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Will Shortz has warned me to avoid using too many proper names in puzzles if they're at the level of not-quite-famous-enough — "either you know them, or you don't." If you're in the latter camp, it's no fun to work hard to uncover someone that brings you little joy.

Now, the President of China? He's most definitely a person everyone ought to have heard of. But is that the case? I could only recall Xi off the top. And JINPING? Good luck with that! All those Asian names look alike.

(One of the benefits to being a minority is being able to say stuff like that. Don't try it at home.)

I enjoyed this entry, as its clue was eye-opening: XI JINPING at #1 on Forbes' list of most powerful people? Yikes! Neat that he has so many rare letters in his name, too.

With only eight long slots (8+ letters), I wanted every one of them to count. AD LIBBING is great. FINAL SALE, FULL TIMER, ODOR EATER, all solid. HYACINTH is pretty, too.

But SITS IDLE and RESTS EASY are on the dull side, sitting there too idly, resting too easy.

Thankfully, there were a lot of mid-length slots to juice up the joint. ARTEMIS, HEY JUDE, NO JEANS, FOX CUB are all assets.

Most others weren't as strong, though. LENDERS is fine, but nothing exciting. I WAS HAD isn't as interesting as I BEEN HAD or WE WUZ ROBBED! And SLOVENS? It is in the dictionary. That's the best I can say about it.

All in all, solid craftsmanship, but I want more snazziness out of a standard 72-word themeless.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

I like Pete's take on the now-standard "stair stack" grid layout. DO THE SPLITS / PERSONALITY / PR NIGHTMARE make for a great foundation. But check out what he does in the SW / NE corners — they're so wide-open!

Typically, most stair stacks have a black square (or more) to break up those corners. Possibilities: somewhere like the final E of GREENE or the G of CHLORINE GAS (with other black squares moved around accordingly). It's so tough to run adjacent long down entries through stair stacks, but CHLORINE GAS / LETS GET ON IT weave their way through.

I wasn't hot on CHLORINE GAS, as it brought up unpleasant images. And like Pete, I was elated that the song LETS GET IT ON was in a crossword!

Except that it wasn't quite there. No doubt, there are almost always going to be trade-offs involved with audacious grid design.

I like what Pete did with his mini-corners (the NW / SE). Not a lot of room in either for jazzy material, but a Z in one corner and two Zs in the other make things spicy. ERSATZ and ZYDECO are fun to say.

Loved RABBIT HOLE, too. I go down so many internet rabbit holes every day.

Continuing the animal mini-theme, I was delighted by the NEMEAN LION. I was enchanted by the stories of Hercules as a kid.

Couple of great clues. ENZYME was already a nice answer due to that Z, but the innocent [Food processor] got me clapping. (Enzymes help process food inside your stomach.)

If it hadn't been for CHLORINE GAS and the cringey HALER — and if the last two words of LETS GET ON IT had been switched — this would have been right up there for the POW!

– puzzle by Peter A. Collins

DJ's SPINNIN' = phrases with D's replaced with J's. GRAVE JIGGERS made me out-and-out belly laugh. What an image that evokes!

HOOVER JAM also entertained, given the change of HOOVER from the name to the vacuum-related noun.

The others didn't do much for me, but humor is subjective. Hopefully, others were more entertained.

Nice touch that Tony and Acme chose phrases that didn't contain any other D's. It would have been inelegant for a simple letter substitution puzzle to have a stray D inside one of the theme phrases.

It's not easy to work so many Js into a single puzzle. Eight of them is no joke! But given that this is such a basic concept, I needed something more to keep up my interest. Here are some possible ways:

• Bonuses in the fill. There's DON JUAN, but not much else.
• Clean as a whistle gridwork? Nope, too much crossword glue. I stopped counting at 10 infractions. Adding / rejiggering black squares, to increase the word count from 138 to 140, could have helped.
• Clever wordplay clues. None that stood out.
• Extra layer of theme. At first I thought there was a neat extra: all the new Js form a circle ... like a record that's being spun! That would have been a solid addition. Alas, no. (Maybe it's a Dali-esque record?)

All in all, some decent theme answers, but I wish there had been something more to enliven my solving experience.

However, it's important to remember that I'm far from an average solver. There's something to be said for occasionally throwing a softball. Many people I know delight in being able to just complete a Sunday NYT crossword, so this could be right up their alleys.

– puzzle by Tony Orbach and Andrea Carla Michaels

Oh, B-have yourself!

Letter / sound homophones have been done over and over in crosswords, including a similar idea from just three months ago, so you have to execute perfectly in order to be noticed. This debut did nearly that:

• Using every possible word homophone of B — B, BEA, BEE, BE — made for a tight theme set.
• Great picks for themers. If you haven't heard the B MINOR MASS, it's worth a listen.
• Strong bonuses. MATHLETE, IS THAT OK, AFL CIO, GINSBURG!
• Silky smooth short fill. Wow, Ellis took great care in assembling this one. Fantasic work, and from a newb!

With just four themers of moderate length, I expect a ton of bonuses, plus virtually no dabs of crossword glue to hold it all together — that's almost always possible, unless you have a lot of rare letters to work around. It's inspiring to see a debut constructor rise to my expectations.

Did you notice the "Bill Shortz" byline? I like the idea of doing something different, but this didn't do much for me.

ADDED NOTE: apparently all the clues start with B. Nice added touch, but I must admit I missed it, even after reviewing the puzzle.

