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Hey, what's this 80-word puzzle doing in place of our expected themeless? Ah, note the date ... April Fool's!

Howard gives us four examples of uber-common crossword entries you can ink in without even thinking … or can you? That Great Lake has to be ERIE … or is it MI/CH/IG/AN! The OREO is switched for the TH/IN/MI/NT, ANTI is CO/NT/RA/RY, and the ubiquitous OSLO is HE/LS/IN/KI.

Fun idea. The WSJ, unfortunately, ran this same idea recently, but that's part of the crossword game. Too bad about getting scooped, Howard.

I don't mind when a constructor goes up to 80 words, as long as I get enough bonus fill. Love GUNNED IT; evocative entry. HAVE NOTS, PIT BULLS, GINORMOUS, SIN TAX are all excellent. But I would have preferred a little more, considering the "theme" answers were so short, and I was expecting a themeless jam-packed with juicy entries.

Howard did get the grid fairly smooth for an audacious 16-rebus square puzzle, which I appreciated — only some minor AIRE, SSE, IN NO kind of stuff. IN NO isn't good, but it's understandable given that it's smack dab in the middle of the puzzle, a tough region to fill given the presence of two "themers" and GINORMOUS, all making for an inflexible area.

I can see why Will was okay running this on a Saturday — it was incredibly hard for me. Very tricksy to figure out what was going on. But daily solvers expecting two themelesses on the weekend might be a little let down, as I was. I like (and fear) my hard Saturday themeless fix!

– puzzle by Howard Barkin

Jerry wrote to me with this idea a while back. I thought it had potential, but I felt it was too easy to make theme phrases using just about any short word. Without something to link them all in some interesting way, I estimated only a medium chance of acceptance.

Shows what I know!

THREE ROLLED INTO ONE was my favorite. It sounds natural, and it's a nice description of TRIO. It's not perfect, as "rolled" feels off compared to "harmonized." But it gave me a smile.

AID TO LOCATE A STREET worked much better than the original Jerry proposed, but it did feel like an awkward dictionary definition. And does anyone call MARS a SPHERE? (Maybe poets?) And wouldn't one say SWIMMER WITH (AN) ARCHED NECK? (Says the annoying grammarian in me.)

Anyone have natural-sounding ones they've personally made up? I'll publish the best one below.

Any Sunday 140-word puzzle is difficult to build with smoothness and snazziness. Jerry gives himself a slightly easier than average task, incorporating only six themers (most have seven or more these days).

Jerry does a good job of spacing out his themers — note how there are at least two rows of space between each pair. He also uses left-right alternation — look at the placement of MOSTLY ARID RED SPHERE and AID TO LOCATE A STREET — a strategy that minimizes overlap between themers.

Mostly decent fill, although I wish Jerry had gone up to 140 words (he uses 138) to smooth out the north section. That ABOLLA / DOTARDS crossing … both are words that I'd worry about as a constructor. I hate eliciting grumbling from solvers. Crossing them together accentuates their presence, if not making for an unfair crossing.

As a solver, I don't mind some minor IOC, DAR, ECUA — short offenders that are figure-out-able — but with the addition of EVAH, ATNOS, TARARA, RAPA, etc. the crossword glue dragged down my solve. I would have liked to see a revision for better overall smoothness. Jerry's a hard worker — I'm confident that his next puzzle will have less crossword glue.

Overall, I liked that the concept spurred me on to think about what would make for some perfect examples.

– puzzle by Jerry Miccolis

Debut! Great to see C.C. work with so many new constructors.

Baseball theme, a BATTER, COACH, PITCHER, and a FAN making up BALLPARK FIGURES. I liked how they concealed those words by using different meanings, i.e. BATTER as a coating, not as a hitter. BEER BATTER was my favorite — a snazzy phrase, and one that threw me off the scent.

It would have been nice to get the revealer, BALLPARK FIGURES, at the very end, though. Right in the middle of the puzzle is a logical spot to place that entry, but that did give away the game halfway through my solve.

I usually prize consistency, and one form of consistency is having all plural or all singular themers. In this case, though, it felt odd with just a lone FAN. Perhaps this represents a Dodgers game. Hey-o! (Lifelong Giants fan here.)

Getting multiple FANS in could have been done with WINDOW FANS, but that phrase doesn't resonate as well for me. (Perhaps it's because my two-year-old has a strange fascination with CEILING FANs. Don't ask.)

Tough to build around five long themers. Looking at the layout of black squares before starting, I guessed that two of the roughest spots would be in the north and the south — those are areas where there's a lot of overlap between themers.

In the north, PATEK is tough, and I don't think Cheri OTERI has made a crossworthy mark yet. In the south … as much as I love Superman, I'm not sure it's fair to expect most novices to get the KALEL / LEA / TOILE crossings.

I did appreciate the effort to incorporate some long fill — RACHAEL RAY and ILL BE THERE are both nice additions. They make for some difficult filling challenges, since they both intersect two theme answers apiece, but the results are pretty good, especially in the lower left. Very smooth there.

I'm not sure the prices of INE / NATL / RHEAS / SCRAG (those last two are tough vocab for a Monday) are worth RACHAEL RAY, but I'm sure her fans will disagree.

Well-disguised theme plus a spot-on revealer makes for a nice Monday puzzle.

– puzzle by Agnes Davidson and Zhouqin Burnikel

PINOCCHIO's NOSE expanding throughout themers — neat idea. Concepts where the circled letters are all the same can be a bit repetitive, but I liked the a-ha moment PINOCCHIO gave me.

Well executed grid, especially considering the high theme density. I'd expect some crossword glue, especially in those areas that have to work around two themers. But I'd also expect the overall product to be nice and smooth because Tim is a highly skilled constructor. Thankfully, the latter of my expectations won out, in spades.

