose as a 15-letter revealer, aptly slicing different types of cards. I enjoyed the visual even more after we took some liberties to colorize it below.

– puzzle by Wendy L. Brandes

Jim Horne and I worked up a DOT THE IS puzzle about a decade ago and sent it to Peter Gordon at Fireball Crosswords. Peter quickly replied that the concept was okay, but having an O represent a DOT didn't feel amazing. Additionally, restricting the grid so that every I had an O above it caused too many trade-offs. We certainly didn't DOT THE IS with that submission!

Pao did so much better today. Novel twist on the old concept: DOTs as rebuses in the Across direction and ignored in the Downs (see grid below for clarification). I thought I had everything all figured out when I realized PALE BLUE DOT was doing something funky with POP () IDOL, and more so when () IONS had to answer the Large Hadron Collider clue. Who's brilliant?

Not I!

Devilishly delightful twist to include DOT DOT DOT in the upper right corner. Rebus or special squares are almost always featured within the longest theme entries — Will Shortz usually requires this — so to have not one, not two, but three extra DOTs tucked in was a stroke of genius. DOT DOT DOT is such an evocative entry, and it was a perfect bow on the grid.

A lot of constructors have riffed on dotting Is or crossing Ts. August Miller gave us his own execution earlier this year, for instance. That one was much more complicated, solvers having to write in DOT one way and I in the other, and we saw a lot WTF?! mail for that one. I bet we'll field some of that today, but I'll also wager that there's a heavy amount of praise for this enjoyable and creative concept that still keeps it relatively easy to fill in all the special squares.

– puzzle by Pao Roy

★ HAD A BLAST is right! This is my favorite type of themeless crossword, focusing on pure fun, loaded with colorful, accessible long entries, and bulging with highly-toned wordplay clues that pop.

Most every themeless these days is chock full of excellent long phrases — they all have to be, considering the sky-high bar raised by pandemic-bored constructors — but so few turn the wordplay knob to eleven. Today, I ticked off at least eleven clues that delighted.

I usually notice the ones that elevate an already great entry even higher — repurposing "funny bones" to describe LOADED DICE is criminally awesome — but I appreciate wordplay clues for short, ho-hum entries even more. Some speed-solvers will gloss over SCUM, barely reading the clue. That would be a shame since I got fooled so badly by [Film about fish tanks?]. So much for my brilliant guess of NEMO!

There isn't any one amazing grid entry that people will be tweeting about (assuming that Elon Musk hasn't destroyed Twitter by this morning), but I'll take fourteen above-average long entries any day. When NESPRESSO occupies your least interesting 8+ letter slot, I gotta say I GOT NOTHIN' in terms of critique.

I also appreciated that Simon didn't concentrate all his long slots in the four corners. Many 72-word themelesses squish three long entries into each of the four corners, making filling easier since you can work on them independently. I love that Simon branched out, with six long words reaching into the middle. I got a sense of pizazz at every step along the way, not just in the four corners.

Hardly any questionable short entries at all, too. Maybe ADZ is a bit LAZY since adze is listed first in many dictionaries, and IROCS aren't for everyone.

Incredibly minor nits to pick, though, in a magnificent example of how to pull off a standout 72-word themeless.

– puzzle by Simon Marotte

Congrats to Kanyin! It's neat to see another puzzle bloom out of the Diverse Crossword Constructor Fellowship program. I'm a big fan of mini-themed themelesses, so kudos for the neat link between two books written in response to other books. Mini-themes help make themelesses memorable, especially for those of us long-time solvers.

For certain types of themeless puzzles, so much of the solving experiences gets back to one's personal history. I loved THINGS FALL APART when I read it back in college, so plunking it in after reading [Chinua Achebe novel …] thrilled me. And I had no idea it was a response to "Heart of Darkness"! I wish I'd picked up on that during American Lit classes, but my study habits did fall apart back in that delightful period of my life. Fascinating to read about the novel's background.

On the other hand, WIDE SARGASSO SEA didn't elate me since I haven't read it (and I shamefully can't get through "Jane Eyre," no matter how many times I've forced myself).

Bracing myself for the brouhaha from die-hard fans …

I also appreciated how Kanyin furthered the mini-theme with COEHLO's "The Alchemist" and cluing UNDERWORLD to Dante. All in all, an ILLUMINATI feel.

Too heavy a literary focus might make for a HIT OR MISS experience for some solvers, so it was great to get some FAKE TAN, BARTEND, THAT SO?, for those of us who are TOO SLOW on the highbrow uptake. Great to include a modern term, too, in RIDE OR DIE.

I learned about WIDE SARGASSO SEA from an old crossword and then a more recent one, but I didn't give the book a second thought. Today's mini-theme prompted me to think about the book in a new way, encouraging me to add it to my to-be-read pile. Such power in that mini-theme!

– puzzle by Kanyin Ajayi

Jim Horne and I have to fix up puzzle entries or a grid display several times a week, and sometimes we have to circle around an issue to triangulate the problem. Jim's usually the star while I'm the square, but he's the one this week who couldn't figure out why a SUPERSTAR was a [Major concern for a meteorologist].

Finally, a chance to take heart in my abilities! Well, Jim, when a star explodes into a nova, some illuminati term it a "superstar." You might have learned this if you watched such cutting-edge documentaries as "Nova," "Into the Universe," and "Babylon 5."

So much for my WHIZ BANG Big Bang theory.

We've highlighted the revealer below, in case solvers are still as befuddled as Jim by my explanation. BENT OUT / OF SHAPE = five theme entries "bend" upward from a shape. Thus, INNER CITY "bends" out of INNER CIRCLE.

Hopefully, you don't go round and round on that.

Great choice to go up to 142 words, Adam making his life a whole lot easier. Smart deployment of black squares, too, mirroring the upward motion of his themers, creating much-needed separation between themers. I won't smear SMEARER any more than Adam already has, but what an impressive result; smoother than the average Sunday.

The left-hand side has far fewer constraints than the right. I wasn't wowed by ACE KING or OAT BRAN, but NO U TURN and WIND UP TOY are excellent.

Since the first word of each themer pair is repeated, there's not much a-ha to the solve. It's a tough constructing call — this idea is probably too hard to execute in a 15x15, but is it compelling enough to hold solvers' attention through a 21x21?

Still, Adam did well to add in many bonuses throughout, and the clean grid helped make for smooth solving.

– puzzle by Adam Wagner