The one hitch in my solve: PASS AWAY. What a downer, especially in the symmetrical spot to GINSBURG. Don't waste your valuable long slots, and more importantly, don't harsh solvers' buzz. A neutral entry, some everyday word, would have been much better.

Outstanding gridwork, especially for a new constructor. It's tough for me to award POWs! for theme types that feel overdone, so I couldn't go there. But if an equal level of craftsmanship had been applied to a more interesting theme, it would have easily garnered POW! consideration.

– puzzle by Ellis Hay

I enjoy the lateral thinking required to dream up these types of themes. SPOTs can be found in PARKING LOTs, on LEOPARD PRINT, during a COMMERCIAL BREAK, and at a DOGGY DAY CARE. Four different types of spots demonstrate the wide range of meanings one word can exhibit.

I originally hitched at DOGGY DAY CARE, since Spot (the stereotypical dog name) required capitalization, but the entry itself is so sparkly that I decided I didn't care.

The only one that bothered me was TEASER VICE. (Think: one of those commercials that advertise "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.") Much too similar to COMMERCIAL BREAK, and a TEASER isn't exactly a "spot."

(I'm kidding, of course. Mostly.)

When I finally realized that it was TEA SERVICE — future crossword theme alert; fun parsing change! — I still wasn't a fan. Proper people do say "a spot of tea," but a TEA SERVICE having "spots" felt different; more of a stretch than the others. You can point while in a PARKING LOT and say "there's a spot." Same with the others. Not so much with TEA SERVICE.

I preferred Joe's original BENCH PRESS (where the bench presser is given a (safety) spot by a person behind). I brainstormed more and came up with CASH DRAWER and PAIR OF DICE. The former doesn't work any better than TEA SERVICE though since no one calls a ten-spot a "spot," and the latter is maybe too similar to LEOPARD PRINT. None of them is ideal, but BENCH PRESS works the best out of these options. I'm with Joe!

It is true that DOLMA is a toughie, especially for an early-week puzzle — doubly so when crossed with LOAM. There will often be prices to pay when a puzzle is theme-dense, but I think this could have been smoothed over by putting a black square at the L of TOILET and shifting black squares down within that column. I love DOLMAs, but its presence might make for a less satisfying newbie solve.

Besides that one blip though, solid gridwork. TEMP AGENCY, I BELIEVE SO, LET IT BE = solid bonuses.

Too bad about TEA SERVICE. The fifth themer makes gridwork much harder than four, and it detracted from the solving experience for me. I'd have given it the POW! if Joe had figured out a way to just use the four strong themers, which would have allowed him to jazz up the fill even more.

– puzzle by Joe Deeney

MARCH comes in like a LION, out like a LAMB. Great fodder for crossword interpretation.

Solid phrases, MARCH OF PROGRESS, showing a progression from WINTER WONDERLAND to SPRING HAS SPRUNG. I liked that notion. I did wonder about WINTER WONDERLAND, which is the opposite of being like a lion — more gentle and lamb-esque, yeah? But WINTER WONDERLAND is fun to say, so I let it slide.

Not hot on the word ladder, though. So many word ladders have been done over the years that one has to be sizzlingly incredible to stand out. The motion from LION to LAMB is a good raison d'etre, but if you have to include LIMN, that's a reason to brainstorm other ways of showing LION -> LAMB.

I wondered if my cringing reaction to a featured rung in the ladder was unfounded. I had seen it recently in a Matt Gaffney metapuzzle, where Matt had painted himself into an extremely difficult corner to fill. Matt's one of the best, and he admitted that compromises had to be made.

Joon Pahk, who's way smarter than me — a former physics prof, winner of six-figures on "Jeopardy!" — agreed, tactfully saying "LIMN is an unusual word."

I asked my wife Jill, who went to Harvard, then med school, and is always educating herself in new subjects. She knew what it meant, but said she wouldn't use it in conversation, for fear of 1.) mispronouncing it and 2.) the other person not understanding her.

Out of curiosity, I wondered how long a ladder would be required if you used only "good" words. I came up with LION LOON LOIN LAIN LAWN DAWN DAMN DAMP LAMP LAMB. Yikes, much longer. And admittedly, LAIN isn't great.

Now, I did enjoy the bonuses in the fill. CORDON BLEU, LET IT SLIDE, GIANT PANDA are fantastic. Spiced up the solve.

HEAR THINGS felt a tad off though, not as strong as HEARING THINGS. And ooh my, OMOO was the only thing that could be jammed in between LION and MARCH OF PROGRESS? Oof. Or should I say, OXX?

A strong idea, with three fun, colorful themers. But I would have enjoyed a simpler idea more: LION at 1-A, and LAMB as the final across answer.

– puzzle by Mary Lou Guizzo and Erik Agard

★ A jazzy revealer — STICK EM UP! — along with four catchphrases: HANG EM HIGH, HOOK EM HORNS, KNOCK EM DEAD, and the doubled-up ROCK EM SOCK EM ROBOTS — made for a great theme set. Fantastic choices.

Every time the NYT runs a "parts of answers jutting up or down," I get angry emails saying that there's something wrong in the grid. Ooh, the vitriolic barrages I got after a HOLDING DOWN THE FORT puzzle (never mind that I didn't write it). You fool, you @#$@!ed up big time! You're the biggest moron in the history of moronocy!

I've learned to spell out themes in painful detail, so that (most) everyone gets it.

I enjoyed today's in part because I won't have to do as much explaining. Tried and true "jutting" theme, but it's so easy to figure out. (We've highlighted the EMs below just in case.) Instead of relying on a long jutting string, or several different strings, it's simply EM at work.