Love how Tim kicked off the puzzle, giving us both a rare X and a great clue: [Fifth member in a noble line]. It's so innocuous, hinting at some royal family, yes? But no, it's referring to the noble gasses, of which XENON is the fifth. Clever!

There is an ODEA lurking, but I don't mind that so much.

I appreciated how many of those rare letters Tim worked in — those Js and Xs spice up the grid. The Big Four — J Q X Z — can be difficult to work in smoothly, but that wasn't a problem today. I especially dug the JX in the lower left, so elegantly worked in without any crossword glue required.

ICHAT is the only short entry that ate at me, in that it's defunct. But there's not a lot you can do with that I?H?? pattern, and when you have further inflexibility in the adjacent M?I?? and E?O?? patterns, the result in that region is still pretty good.

If only AS YOU WISH had been clued to "The Princess Bride," one of my favorite reads from the past few years (even better than the movie!) A guy can wish.

I like the idea to turn PINOCCHIO's growing nose into a crossword visual. It felt a little strange that his nose grew unevenly — the O forming a step function rather than going linearly, for example — and maybe there was a better way to visually represent that lengthening schnozz. But I thought Tim did a great job executing this particular interpretation.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

Five special characters in the grid, reflecting the N with a tilde used in SPANISH. We've seen this concept before, but I like many of the touches Alex added. I liked having SPANISH as a revealer — without this, I don't know that I would have picked up on the theme — and I loved ESPANOL right next to it. It's hard to stack specific answers together, and it's even harder to do that when they're running through a themer (EL NINO). Very cool.

I appreciated the bonuses, COPERNICUS and GEOLOGISTS making for a science-y mini-theme. Given how so many people seem to dismiss science these days, I love the effort to pair up these long entries.

As a basketball fan, I love getting Dikembe MUTOMBO in the grid. As a Sonic fan, I hate Dikembe MUTOMBO. (His #8 seeded Nuggets upsetting my #1 Sonics was over 20 years ago. But my friends and I still can't joke about it.)

WOOT! made me smile — it's a slangy expression of exhilaration that my friends and I use. LT DAN did too, as I have fond memories of "Forrest Gump." But, I heard from a constructor friend that Will pointed out LT DAN in one of his puzzles as an undesirable dab of crossword glue. I quickly changed its assigned score on my list! It's so subjective, but Will is the final arbiter.

Good gridwork, especially given five pairs of theme answers, plus SPANISH as a revealer. With so much inflexibility within the grid, to get by with just some TNG (I'm a huge fan of "Star Trek: the Next Generation, but TNG is tough to figure out), IN A NET (sounds like a partial), SEP. Well, I didn't care for the combination of ERINNA (ancient poet) and IN AT in the lower right corner, but it was totally worth it to get that cool mash-up of SPANISH right next to ESPANOL / EL NINO.

Since I've seen this concept done a few times before, it would have been great to get something extra today. Not sure what that is, though.

Overall, the puzzle's solid execution still made for a fun solve.

– puzzle by Alex Eaton-Salners

★ I love it when a crossword surprises me! I got to XS AND OS pretty quickly and having already figured out that X MY GRITS was (KISS) MY GRITS (I watched WAY too much "Alice" as a kid), I shrugged. X representing KISS, O for HUG, got it. Been done before.

Then I stared at THREE X ___ for the longest time, wondering what song could start with THREE KISS. Great, great, great a-ha moment to realize that the Xs all represented different things: THREE (TIMES) A LADY, (KISS) MY GRITS, and (TEN) SPEED. Same with the Os! TURNED FULL HUG made no sense but TURNED FULL (CIRCLE), (ZERO) SUM GAME, BEAR(HUG)S did.

Very cool that Damon found so many different things that X and O commonly represent.

Did you notice that all the Xs are confined to the left side of the grid? And the Os on the right? Elegant touch. And it wasn't lost on me that Damon avoided extraneous Os. That may not seem very difficult, but O is such a common letter that it's hard to avoid. These two elegant touches helped elevate this puzzle in my eyes even further.

Normally when a theme tickles me this much, I don't bother talking about the fill. But Damon does so well to spread around his crossword glue, keeping it to just minor ENE UNE ESTD ATL shorties.

All O (around), a superb puzzle.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

There are few constructors who can put together a 66- or even 68-word themeless as smoothly as PB can. Today, he goes all the way down to a 62-worder, one of the toughest tasks in all of construction. A puzzle with so few words is bound to have big white spaces to fill, and today it's that giant swath in the middle. So many long entries intersecting each other!

A constructor's secret: those "stairstep" chunks of black squares in the north, west, east, and south can make filling a low-word-count grid like this almost an order of magnitude easier. Not only do those blocks chip away at the number of letters you need to put in, but they tend to stagger entries, making for more favorable vowel/consonant patterns.

It's a tricky balance, though — use too many of these stairstep chunks, and your grid looks visually unappealing. (Also, overanalytical/anal constructors notice your overusage and annoyingly point them out.) I like PB's result today, pairs of stairstep chunks forming two implied diagonal lines from lower left to upper right. Pretty.

The result is amazingly smooth, not a surprise given PB's emphasis on avoiding crossword glue. However, the usual trade-off between snazziness and smoothness comes into play even more than usual, with the former suffering. I only got excited about a few of the answers in that big middle: PENNY ARCADE, HERE WE GO, and SPEAKEASY.

No doubt, it's subjective. But HOUSE CLEANS doesn't do much for me, for example. (CLEANS HOUSE is much more evocative; a term for making huge changes in an organization.) And I more or less know what a FIRESCREEN, CRADLE SONG, and STONE CIRCLE are ... but I wouldn't go out of my way to incorporate them into a themeless. The last one was a real letdown — I so badly wanted the awesome STONEHENGE.

Along with the oddball LARRUP and arbitrary SIX-YEAR-OLDS, I felt the grid didn't have nearly as much pizzazz as I generally want.