It is true that once you've figured out the theme, it all falls quickly. But I didn't mind that. Enough of a trick to make it worthy of a Thursday slot, but easy enough to make me feel smart. It's a win when a constructor makes solvers feel smart.

Fully agreed with Brian, I could have used a slightly smoother grid. DAK Prescott, become uber-famous already! ETE MKTS TIO TMEN XCI almost made me rethink my POW! pick. But these gluey bits did allow for a lot of great WHAT A TOOL / LINE DANCE CHIN MUSIC bonuses, so I'm okay with the trade-offs.

Even after doing thousands of crosswords over the years, I still get tripped up solving these "jutting" types of puzzles. I appreciate that Brian found a simple, but colorful, effective, and easy to understand concept within this genre.

– puzzle by Brian Thomas

Beautiful parallelogram in the middle, featuring five longish stair stacked answers. I loved WINE FLASK, SUGAR RUSH, SUSHI RICE, all delicious. MOSAIC LAW took me two missteps — KOSHER LAW and then JUDAIC LAW, but MOSAIC LAW is inferable. Remember that dude, Moses?

DISS TRACK was my least favorite of the five, only vaguely having heard of it before. But it seems to be solidly in the language, so that's simply personal preference. Glad that it was easily understandable — you're DISSing someone on a record TRACK.

Running I JUST MIGHT and I LUCKED OUT through the center was the icing on the cake. What an impressive middle of the grid!

I appreciate David's effort to zazz up the grid with more long slots, AFC NORTH and MEGALOMANIA providing more juice. RAVE CULTURE didn't do much for me though, as it felt too specialized a term at first; a bit arbitrary. Some research showed that I was wrong yet again. It's definitely a thing — and a popular thing at that!

Opening up the top and bottom of the grid to include these extra long entries did exact a price, though. There was enough ERE NOW, AGUE, NIIHAU, that the puzzle fell out of POW! consideration. It's a shame, as that center five-stack had such a wow factor.

I wonder what would have happened if David had broken up VERA WANG and AFC NORTH, which might have allowed him to smooth out some oddballs, and maybe even juice up his NW / SE corners more as well.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

Note the similarities between today's grid and Sam's last themeless? They're not identical, but they're so similar. Today's is easier to fill in general because you can work on the SW / NE more independently, since those regions are easier to separate from the rest of the grid.

Similar impressions about the grid qualities, too — both have a lot of stellar entries, not many gluey bits, but some oddities. The SW corner is a perfect microcosm of this. Starting with ALRIGHTY THEN and THE CONGA on the outside edge. INBOX ZERO, LOWBALLS, MG MIDGET, IRON RULE inside — wow! And no crossword glue!

But DRAWMEN? GULLED?

Huh.

Since the SW corner is easier to construct today compared to his last grid, I can understand the allure of going for broke, stuffing as much great material inside as possible. DRAWMEN is a heavy price to pay though, especially if you're crossing it with XMEN. Most other editors wouldn't allow that.

Along with VIENNA COFFEE (a sort of espresso drink?), FAST ICE (solid H20 during Ramadan?), LOESSER, BURKINI (cross between a burqa and a bikini), that's as a whole too esoteric for my taste.

Don't get me wrong — I like each of these entries on their own. Some of them I like a lot — BURKINI, what a fun term! But it felt like it had the potential to be a slew of punishingly-tough material forced upon some poor solvers all at once. I'd have rather had a few less of these and a few more minor short offenders like STET and EXTS.

– puzzle by Sam Trabucco

You had me at math puns.

ROOT OF ALL EVIL as √666 was hilarious. POWER OF ATTORNEY as X^Esq made me smile. As did 3.BB. I've taken so many THREE POINT SHOTs in my life (most of them missed, sadly), how could this former mathlete never have thought of that?

Even the ones that didn't hit 100% amused me. $$$/X = CASH DIVIDEND yes, in that a dividend can be the number on top of the divide line. Hard to remember that definition of dividend though, making for not as strong an a-ha moment.

Still, math humor!

As Adam mentioned, the grid wasn't as smooth as I wanted. I stopped counting gluey bits at 10, and it kept going. ECOL ELA FISC ILE OME etc.?

AH, SO, I say (with squinty eyes).

A great majority of constructors should never go below 140 words. There's an exponential rise in difficulty, inversely proportional to the number of words. Don't do it; resist the temptation! Split up TACONIC so you get rid of AH SO. Trouble with the SW corner? Use more black squares there — break up DEPRESSORS and get your long downs elsewhere. A 6x5 chunk of white space is rarely easy to fill with smoothness and color.

Thankfully, the theme entertained me enough to overcome my qualms with the gridwork. I'd love to see Will start returning grids for rework with two caveats:

1. don't go below 140 words unless your name starts with Berry, and
2. go up to 142 or even 144 words if that makes for a squeaky-clean grid, with at least 4-6 strong bonus fill entries.

I bet few solvers would notice an occasional 144-word puzzle.

– puzzle by Adam Fromm

This puzzle is no GENUINE IMITATION! Wait. I didn't mean to say that. Or maybe I did. I'm such an (oxy)moron.

Four (awful) good oxymorons featured today. It's tough for me to get excited about straight-up oxymoron themes, given how many puzzles I've made about them, and how many people have asked me for help with their own oxymoron puzzle. There are tons of lists out there, chock full of hundreds of oppositional phrases, including one that's my go-to.

Although I liked the four Trent chose, I did hitch on FOUND MISSING, as it made me think right away of pictures on milk cartons. As a parent, I don't want any hint of that in my five minutes of recreation. (It was also on the aforementioned list, so no points for freshness, either.)