But a 62-word grid is a feat in its own right, and they're usually full of crossword glue splattered liberally around. Impressive, to have executed so smoothly on such a hard task.

– puzzle by Patrick Berry

I love a challenge, and another 62-worder seemed like it might occupy me for a while. After deciding on WWIIVET as the seed, it shouldn't be that hard — after all, I've used a similar wide-open pattern before. Heck, two times even! Surely I learned enough about this overall pattern that I'd be able to finish a solid grid in a week or so.

Fast forward to five months later ...

Huge props go to Will and Joel for the clue of the puzzle, [Head scratcher?]. I struggled mightily with that upper right corner, only settling on what I thought was a dull WOOL CAP because it allowed me to work in some fun stuff like ANTIHERO, TEASER AD, SWATCHES, and DUELIST. But I wasn't happy about letting a precious 7-letter slot go to waste. It's a good lesson for me to learn — I shouldn't have dismissed WOOL CAP so quickly as irredeemable. My (scratchy wool) cap is tipped to you both, good sirs.

I debated over the inclusion of XKCD for the longest time as well. As much as I love the strip — Randall Munroe, if you're reading this, YOU'RE MY HERO! — if a solver doesn't know it, he or she has no way of piecing it together. Ultimately, I figured inclusion might be a way to get even more people reading it, and I'd just have to make 100% certain that the crossing answers were easily gettable. Hope that worked out for people.

So glad Will kept my "Rabbit of Seville" clue!

'Nuff said.

– puzzle by Jeff Chen

Byron adds OON onto base phrases to form kooky themers. HORSE-DRAWN CART(OON) gave me a big laugh, reminscent of a million monkeys on a million typewriters, trying to write the great American novel. FLOOD LAMP(OON) also amused me, as Noah seems ripe for comedy potential. I can just imagine him on the ark for 40 days and nights ... staring at the two pigs and two cows ... drooling …

WAILING WALLOON was the only one that didn't hit for me. Apparently, it's a French-speaking person who lives in Belgium? It doesn't seem familiar enough to build a theme entry around, but I did like adding that funny-sounding word to my vocabulary.

Although I loved it, a huge surprise to get SAUSAGE FEST as a base phrase. If you don't know it, the term is slang for a meeting or gathering filled mostly with guys. You can figure it out from there. Take that, Gray Lady!

There were some really tough bits in the fill — the ACTA / VACUA crossing = oof. ACTA is a legit legal term, and VACUA is a plural form of VACUUMS. Crossing them seems like it could set up solvers to fail, though. I also had a hard time with LA LOIRE, which seemed like a long partial. Again, crossing it with LOCI … hmm. That does feel more fair to me since I hear LOCI much more than LOCUSES.

Along with longish gluey bits like AEREO, A CLEF, and some ugsome ULA RWY INDA sort of things, it felt a bit inelegant. I would have much rather Byron deploy some more black squares, going up to a 140-word grid (it's all the way down at 134 right now) in order to clean a few things up.

I think the title HAVING NOTHING ON implies "add O (nothing) + ON"? It didn't quite resonate with me, but I'm not sure what a better title would be.

I did wonder if this would have made a better 15x15 than a 21x21, since the idea is so straightforward. But Byron did a nice job of coming up with some funny themers. So glad he managed to save HORSE DRAWN CARTOON!

ADDED NOTE: Pete Collins pointed out that Byron ran eight(!!!) themers through the central MONSTERS BALLOON. Okay, that is impressive!

– puzzle by Byron Walden

My dad and I are both huge BOND fans, so it was fun to see the major actors who played the role. It was odd that GEORGE LAZENBY was excluded from the set, but realistically, he was a goofy BOND, best forgotten.

I don't often like revealers coming at the top of the puzzle — pretty obvious what was going on when I uncovered BOND and SEAN CONNERY right off the bat — but what a great idea to position BOND at 7-Down … or is that 007-Down! Very cool touch.

I think Mondays ought to be uber-friendly for novices, and generally, this grid does that. Lonnie does well, considering the theme density. He deploys black squares well to separate SEAN CONNERY and TIMOTHY DALTON, never leaving big white spaces that have to flow through those two themers.

In this type of layout, the west and east sections are typically the roughest: the TIM of TIMOTHY and ROG of ROGER must work together, and that usually causes problems. But a beautiful result in the west — I don't mind ITO at all since there are at least two famous ITOs. There is a bit of RIA / EIN in the east; more typical of these side regions.

There's also a tough little IRINA / RAJ crossing in the lower left, but IRINA / RAJ does look a lot more plausible than IRINE / REJ or IRINI / RIJ.

And even a couple of bonuses in the fill. I like PB AND Js, and ARAMAIC is interesting too. I would have liked a pair of long downs somewhere in the puzzle — perhaps removing the black square between I CAN and MEG? — but that would likely have sacrificed smoothness.

It would have been great to get a little extra punch to the theme, like in an earlier Gorski. And how awesome would it be to have the full BOND, JAMES BOND at 007-Down, with actors crossing that central entry! That's probably impossible, but a guy can wish.

– puzzle by Lonnie Burton

★ UNITED NATIONS used as rationale to smash two countries together. I've seen this theme type before — my wife and I even did a puzzle like this years ago, also using country pairs — but the added touches of 1.) UNITED NATIONS as a revealer and 2.) country pairs *generally* near to each other were great.

I particularly liked SWITZERLANDORRA. Not only does it roll off the tongue as a portmanteau, but the two countries are nearly adjacent (separated by France). It would have been perfect if there had been abutting countries sharing this type of letter overlap, but that would be too perfect.

If only country namers had been crossword fans …

I also liked how easy PAKISTANZANIA was to say. This one wasn't quite as good, though, since the two countries are from different continents. But I liked tying them together through the Indian Ocean.

NICARAGUATEMALA … it's great that they're so geographically close, but the portmanteau was much harder to pronounce. But it still works, especially given that [Central American bloc?] works so well.

I appreciated Zachary and Diane's efforts to work extras into the fill. I expect at least a pair of long bonus entries in a four-themer puzzle, and to get more than that is great. Love SIGN HERE and LENTANDO (I played in orchestras for 20+ years). LAST NAME is pretty good. STONERS was funny with its [High achievers?] wordplay. GAZE INTO was more neutral for me — add-a-preposition is rarely exciting — but tying it to a crystal ball was fun.

Short fill was strong, too. Some early-week solvers might have a tough time with AKIO Morita and AKIRA Kurosawa, but both are crossworthy. AKIO Morita might be more on the cusp, but thankfully all the crossings are straightforward.

The only dabs of crossword glue were the minor ENC and the less minor OLIO. Nice work, especially considering they went all the way down to 72 words, making it possible to include nice mid-length fill like DOMINOS, WOE IS ME, HOLIDAY, GENTILE.

So neat to hear about crosswords engrossing an entire family — ARE YOU LISTENING, TESS AND JAKE CHEN? I was already leaning toward giving this one the POW!, and that put it over the edge.

– puzzle by Zachary Spitz and Diane Roseman

Emily SPLITs THE BILL today, using themers with famous Bills at their ends. Fun to get Bill GATES at the ends of GUESSTIMATES, a fun word. (In my engineering days, we'd use that term in front of clients. In private, we'd use WAGs = wild-ass guesses.) Bill HADER was only vaguely familiar, but it only took a quick Googling to refresh my memory of who he is. Some nice finds.

WALL STREET CRASH … I grew up a Niners fan, so I enjoyed seeing Bill WALSH featured. But as a finance guy in a previous career, I didn't care for the reminder of 2008. Too soon!

This is a perfect example of why constructors call 12-letter themers an "awkward length." Typically, a revealer is placed in row 13 of a puzzle, which helps to maximize spacing between all the themers. But that's basically impossible with a 12-letter revealer. If you move SPLIT THE BILL down one row, those black squares on the left of it form two-letter words below. No bueno! It is possible to do this if you make your grid 16 letters wide, but that's a solution that comes with its own challenges.

What's the big deal, row 13 vs. row 12? It's a huge deal! Look at what it forces, just a single row of space separating pairs of themers. Big-time no bueno! It means that you'll have a difficult section in the west (ALERO / PLEX / ALEE), in the east (ADEAR / AEREO, in the middle-top (TIO / oddly spelled out AT AND T), in the middle-bottom (HOC / ETH). So many places of inflexibility mean there's bound to be crossword glue required.

It's possible to swap HOME INVADER and MARX BROTHER, and it's also possible to start GUESSTIMATES to the right side of the puzzle instead of the left. But that's only a few options to try out = very little flexibility.

A couple of nice bonuses in PORSCHES, CAR SEATS, and MAPLE LEAF = DYNAMITE! Much appreciated. I especially liked Emily's effort to include MAPLE LEAF and CANAVERAL, as those across bonuses are typically tough to work in. She did well filling those upper right and lower left corners smoothly.

And love it when a constructor has a sense of humor — sounds like there's a painfully amusing story behind that bad date, Emily!

– puzzle by Emily Carroll

TRIPLE OVERTIMES = entries with three OT rebus squares apiece. There was something so pleasing about the OT x OT x OT alternation in DOT DOT DOT and HOT TO TROT. Very fun.

GOT TO THE OTHER SIDE … this one didn't hit for me, as it felt like a truncated punchline. With four featured themers, it would have been great to get a little more zip to this one.

A bunch of nice bonus fill, PUMP IRON, SALSA DIP, I THINK NOT, OTTER POPS all excellent. I liked that those last two included some of the OT squares; a nice touch. Often, the crossing answers to rebus themers can be a bit neutral to dull (OTTOS or OTROS, e.g.) so I enjoy when a rebus constructor goes the extra mile to work in snazzy crossing answers.

I finished with an error, AMOCA / OTRAS instead of AMOCO / OTROS. Peeved me at first, but I think it's probably fair — more my being careless than anything. OTRAS / OTROS is ambiguous, but AMOCO was a big company after all … and the CO = company should have been a dead giveaway. SHOOT!

Some blips in the short fill in IGOT OYE ESTS ZBAR (if I as a mechanical engineer struggles with this …), causing me some AGITA. Not unexpected given all the crossing themers.

The only place that I thought really suffered was the lower right, which Mike already called out. Not surprising given the TRIPLE OVERTIME / HOT TO TROT crossing causing so much inflexibility. ESTS / OTTOS / OTROS / AMOCO / RECT ... oof. Perhaps moving the three black squares at the end of FLASH down one row would have helped, but that could have easily created more problems.

As a basketball fan, I liked the solve. Would have been nice to get an extra layer of a-ha, but I'm not sure what that could have been.

– puzzle by Michael Shteyman

Beautiful start to the puzzle, the POT ROAST / ABOUT THAT … / TOUGH LOVE / OTHER HALF quartet is so nice. There's even a TERABYTE running off of it. All of that for just the price of a minor SRS? That's the way I like a themeless to kick off.

Quite a few other great entries too. I like me a TALL ONE especially after exercise (don't judge me!), and I have a curious fascination with the BALALAIKA — Eastern European music can have such a cool sound. Throw in ALPHA MALE, BAD RAPS, and SOUND ASLEEP nicely placed next to CATNAP and that's solid material.

I also liked that Andrew spread his goodies around. Often, I feel like a themeless has all its feature entries concentrated in the corners, and the middle does a workmanlike job of holding the corners together. Nice to get SNOW CRAB, even PARLANCE, EXPEDIA adding a bit of zazz in the middle.