Execellent execution on the grid. It's rare that I fly through a Monday so quickly; such buttery smoothness. Even after a second pass, I couldn't find anything even minorly objectionable in the fill. It's common to have just one or two blips but to have zero deserves high kudos.

And jazzy long fill, too. LIP BALM and WAR HERO are excellent. STATE LAW and MONEY PIT! Even NO DICE and FUDGED were fun. The added spice was much appreciated, especially given my oxymoron burn-out.

Check out what Trent did with his themers. Instead of alternating left-right-left-right, he has two on the left, then two on the right. That often makes for a tougher construction job. Here, it (indirectly) led to having to segment the grid up into a top mini-puzzle and a second bottom one. Not ideal — solving flow is compromised.

It also made it tougher to work in long downs, since it's much easier to have a long down go through just one themer rather than two. I bet Trent could have worked in even more long bonuses — and even juicier than the ones he had — if he had used standard themer alternation.

Overall, nice work. I'm always happy with a smooth, well-crafted Monday grid. I bet most newer solvers won't have encountered oxymorons as much as I have so the impact may be stronger for many.

– puzzle by Trent Evans

Will Shortz isn't taking many "words that can precede X" themes these days, as they've become done to death, and as Jules mentioned, "___ DOWN" puzzles are falling into that camp too. But there's still room for one that offers something extra. I appreciate the tight set — it's hard to think of more BUTTON types than SNOOZE, LIKE (think: Facebook), BELLY, PANIC.

I like to play the early-week "name that theme" game, and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. Partially in a good way, since it's tough to figure out what SNOOZE-FEST, LIKE YOU KNOW etc. have in common.

But partially in a confusing way, as I stared at TOOK A TOLL ON, UNGARBED, RETROFIT, and NIMBUS CLOUD for ages. There had to be a link! Who would use the word UNGARBED if it weren't necessary for some clever theme?

Will is much more lax about this "theme obfuscation" issue than other editors. Rich Norris over at the Los Angeles Times won't allow long acrosses (8+ letters) when themers are arranged in the down direction, because it confuses people. Mike Shenk at the Wall Street Journal is more lenient, but it's still frowned upon. I tend to side with them because regular solvers have been trained to look for theme in the longest across answers.

This can be a real problem when it comes to grid construction. Jules already went up to 80 words (two past the max allowable), so simply breaking up TOOK A TOLL ON and NIMBUS CLOUD isn't the answer. I have a feeling that including more long down fill would have been a good direction — perhaps taking out the block between TOOTED and IRE (after breaking up TOOK A TOLL ON), and similar strategies throughout the grid.

I think it's possible to retain all five themers, all of which were great phrases and made the theme meaty, while elevating the elegance. Cleanup in aisle AGA ASA OTOS EEKS! Tough to say for sure without rolling up my sleeves, though.

– puzzle by Jules Markey

Four REFERENCEs placed OBLIQUEly, i.e., diagonally through the grid. Any time I see diagonal entries, I brace myself for the onslaught of crossword glue. Four long ones forced me to take a deep breath before jumping in.

Pleasant surprise to not get as much as I expected! And I was mighty impressed by the SW corner. That's bound to be tough, considering that there are two intersecting themers and a whole lot of white space. I didn't say WHAT A BORE at all, especially since that corner came out so colorful AND clean.

No doubt, there were some rough patches, notably the south: ERTE KRONER (even as a finance guy, I blinked when it turned out not to be KRONOR), ERTE, ROUE, VERSO. None of those entries are bad, but as a whole, oof.

What interested me most about the puzzle was Jeffrey's decision to use mirror symmetry. He could easily have used regular symmetry, placing OBLIQUE REFERENCE in the center. But think about how many diagonal entries would have had to intersect that. He could have snuck ATLAS in a corner, but the other three would have had to run through OBLIQUE REFERENCE, making the gridwork almost impossible. At first, I thought it was an odd choice to use mirror symmetry, but it's a clever way to solve a difficult construction problem.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this more from a constructor's perspective than a solver's. After filling one REFERENCE in, the game was up, and what with the dabs of crossword glue and the heavy grid segmentation, it didn't provide much solving joy. But I did have a good time going back to deconstruct how Jeffrey went about the tough gridwork challenge.

– puzzle by Jeffrey Wechsler

The villainous BLACK HAT played upon; HAT implied in the central square (see below for images / fixed-up entries). Four sizzling phrases hid that HAT in confounding ways — YOU DID WHAT, HATE MONGER, HATCHET JOB. CHEW ON THAT! Note how HAT was never alone, like in HAT HEAD or COWBOY HAT. Great work picking themers.

Solid gridwork, too. Not a surprise, given that Will Nediger is one of the best in the business. With only four shortish themers, I'd fully expect a ton of great long fill. ALTER EGO, BAR CAR, HOBO BAG, GET ON IT, OLD LATIN — not disappointed!

I wasn't keen on the grid segmentation, though. I got trapped during my solve in the SW, then again in the SE, then a third time in the NE. So frustrating to dead-end multiple times. It's tough to avoid grid segmentation in a theme layout like this, but I'd have taken lesser sizzling fill in exchange for more grid feng shui. Think about how much more open the grid would have felt without the block between IT IS and PHEW, for example.

The puzzle conceit would have felt more deliberate if the HAT square had been the lone black square not touching any others. As it was, I wondered, why that square? Just because? A bit too random.