I did have a major pause in the lower left, though. ARIAS crossing ARIOSE felt duplicative, so I looked up the terms. ARIOSE is linked to "arioso," meaning … "like an ARIA." I don't know how many solvers will be bothered by this, but it feels like a big-time no bueno to me. It's too bad, since that corner otherwise is nice and smooth, with the added bonus of WARHOL, SHOCK, and MOSES. It's a relatively big corner to fill, and if there hadn't been that duplication, it would have shined.

The opposite corner demonstrates how tough these innocent-looking biggish corners can be. Given SOUND ASLEEP and RAIN DATE in place, it's not easy to fill that 5x6 corner smoothly — plural ANNAS isn't great, and SOAVE was tough for this wine buffoon. (The latter one probably is perfectly fine, just an oddball for us TALL ONE drinkers.)

Overall, too much crossword glue for my taste, given REHEM, CES, SKAT, HELI, NIE, ANNAS, TEN AM (arbitrary time) — about five is where I start to notice the strain. But there was enough good material that it still was an enjoyable solve — besides that big ARIAS / ARIOSE duplication.

– puzzle by Andrew Kingsley

Wide-open middle! So cool to see the three stair-stacked acrosses (HIT THE BRICKS atop SPACE TOURISTS atop PHONE SERVICE), with so many long down answers running through it. The grid breathes so well; the solving flow so pretty, so many ways to get into each section.

Love the pairing of HIT THE BRICKS and SPACE TOURISTS. Talk about getting out of town! I wasn't familiar with THE MECHANIC, but BRIMSTONE, NOISEMAKERS, CLASS ACT, DOG PARKS = such good usage of those long down slots.

CLASS ACT and DOG PARKS particularly shine — not because they're better than other entries, but because these corners often leave unfulfilled potential on the table within this kind of stair-stacked design. Peter does almost equally well in the opposite corner, with PITFALL / SHOO AWAY / PONYTAIL, even a TOY CAR to boot. A stair-stacked set of acrosses can make these corners inflexible and a bit blah to ugly, but not today.

Peter's grids typically are so snazzy and ultra-clean, that AWAG, THORO (do people actually use this?) and even IOC stood out a bit. They'd be virtually ignorable for most anyone else, but Peter has set an incredibly high bar for himself.

I don't mind a double dose of THE in THE MECHANIC and HIT THE BRICKS — it's such a common filler word — but getting a third in THE JONESES felt like too much. Maybe it would have been different if it had been with a shorter entry like THE FED or THE UN, but …

Peter did a great job of incorporating some rare letters in the south, that J and X worked in so smoothly. Usually, a tiny region's job is to be ignorable and not stand out with crossword glue but to get some JIM Kirk, TOXIN, even RATTY and YAY ME makes that corner a real asset to the puzzle.

It's so tough to achieve both sizzling and smooth in a wide-open 68-word grid like this. PHONE SERVICE didn't do much for me, nor OMELETTES, nor SHOO AWAY. Might not seem like too much wastage, but those take up some prime real estate. Still, I'm in agreement with Peter — well executed overall.

– puzzle by Peter Wentz

Famous horses and their riders featured today. The LONE RANGER atop SILVER resonated best for me. ROY ROGERS on TRIGGER felt mostly familiar. The others I didn't recognize, but some Googling suggests that these are all crossworthy. ZORRO on TORNADO was the most questionable for me, but ZORRO fans will likely vociferously disagree.

I shudder when I see paired, stacked themers — they force so many fixed letter pairs, and when you stack up all those pairings, you can get a quagmire. My prior experience with it was so challenging that I swore it off. Tim did such a nice job executing on the grid — I had to look a second and third time to believe how smooth the final result was.

The long paired theme answers create an even bigger challenge. You might think, what's the big deal, crossword symmetry allows for pairs of themers, right? Nope. With the horses in symmetrical locations, the riders end up in non-symmetrical ones. LONE RANGER doesn't match up with ROY ROGERS … but instead, it has to match with a 10-letter piece of fill. Now, not only do you stack a rider atop a horse, but you stack another long answer to make a triplet of long answers. Such a challenge!

There was some minor O GOD / LYIN, maybe KWH (kilowatt hour) could be tough, but that would be a great result in a normal puzzle. To pull it off here is astounding.

One thing he did well was to space out his theme pairs to the far edges of the grid, to reduce interactions between pairs of themers. As a result, ROY ROGERS / TRIGGER barely had to work with DALE EVANS / BUTTERMILK. But he still managed to make the puzzle feel open; not overly sectioned into mini-puzzles. Great work.

The theme didn't do much for me, as a majority of the pairings were unfamiliar, but the concept makes for a fun visual. And the fill execution was top-notch, especially considering what a Herculean task Tim had in front of him.

– puzzle by Timothy Polin

OOH OOH, I know what the theme is!

Nice examples of that OOH OOH pattern. LULULEMON is big here in Seattle, what with so many people in yoga. I grew up on Yogi and BOO BOO BEAR. I've even had a PU-PU PLATTER, staring at it with GOO-GOO EYES. Fun stuff.

I only learned what VUVUZELAS are through crosswords, though. It's a neat word but man, am I glad that Peter made all his crossings fair. (Tom SEAVER might be tough for some, but VON is easy enough to figure out so that second V should be gettable due to the theme pattern.)

At first, I thought the theme was a bit loosey-goosey for my taste, since LULULEMON is one word, and BOO BOO BEAR is three. But it turns out that Peter chose a tight set, the first and last themers being one word, and the others being two (all with a hyphenated first word).

I liked getting a couple of extras in RAMROD, URANIUM, PINOCHLE, even AP BIO. I wasn't as hot on SNARLER, sort of an arbitrary -ER word. Toss in AMUSERS and BUDGETER … some of these three may be legit, but they do draw attention to each other. Not ideal to pile on one type of iffy crossword entry.