That train of thought led to another puzzle, with much more of a BLACK HAT. That would have been exceptional for use in today's! It may not have been possible to have every answer running into the HAT be thematic, but I'd have been okay if it had been just a subset.

"Words or letters in black squares" have been tapped for thematic material enough that Jim wrote a script to help automate the fixup process. One from just a couple of months ago came to my mind immediately. Since this is getting to be an old idea, it'd be helpful if Will (Shortz, not Nediger) spaced them out further going forward.

But aside from dead-ending a couple of times, I enjoyed the solve, enough of a trick to make all the hard work worth it. Strong debut.

– puzzle by Nancy Stark and Will Nediger

Jim Horne and I often have conflicting viewpoints on entries. He's more educated, cultured, intelligent, and smells better than me, so it wasn't a total surprise that he thought LIMN and LOESSER were perfectly fine. What was surprising was that he hitched on AIDE MEMOIRE! I recognized the term but didn't know what it meant off the top — I figured it was just my boorishness at work.

Some lovely feature entries, HAPPY CAMPER right off the bat, making me a happy camper. Enough OUTSIDE SHOT / PINK MARTINI (their music is awesome!), ATOM SMASHER, PIG LATIN, ROWING CLUB to be entertaining.

Fantastic clue for NAPOLEON III, too. Not being great on foreign presidents, I struggled mightily to recall names from the past decades. Turns I had to go a lot farther back than Sarkozy, Chirac, and de Gaulle!

I still tried to shove JACQUES CHIRAC into that slot. Ahem.

Another great one: [Will might change them]. It's an inside joke to constructors that Will Shortz changes many of the submitted clues, so this one made me laugh. Good wordplay too, as the word "will" does change (verb) TENSES.

Aside from AIDE MEMOIRE, CALORIE BOMB didn't resonate with me either. Research shows it's a valid term, but something like GUT BOMB or GUT BUSTER would have been much more colorful.

My criteria for 72-word themeless are so strict since it's the easiest of themeless construction challenges. It's tough to see any crossword glue, much less a slew of I WERE, RE-ICE, ADAS, ELD, OME, etc. Standards for the 72-word themeless have ratcheted so high over the years.

Thankfully, there was enough meat in the grid that I didn't mind the gristle that much. Nice debut puzzle, with enough color to keep me entertained.

– puzzle by Jamey Smith

★ STANDARD POODLE crossing TOODLES entertained me way too much. Now that's an AMEN CORNER! There was so much greatness packed in, especially impressive considering how tough a construction job this is. A wide-open middle, with nine (!!!) long feature entries is no joke. That quartet of STANDARD POODLE / DINNER DATE / DON DELILLO / TANGERINE DREAM is so impressive.

The only one of the nine that didn't grab me was ROAD TO RIO, but I bet it might be the favorite for an older generation. No doubt that it's crossworthy, at the very least.

I liked that Andrew didn't stop there. EARL GREY TEA and RAISING CAIN added even more color. But wait, there's more! The SW / NE corners, which often don't live up to potential on layouts like this, feature DATA DUMP, PA KETTLE, and even METEOR. Not at all TEDIOUS.

Fantastic clues, too. [Person who's on a roll] directed to a high roller at a craps table. No, that's a VOTER roll — top-notch wordplay.

A couple of dabs of crossword glue in MML CTS LUM, but that seemed like a fair price to pay for so much goodness. There was the oddity of ENTRAIN — I've ridden a lot of trains but never heard someone say, "it's time to entrain" — but again, it was a price worth paying. Easy to infer, anyway.

Fantastic construction. I often tune out of a themeless if I get more than a couple of dabs of crossword glue, but today, all the sizzle was well worth it.

– puzzle by Andrew J. Ries

Great fun to help Sophia develop this idea. When she came to me with a couple of themers, I wasn't sure there would be enough material. Or whether it'd be more fun to have VENUS DE MILO in the clue or as the grid entry! A lot of unknowns.

Our spreadsheet for book titles and possible "biography" subjects extended into the hundreds. After narrowing it down, it was unfortunate to discover that the winners didn't pair up at all for crossword symmetry. Fie on thee, crossword gods!

But I've done enough mirror symmetry puzzles that it felt like things had a chance to work out that way. After realizing that THE ONCE AND / FUTURE KING could split out 10/10, I decided I might have been too hasty shaking my fist at the crossgods. Then, finding the fortuitous intersections of A GAME OF THRONES / GONE GIRL and LORD OF THE FLIES / LIFE OF PI made me stand up and say I'm a believer!

Word lists aren't nearly as important as grid-building experience, but (shameless plug alert) the XWord Info lists sure helped with this one. It's incredibly hard to create a clean and colorful 140-word puzzle, what with all the huge white spaces you have to work with. Sophia got stuck several times, and twice, a single entry helped me get her unstuck: ETOUFFEE in the NE, and BODY SURFS in the SW. Building this puzzle with only entries that come with a standard dictionary-based list would have been possible, but only with severe compromises.

Sophia's in college now, so doesn't have that much time for crossword construction. But after she graduates, I think she could rise to the top, if she decides to put more time into it.

– puzzle by Sophia Maymudes and Jeff Chen

★ A Monday theme that's accessible to newer solvers and interesting for more experienced ones? I say YES!

That was too easy. Well played, C.C., well played.

It's one thing to use "foreign words for YES" — I've seen that a couple of times before — but to disguise them using homophones is a great way to target both sides of the solving spectrum.

The theme is tight, too. How many other foreign languages would YES be obvious in? SI (Spanish or Italian), HAI (Japanese), DA (Russian), and OUI (French). My inner nerd wishes that Dothraki or Klingon were included, but in both of those languages, YES loosely translates to "I shall excise your gizzard and use it to kill the ghosts of your ancestors." Probably wouldn't pass the breakfast test.

C.C. did well in her themer choices, LAH DI DAH, AIMS HIGH, and especially THE ROYAL WE. I liked PLAIN TO SEE, but it was a bit, well, plain. I'd have preferred THE DEAD SEA. Perhaps that's my inner Dothraki speaking.

As always, C.C. is a star when it comes to bonus fill. So much greatness in CARPE DIEM, SAN MARINO, PIT STOP, SLEUTHS. I liked FAN ART, too, great way to use a mid-length slot.

My solve was slow. Not because the short fill was gluey — on the contrary, just an LTS = top-notch craftsmanship. But there was so much novelty in the shorties: AP LIT, GO BAGS, KTOWN, even DEETS and DCON. As much as I enjoy a feeling of freshness — and I do like each of these entries on their own — this verged on too fresh. I wonder how it affected newer solvers. I could imagine it being a turn-off.

But overall, an entertaining, creative theme with a solid a-ha moment doesn't come around very often on Mondays. Along with a solid grid that aimed high, it's a slam-dunk POW!

NOTE: Thanks to some sharp-eyed readers, mistranslations in the original post have been corrected.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

Was it EASY AS ABC to discover the theme? I was going to boldly highlight the appropriate squares, but it might be more fun if you took another look. Think about the numbers in the clues, ranging from 1 to 26 …

Excellent finds, the alphabet fully represented in strings of letters — inside symmetrical themers! That's neat. I especially liked that Daniel was able to work smoothly around the tougher letters, DJ KHALED and BACKUPQB so innocently hiding JK and PQ.

I did hesitate at the HATHA / KHALED crossing — ripe for mistakes, as HATHI / KHILED or HATHE / KHELED could seem just as right. Also, having two rappers might trigger the solvers who constantly write to me saying DON'T PUT SO MANY DAMN RAPPERS IN YOUR &#$@# PUZZLES!

I'm a fan of MOS DEF, partially because of his music, but more so because he's gotten me out of many a crossword jam.

A tiny part of me enjoys irritating those rapper-complainy solvers, too.

With so much theme material — nine of them to work around! — Daniel did an admirable job of building his grid. Even at 83 words (the max for a 16x15 grid should be roughly 81), I noticed the strain here and there, a SEISMO up in the NE, random AT TWO in the SE, a bit of ODA, ALTI, ON AT daubed on elsewhere. It's not too shabby, given the theme constraint. Don't forget that Daniel necessarily had to make a pangram; rarely an easy construction task.

I appreciated his bonuses, too. OCTAHEDRA and other Platonic solids are always interesting. SAYS WHO? Sez ARISTOTLE!

This one reminds me of a similar concept done in a Sunday grid. I finally put up a note on that one, since at three separate instances, I couldn't figure out what was going on, and then promptly forgot. I like that Daniel found a way to similarly play on the alphabet, but squeezed his into a weekday grid, allowing for a theme-dense feeling.

– puzzle by Daniel Larsen

Erik, Amanda, and Karl riff on DISAPPEARING INK, theme answers successively missing one more letter of INK. I enjoyed my hitch at KITCHEN SIN — what happened to the K? It couldn't have disappeared, since nothing had happened to WINK up top. Or could it!

MAKES YOUTH was a clever way to achieve the final INK removal. It took me a long time to figure out the base phrase, since it was the only one that required a parsing change. MAKES YOU THINK, doesn't it? But it felt inconsistent. Perhaps something like BARTON F [Clara's result of not studying?] or QUICK AS A W (something to do with Prez Dubya) would have been better.

I also wondered if I COULDN'T SLEEP A WINK was in the language. The past tense I didn't sleep a wink is more common to me (other parent sof young kids, weigh in!). Minor quibble, as it turns out, according to the Goog.

Nice bonuses, AS IF I CARE, RUM RAISIN, THE CHAMP, IN CHAOS. None of them made me stand up and cheer, but they're all solid.

And as with any Agardian joint, delightful clueing:

• [Grounds for discussion?] is a FORUM, not some legal / business term.
• [Letters at a filling station?] refers to a DDS (dentist), not a gas station.
• [Off the table?] means it's already been EATEN.

I appreciated that the themers didn't take question marks, even though three of them could easily have. Starring their clues was a solid choice, so that the puzzle didn't feel flooded by question mark murkiness.

DISAPPEARING INK has been played upon many a time, including a memorable mini-theme from Xan Vangsathorn, a similar conceit by Ed Sessa, and my favorite of the bunch, Tim Polin's where the phrase affected clues instead of answers. Still, there's room for another creative take, and I enjoyed today's.

– puzzle by Erik Agard, Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Even having seen SLASHER FILM used in a crossword in the same way, I still appreciated today's theme. I liked that Chris found three solid movies that used slashes in their titles. It took a while to recall that FACE/OFF indeed contained a slash, but it triggered a funny thought: that ridiculous flick (about two guys who trade faces) was the very definition of a SLASHER FILM.

Perfect use of mirror symmetry. It's a constructor's nightmare to come up with a clever concept, only to discover that the themer lengths don't match up. 15, 11, 11 ... 8? Groan, bang head, curse at Crucivera (the god of crosswords)!

Then the constructor's a-ha … wait for it, wait for it … the 11's can match vertically, with the 8 vertically in the center! That's divine intervention right there. All praise Crucivera!