NERFS usually is an odd plural. But in gamerspeak, it's used as a verb to describe reducing a weapon's damage potential. The first time I saw someone write "the wizard got nerfed" I had to do a double-take. I love that usage now, and try to sneak it into daily conversation.

VUVUZELAS felt like it could have put the puzzle out of reach for beginners, those solvers who finish correctly still staring at that bizarre word. (Could have used a nerfing.) But some nice examples of this OOH OOH! pattern.

– puzzle by Peter Gordon

I like a stunt puzzle every once in a while. No doubt, using only seven distinct letters for an entire 78-word puzzle is a feat.

I do hear grumbling from solvers via Facebook, Twitter, etc., and I'm sure I'll hear some around this puzzle. But I also hear from people who delight in this sort of thing. Curious to see which way this one goes.

Some nice anagram finds, the seven distinct letters forming REALIST, ALISTER, RETAILS, SALTIER. Creative way to "reveal" what's going on in the puzzle.

I could have used stronger entries, though. TEASER and LARIAT are pretty good, as is STILLER, but there aren't any other entries that delighted me as a solver.

On the liabilities side, there's ETES ASST ETTE EATER REES … (ET AL!). Way, way, way too much for my taste. Having done a couple of these letter-stunt puzzles, I know how rough it is to work with such a crazy constraint. But it's not a lot of fun to run into IRAE SSTS ETATS AILES STER (ET AL!).

Still, Bruce did well to adhere to the 78-word maximum — it'd be much easier to do this with 80 or even 82 words.

And we didn't get some that we could have seen: STETS. RETES. TEER. SEERESSES. Wait, that last one is kind of funny.

Someone out there will eventually reduce the record to six distinct letters, I'm sure. But as Bruce mentioned, it'd have to be cool in some way, not simply breaking a record for its own sake.

How cool would it be to get some rare letters worked into the mix? A I Q S T U anyone? Now that would be pretty fun.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

Love, love, love that Emanuel Ax and Brad teamed up to make a crossword related so closely to their lives! Visuals in crosswords can be so much fun — the musical eighth note made of black squares delighted me. It has been done before (Liz is a violist!), but it's still neat.

"Words that can follow X" puzzles have fallen by the wayside, so if you're going to go down that well-worn road, I think it's important to do something above and beyond. The musical note visual helped in that regard.

Having NOTE as a revealer (SOUR NOTE, MASH NOTE, HIGH NOTE, HALF NOTE) was a let-down though. I like to work a little for my a-ha moment, especially in a mid-week puzzle — no spoon-feeding! I'm not sure what would have been better, but something like HINT clued with a reference to the musical note?

I loved QUAKER GUN, what an evocative term! DAYMARE too. GRETA GARBO, MANGIA (Italian for "eat!"), ANECDOTAL, even PLAY AREA clued cheekily toward Ax's profession = so much great bonus fill! Almost felt like a themeless puzzle in that regard.

Prices to pay for these goodies, though. I don't mind a little ENE RONS UNAS LEROI SASE; generally minor and forgettable. But the upper left and lower right corners ended up giving the puzzle a rough-around-the-edges feel. It is difficult to fill around crossing themers — the starts of WHISKEY SOUR and MONSTER MASH combine to create inflexibility up in the NW — but A CENT + ERE I + LE ROI makes for an inelegant start to the puzzle.

Same for the end — A FATE + N CAR + the tough HALLO and AGLET…

(I usually would employ cheater squares (a black square at the R of RHODE or first A of AFATE to smooth these sections out). But some constructors much prefer a cleaner, more stark look to a puzzle.)

But overall, so neat that two musically-driven people came up with something so related to them.

– puzzle by Emanuel Ax and Brad Wilber

Fun theme idea, one-syllable words interpreted as their two-syllable counterparts. I'm a big fan of MOLE sauce (spicy chocolatey goodness!), so WHACK A MO-LE made me laugh. FOR HEAVENS SA-KE and LA-ME EXCUSE felt more tortured grammatically, but I was still amused.

I did like RUN FOR THE RO-SES (pinkish wines), but it felt inconsistent with the rest of the themers, as the only plural. I don't mind a lack of tightness if the theme is ultra-constrained, but there are a lot of ROSE phrases out there.

I know, my OCD constructor's brain is so annoying!

I like that Jeffrey made an effort to give solvers some bonuses in the fill. Fun to have WHITE RICE and THE NATURAL, as well as YESHIVAS and SUM TOTAL.

There were prices to pay for this, though. WHITE RICE and THE NATURAL are made possible by not using the typical black squares which would break up the side of the puzzle — the RET of RETAIN would normally be black squares to facilitate better fill. This forces some crossword glue like A TALE, and the odd LAND AT. I don't mind add-a-preposition phrases when they sound natural, but LAND AT … hmm.

My immature brain giggled at LUDE and TOKE in the same puzzle.

My constructor's brain pointed out RECTO, TVA, ROUES, HMS. Nothing terrible, but all slightly iffy. Overall, I would have preferred a slightly cleaner puzzle with slightly fewer goodies.

Neat concept with some funny results. If 1.) this had been on a Wednesday or Tuesday, where I expect these simpler types of themes, 2.) the themers had all been singular, and 3.) the puzzle had been executed more smoothly, I would have given it the POW!

– puzzle by Jeffrey Wechsler

★ SO MANY great entries! Damon starts with 14 long slots (8+ letters), and converts most into sizzling material. Love GO-GO BOOTS, and in my previous career, the ACTs OF GOD clauses in legal contracts were always good for a laugh. HOT DATES, SMEAR TACTIC, SPY STORY ... everywhere I looked, great material packed in tight.

My daughter has a weird fascination with HELLO KITTY. Sigh, so much pink. Still, a great entry.

SETTLE IN and TOTAL BASES didn't do much for me (I'm plus/minus on baseball), but Damon's slugging percentage (or whatever metaphor you baseball fans like to use) in converting long slots to great entries is very high.