Did you get Chris's explanation about the 8 presenting a challenge? It's much different than with normal symmetry since, with mirror symmetry, there's no way to break up the answers on either side of the 8 (you'd create 1-letter words).

It gets even trickier considering you need to work around another fixed constraint: a crossing themer in AM/FM. But Chris is a skilled constructor, well up to the challenge. I wondered if DR ROMANO had staying power, but what else in that stack would someone hitch on? To top it off with RED FLAG running through the stack is a bonus.

Hardly a dab of crossword glue, too. Such care taken throughout the grid. Longtime solvers might roll their eyes at AREOLAE and LOESS (HIE too, perhaps), but despite their potential foreign feeling for some solvers, they have merit as real words.

Fun clue for RETINA. I often wish I were the holder of many (ice cream) cones. I suppose my optical cone cells will have to do.

If there had been more novelty for me — if my OCD brain hadn't immediately remembered the 2013 puzzle — this would have been my POW! A tidy theme, tight set of three examples, a fun wordplay revealer, and great craftsmanship.

– puzzle by Christopher Adams

BEQ was one of the early legends in themeless crosswords. One of his featured entries, WHAT THE …, turned my world upside down. I had never thought of implied punctuation within an entry. Not surprising that that puzzle got chosen for one of Will's "favorite puzzles" books!

It was MULTIVERSE that similarly wowed me today. I'm such a nerd, spending a disproportionate amount of my time thinking about parallel universes and alternate realities. I'd take the blue pill, thank you very much. No, not Viagra! Sigh.

I spent a couple of minutes mulling over WIIITIS — love or hate? On the one hand, it's got that crazy triple I string. And don't forget that neat implied punctuation, WII-ITIS. On the other, the WII is an old console by now, and I don't remember WII-ITIS being solidly in the language.

A lot to learn from this puzzle:

• THIEU was a Vietnamese president.
• CARLO PONTI was an Italian film producer, married to Sophia Loren.
• CAR DIB is when you yell "I call shotgun!".
• JUVENTUS is a soccer club, huge in Italy.
• Easter Island statues are called MOAI. I think I once knew that. That's my story, anyway.
• SKALDS are Icelandic toasts for when you're drinking Akvavit. What? They're Icelandic poets? Well, poets drink too, don't they? HA, I GOT YOU THERE!

Along with the gluey NTESTS, made-up feeling MISLAYER and a bit of ESSE SIPE, it wasn't my favorite of BEQ's puzzles. I like to learn something from a puzzle, but this was drinking from a firehose.

Still, a couple of great clues helped keep me entertained: PIE A LA MODE as being a dish being both hot and cold, and "can opener" repurposed for PAROLE. Good stuff.

– puzzle by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Awesome-looking grid! I don't remember seeing anything like it — so rare for me to say that. Reminded me of a "Space Invaders" alien.

I usually don't like grid segmentation, this one being cut into three mini-puzzles of the NW, the NE, and the rest. But in service of a stunning aesthetic, I let things slide.

That middle is daunting. So many long across answers, and so many long down answers running through them. It seems impossible to fill upon first glance. Upon second and third glances, too.

I didn't care for LOBAR or DELE, but that's all the crossword glue there was? Wow!

I wasn't sure what DISTRESSED DENIM was, but it made sense. Solid entry to anchor that megastack, all those common letters so constructor-friendly, especially the Ss. Will once commented that entries like STRESS TESTS are a bit cheap since they're not that interesting in themselves plus they have too many common letters. DISTRESSED DENIM appeals to me much more.

Big fan of the lower stack, too. TELEPORTING! ROAST PORK! LEMONADE STAND! Although, I questioned whether Lucy's stand was, in fact, a LEMONADE STAND. She sold psychiatric advice, not lemonade, yeah?

Great to get even more in the upper corners, LEFT JAB, VANUATU, MAI TAIS — call me a FANBOY indeed. Squee!

As a constructor, I was floored by this achievement. As a solver, I was a bit underwhelmed by entries like COME BEFORE and HORACE GREELEY. So overall, this fell just out of POW! contention. But it got some consideration.

– puzzle by David Steinberg

The NATO / PHONETIC ALPHABET has been tapped for many a crossword over the years. Of all the types of themes I get pinged with, it's in the top five. (The most common is homophone-based themes.) I liked Trenton's take today, combining NATO and homophones to result in something I haven't exactly seen before. BOSTON TANGO PARTY (from Boston Tea Party -> Boston T Party) brought up fun images of people doing the sultry dance while yapping in Beantown accents.

The others didn't make me laugh much, but there were good efforts in the cluing. Amusing to think of THE PRINCESS AND THE PAPA as a king bringing his daughter to work one day. What exactly that means, I don't know — what do kings really do as work, anyway? But an amusing-ish thought.

My first impression of the gridwork was that there wasn't much crossword glue. Excellent! And all too rare for a Sunday 140-word puzzle. Trenton took great care; much appreciated.

My second impression: there wasn't enough bonus fill to entertain solvers who didn't connect to the theme. I liked what Trenton mentioned (although OOH LA LA isn't that interesting anymore), but what else? DOORPOST isn't going to do much for anyone (except maybe carpenters). Less than a half a dozen great bonuses to see a solver through a 21x ...