Excellent use of mid-length entries, too. I grew up idolizing THE FONZ, a virtual MESSIAH to me. AFROPOP too? OMIGOSH! Constructors tend to overlook the potential of these mid-length slots, but Damon does so well with them.

GRAMMAR NAZI … I chuckled at this one in the end, but I uncovered the NAZI end of it first. Never pleasant to see NAZI in a crossword. GRAMMAR NAZI sure is a colorful term, though.

There was something non-themeless feeling to this puzzle, and it took me a while to figure out what. During my solve, I felt like I stopped and started dozens of times. Took me a while to figure out that the number of three-letter words was most of the root cause.

Now, most people won't care how many three-letter words there are in a themeless. But so many shorties leads to so much starting and stopping. Typically, themelesses don't have more than 12 three-letter entries, for good reason.

And entering ERG, then DAN, RIA, TEA, OHS, across the middle … that row of shorties takes away from the themeless feel to the layout.

But overall, a fairly smooth solve (aside from what Damon mentioned plus TE AMO, ERG, and OFT) and a huge number of great entries gave me a very nice solving experience.

– puzzle by Damon Gulczynski

A themeless built around intersecting 15-letter entries typically needs a lot of crossword glue to hold it all together — filling around each intersection gets to be tricky. When I saw the blank grid, I was sure that there would be a ton of ugly short entries in the upper left. Not only do two 15-letter entries intersect inside it, but that big section is essentially an 8x4 chunk, which is hard enough to fill, even without that added constraint!

Great surprise to get excellent work in that corner. JUICE BOX and SEX TAPE provide some zazz, and HEBRIDES and AQUILINE are pretty good. HAJJI feels rickety, as I'm used to seeing it HADJI, but either is fine. So with ILEA (plural of ileum) as the only price to pay, it's a big thumbs-up from me.

As Adam mentioned though, the opposite corner didn't turn out quite as well. MINICAR feels odd. I love ATALANTA in Greek myth, but she does tend to get overused in crosswords due to her friendly consonant / vowel alternation. And ANNAS / SAY A ... still, RED DRESS was fun given that I had already uncovered ROXANNE, which has a RED DRESS featured in the lyrics. Wish they had been linked through their clues!

Some bumps here and there: ECCLES is an odd-looking abbr., HWY is minor, and there's a reliance on some old-feeling entries: SAYER, REO, and (dare I say it?) RICK SPRINGFIELD? He's fallen out of my consciousness, unfortunately.

I would have liked more sparkle out of those 15-letter entries — they're all fine, but none of them made me want to go tell friends about this crossword. Hard to believe that JACKASS THE MOVIE is 15 years old now.

But overall, for the difficulty level of the grid design, it's pretty good execution.

– puzzle by Adam Fromm

Homage to a jazz great, near what would have been ELLA's 100th birthday. I'm a huge jazz fan, having played in jazz bands for 20 years in my youth; neat to see Ella honored.

Love that I SING LIKE I FEEL quote — perfect for someone known for her soulfulness, right up there with Nina Simone. If you haven't listened to her HOW HIGH THE MOON rendition, it's well worth a listen. A TISKET A TASKET is not one of my favorites, but it did help make her a star.

A shame that IT DON'T MEAN A THING didn't make the cut. One of her best performances.

Tribute puzzles can feel like a Wikipedia page, a dry listing of factoids, so I liked the QUEEN OF JAZZ crown visual. I wasn't familiar with this nickname, though — and LADY ELLA was only vaguely familiar — so that took away some of the impact for me.

I used to think that dot-to-dot puzzles weren't that hard to make … until I constructed one (coming out later this year). Turns out they're devilish, especially if you need exact placements of certain letters.

It wouldn't be hard to build around the letters if the crown were the only factor, but they all must interact with so many themers.

As if that wasn't hard enough, Will's max of 140 words means that you have to build the entire grid using fairly long entries!

Take the upper middle region. ABEET, SIA, OF NO, RESNAP aren't great. But with ELLA, the E O F hanging out in that section, and the long words like CONSUMER, it's hard to avoid using gluey bits. (If it were allowable, going up to 142 words could have helped, maybe by placing a black square at the S of CONSUMER.)

I did wince at ACETAL crossing AGHA and NUI crossing NUIT. Both should be gettable for regular crossword solvers, but it's these kind of things that potentially turn solvers away from crosswords. (If I had a nickel for every time I've heard "I have to know WHAT?")

Overall, Olivia does pretty well with this Herculean task — quite a way to make one's debut!

– puzzle by Olivia Mitra Framke

Such meaty theme entries today … and they form a meal! Starting with a WORD SALAD (a more polite term for "word vomit"), continuing with a NOTHING BURGER (Kevin O'Leary from "Shark Tank" uses this all the time), some COUCH POTATOES, finishing with a HUMBLE PIE. I've seen COUCH POTATOES and HUMBLE PIE used before in similar crosswords, but the first two feel nice and fresh. Well done.

Strong execution, too. I'd expect at least a pair of good bonus entries from Gary, given just four themers, and he didn't disappoint. ARPEGGIO for us classical music-lovers, I SUPPOSE, HOT MIC, PEGASUS — all of them excellent lifts as I solved.

There's a bit of arbitrary TWOAM, URI Geller (is he really crossworthy?), a singular ALP, but nothing else that dragged me down. I want smoothness in my Monday puzzles — to make them accessible to newer solvers — and Gary did well in this regard.

I usually think inconsistency is inelegant — POTATOES is the only plural food item — but in this case, I like the inconsistency. Who eats just one potato, after all? (This really should be the case for PIE. I mean, it's PIE, people!)