Third impression: maybe the puzzle didn't need any more bonuses in the fill, because there was a torrent of fantastic wordplay in the clues. I ticked off about 10 clues that were wickedly clever or genuinely novel. My top three:

• SISYPHUS fighting an uphill battle, indeed!
• Blue jeans OUTLAWED in North Korea? No wonder they're struggling, economically! (Just kidding Kim Jong-un! North Korea is the greatest and most wonderous of superpowers much better than the devil Americans wearing deplorable blue jeans! Please don't kill me!)
• The boot-shaped ITALY as a source of boots. How's that for art imitating life?

It all made me think about my own constructions. I tend to spend the majority of my time brainstorming themes and building grids. But seeing the impact of such cluing greatness today reminds me that I ought to dedicate more of my time to coming up with clever clues.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

The colorful LEOPARD PRINT makes its second appearance this month! I'm sorely tempted to expand my wardrobe, much to my wife's chagrin.

Mathematics has an entire subcategory of study called "packing problems." It's not just theoretical, either — there are important applied problems related to shipping, molecular structure, and of course, packing one's bags for a trip. And let's not forget crossword construction!

Packing four theme entries into a 15x15 puzzle is boring. There are so many ways it can be done; way too much flexibility. But when you up that to five or six or even seven themers, that's when constructors crack their knuckles in anticipation of a Herculean challenge.

When a puzzle packs in a ridiculous number of theme answers in an elegant way, it's something you want to study. Delight at. Clap for. It's like the feeling you get upon finally solving a "fit these pieces into a frame" brainteaser. Check out the elegance of the packing puzzle on the right, for example.

When the ultra-high density is enabled by blunt force, though …

I don't mind when constructors take on personal challenges, if the resulting grid sings for solvers. And sometimes a high-density packing can have a wow effect — I heard some praise for Bruce Haight's SS puzzle, for instance.

But when there's so much to turn off newer solvers — AGA TSE NEAP ERE UNI etc. — the degraded solving experience makes IT SO not worth it.

Now, I did like some things — YOWZA was fun, as was MOOCH (huge "Mutts" fan here). I also appreciated that Kevin and Acme made an attempt to elevate the overdone "initialisms" genre. If there had been a reason to include seven LPS, perhaps some band named LP7 or whatever, I'd have said it was justified.

But the ultra-high density approach, replete with such a high amount of crossword glue, doesn't make for a good gateway puzzle for newer solvers.

ADDED NOTE: reader Jeff Doyle-Horney points out that there's an eighth themer — a young dog from SoCal at 23 Down. Ha!

– puzzle by Kevin Christian and Andrea Carla Michaels

Compare and contrast today's puzzle with yesterday's. They both have seven themers along with a revealer, and both needed heavy crossword glue.

The big difference is that C.C.'s puzzle had a good reason to need all seven themers, since you can't do a puzzle about the days of the week without including the entire septet. I was able to overlook a slew of ESSO ESO IRT EUR ARA RTES today because it was in service of a complete set.

I've seen many "days of the week" themes, as well as "months of the year," etc. But I loved how C.C. tied in the snappy OPENING DAY to give the puzzle a raison d'etre. She could have kept to seven themers, calling it good by simply circling MON, TUES, WED, etc. But the addition of OPENING DAY put a perfect bow on the theme.

Thoughts on TU ES BELLE? Initially, I shook my head. Resorting to random phrases in a foreign language? Why not pick a strong phrase or word that starts with TUES?

Oh.

Wait.

Is "Tueslam" a word?

Okay, then. Why not shorten to TUE and use …

Tuemeric?

Ah, now I see C.C.'s issue.

Given that there is nothing reasonable that begins with TUE, TU ES BELLE is passable in service of a decent theme. Sometimes I think that it's better to scrap a theme completely if you're going to need a phrase that's not in the language, but in today's case, I came out in favor.

I would have preferred for OPENING DAY to be at the very end since it was odd to get SATE afterward like it was an afterthought. But trying to pack seven themers in rows 1 to 12 is sheer madness. Perhaps a compromise would have been to shift SUNG to the NE and SATE to the SW, which could have made OPENING DAY seem more like it was at the end of the puzzle, even though it still technically wasn't.

Incredibly tough construction that came with the sorts of trade-offs I'd have expected. But overall, the theme plus revealer was interesting enough that I didn't mind the rough patches.

– puzzle by Zhouqin Burnikel

★

The finance wonk in me loved this one. It's paradoxical that an industry so boring — many friends have nodded off or run screaming as I've spun delightful tales of arbitrage, efficient portfolio frontiers, and basis points — can introduce such colorful terms. PATENT TROLLs have been in the headlines a ton (at least in financial headlines), and I'd heard of ZOMBIE BANKS (think: banks biding their time, all but dead). Such descriptive phrases!

UNICORNs I knew too, but just as "unicorns." As in "those horribly prancy things my daughter begs me to get books about." Also, as in "private startups valued at over $1B." Never heard them called UNICORN STARTUPS, though. Kind of like calling a company a "business company." Still, I can let it slide in the service of a clever theme.

It'd have been good enough for me with just three themers. Toss in the brilliant revealer, FINANCIAL MYTHS (think: what Jim Cramer propagates, ba-dum *rimshot*), and you have yourself a winner.

Clean-as-a-whistle gridwork, only OBE as a tick in the liabilities column. Add in some assets — PATTY MELT and HOT TAKES — and it's a solid product.

Mike's a good enough constructor that I'd have liked to see him push himself. Take out the black square between ABET and HOW SO, for example. That'd likely have resulted in more bonuses, while still retaining smooth short fill.

Overall, a great theme tailored to us econ junkies. Even if you hadn't heard of any of these terms before, they're so colorful that I bet at least one will stick in your memory.

– puzzle by Michael Hawkins