Only minor nit was the "Utah blocks" on the sides of the puzzle — the sets of five black squares that look like the state of Utah. Gary was already going to have a long down on each side of the puzzle, so why not do it in a way to avoid Utah blocks? Here, you could take out the three blocks after OPENS, and put one in at the E of IRATE — the long down would then be at the bottom right instead of the top right.

Solid Monday puzzle. It would have been spot-on if the meal had been a more typical menu — maybe SOUP, SALAD, BURGER, PIE? — but now I kind of want to try that BURGER followed by POTATOES gut bomb.

– puzzle by Gary Cee

Phrases where both parts of the phrase can follow HOME: HOME BODY / HOME GUARD, HOME GAME / HOME BOY, etc. This theme type tends to feature so-so entries because it's hard to find strong phrases that follow this principle — COMPUTER PORT isn't super snazzy, for example. But some good finds, BODYGUARD and FRONT PAGE particularly nice.

Working with six theme answers is not for the faint of heart. This typically results in 1.) an excess of crossword glue and/or 2.) a dearth of long bonus fill. Gary does quite well on the second point, featuring CHIMERAS, KEEP AT IT, ITS ON ME (I don't mind short word dupes like IT), TRUISMS, and even NUZZLES. These quality bonuses elevated my solve.

The first point, though … Gary does well to "stack" BODYGUARD just one row above GAMEBOY, sort of treating them like a single, long themer. This helps create good spacing between themers.

But there are so many prices to pay, all over the grid. The opening corner alone: MENT, EGESTS, QTY, URI crossing ANDIE. Inelegant. You might think that adding a black square, perhaps at the S of EGESTS would have helped smooth everything out. You'd be right, but Gary is already at the max word limit of 78, so that's not possible — so many themers means that Gary already had to spend his black squares elsewhere.

It's admirable to try to distinguish this theme by going to high density, but I'd have preferred a smoother puzzle at the price of not as many themers. Given that GAMEBOY and ICELAND feel unlike the others (being single-word entries that don't totally work with the theme revealer), the puzzle might have been stronger without them.

Very glad to get so many great pieces of bonus fill — the CHIMERAS type entries did help hold my attention.

A couple of years ago, Will said he was phasing out "word that can follow the ends of …" puzzles, as they had run their course. Given how long it's been since we've seen a "both words can follow ...", I wonder if this theme type has also reached the end of its lifespan.

– puzzle by Gary J. Whitehead

★ In general, I try to be kind to newbies, erring on the side of encouragement while downplaying puzzle's flaws. So I love when I can flat out call a great debut a great debut. It was fun enough to uncover these crazy double-X entries, but to get that spot-on DOS EQUIS revealer — meaning "two Xs" in Spanish — was so perfect.

I remember running into the word ANTI-VAXXER a while back. It looked so bizarre at first, but within seconds, I decided I loved it. (Not the movement, mind you!) I had meant to seed a themeless with it, but I never got around to it. Great to see it featured today.

I had seen the other themers before, some even in a "phrase containing two Xs" context. But I hadn't seen a puzzle featuring adjacent double Xs. Nice.

A single X can be tough to fill smoothly around. Try filling around 10 of them … plus the Q from DOS EQUIS! I would have bet a lot of money that a new constructor wouldn't be able to produce a silky, lively grid. But I marveled as I solved, each pair of Xs filled around with care. No crutches like OOX or XKE or MXS. Beautiful.

But that's not all! Trent managed to work in some lively bonus entries through those Xs: BOX SEAT, and the lovely pair of ELIXIR and AP EXAM.

I would have liked a little more in terms of long bonuses — ARRIVING is fine, but not snazzy — but to get some YES SIR, VIN ROSE, GONDOLAS was good enough, especially given that I was already getting a lift from uncovering all those smoothly integrated Xs.

Sure, there's a bit of minor ORU (Oral Roberts University), SYS, AGGRO (although I kind of love this term, used in gamerspeak for "lock onto"), RIA, MOA. But those are all easy to gloss over and well worth the great stuff Trent managed to pull off.

It might have made for a perfect Tuesday puzzle — the theme was a little easy for a Wednesday — but all in all, can't wait to see more from Trent.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

Many people have approached me for feedback on SUDOKU / PUZZLE crossword concepts, but I can't remember something quite like this. Todd gives us a mini-SUDOKU, with the letters A E R T in the middle 4x4, each letter showing up exactly once in each row, column, and 2x2 region.

It's very easy to fill such a 4x4 with those letters to fit that SUDOKU property. But it's mighty hard to do so in a way that facilitates integration into a crossword. I can only imagine how many permutations Todd must have tried before landing on this 4x4 layout.

I think Todd did fairly well in the center, with mostly fine entries like CARET and RATES. Neat to get some bonuses: DIETARY, ITERATE and ANTEATERS. HERAT is tough, but it seems crossworthy(ish), given that its population is over 400K. Thank goodness the H in MARSH had no ambiguity.

My only real wince — and it was a big one — was at PSSST. One might argue it's arbitrary how to spell that sound. But I've seen it in print (not just in crosswords) as PSST so often that it feels right like that. PSSST opens the door for unfortunate entries such as AAAAH, OMMM, etc.

Where I thought Todd shined was in some of the big, open corners. Even that opening corner is tough, given that it's a 7x4 chunk of white space. To work around CENTRAL so smoothly (just LDS = Latter Day Saints), and even feature THE EMMYS = a great way to kick off the puzzle.

And that lower left! Working around two Zs can be tricky, so to feature HAIRCUTS with a fun [Tops off?] clue, and I HATE YOU is fantastic. Some may argue that Daniel INOUYE is esoteric. But educated people ought to at least be familiar with the highest-ranking Asian-American in the history of U.S. politics.

I would have liked some rationale as to why A E R T were used (not just because those were four letters that worked) — and some revealer to rationalize why a mini-Sudoku — but all in all, a creative idea with generally good execution.

– puzzle by Todd Gross