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YOU GO, GIRL is right! What a one-two combo of crossword stars. OH, HELL NO, I didn't NEED HELP to enjoy today's solving experience.

I loved the sheer quantity of clever cluing. Such creativity behind [Meter reader?]; a next-level repurposing of a common phrase. (Some POETs focus on their meter.)

Staying along the lines of artistic license, ORIGAMI is so ripe for a delightful clue. [Enterprise that's folding] innocently misdirects toward a business that's going under. Maybe a bit tortured grammatically, but it didn't take much away from the fun.

I'm currently rewatching "Game of THRONEs," so it didn't take long to figure out [Courtside seats?] That repurposing — a literal seat by the royal court — might be my favorite of the bunch.

Only one debut grid entry: ATE FOR TWO. It's a great phrase, but EATS FOR TWO debuted decades ago and EATING FOR TWO showed up recently, so it didn't feel that fresh. I would have loved some GOAT RODEO or SAY THE MAGIC WORD magic. Entries like RODE SHOTGUN and YOU GO GIRL are excellent, although they trend toward old hat for regular themeless solvers.

These days, the competition for themeless slots is brutal. Tons of constructors can produce spotless themeless grids without many (or any) gluey short entries, so you have to have some way of distinguishing yourself to gain serious consideration. Although there wasn't enough new material in the grid, the cluing kept this one entertaining.

– puzzle by Christina Iverson and Caitlin Reid

I've been obsessed with football's Statue of Liberty trick play ever since Boise State used it to win the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Such misdirection and flim-flammery!

Not nearly as much deception in today's theme, although it wasn't until I hit TABLET that I was 100% sure it was about the STATUE OF LIBERTY. Neat that her major features — TORCH, CROWN, TABLET, GOWN — can all be hidden (to some extent) at the ends of phrases.

TRIPLE CROWN worked best, since it's 1) a colorful phrase and 2) it doesn't refer to the physical object. ROYAL CROWN would immediately call Lady Liberty's headwear to mind, for example.

ASPIRIN TABLET uses a completely different meaning of TABLET (pill vs. writing pad), which is fantastic. However, it's not snazzy enough to be a theme-worthy phrase. Tough to imagine people asking for an ASPIRIN TABLET as opposed to simply an aspirin.

Like Bruce, I wondered if she wears a GOWN. I always thought of it as a toga, but that makes even less sense than the monument greeting immigrants in a ball gown.

Sticking to only TORCH, CROWN, and TABLET would have made for a stronger puzzle, especially since the central ASPIRIN TABLET forced some newb-unfriendly regions. I'm glad that LILI's clue gave solvers an additional hint, but when the EDER is flowing next door, to the sounds of COSI Fan Tutte, it's too easy to put the puzzle down and do something else.

Going to a 74-word grid could have smoothed things out — a black square around the S of YES I DO (along with much black square rejiggering elsewhere) might have lent our Lady her rightful aura of awe.

Solid July 4^th puzzle though, and I appreciated the top-down ordering of her TORCH high in the air, the iconic CROWN next, and the TABLET at her waist.

– puzzle by Bruce Haight

★ I was so intrigued by "Name That Tune" today. What could MINE and FEARLESS have in common? Toss in BABE … RED …

BLANK SPACE is right!

I admitted defeat before piecing together ...

SWIFT.

SWIFT?

As in, what my brain was not, in still being unable to figure out the puzzle's theme?

I couldn't pick out Taylor Swift from a lineup of her, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jonathan Swift, and if offered one treeelion dollars to name any of her songs, I'd mumble "I'm lovin' it?" So my disappointment was appropriately SWIFT.

But wait! Even this pop culture moron's ears perked up, recognizing SHAKE IT OFF. Then I nearly broke my computer while listening to Taylor Swift tunes for 22 straight hours. As I bopped to the beats, I couldn't help but yell out FEARLESS! to the neighbors.

Alas, they responded with:

I'm taking it as a personal challenge to go through life speaking only in Tay-tay titles.

Nothing flashy in the grid, but STORYBOOK and I OWE YOU are fun. Although I'd have preferred more T-Swizzle sparkle, erring on the side of cleanliness is the right thing to do for most Tuesday crosswords. The fact that I couldn't pick out a single ding-worthy entry makes this debut a bit enchanted.

I'm so glad I gave this tribute puzzle a second look. Along with solidly smooth debut gridwork, I'm finding it as hard to SHAKE IT (this crossword) OFF as that earwormy song.

– puzzle by Malgorzata Nowakowska and Eileen Williams

I grew up on Rocky and Bullwinkle, so I couldn't resist when Sam proposed a RABBIT theme. Hey solvers, watch us pull RABBITs out of different types of HATs!

When it came to gridwork, though … tons of themer crossings to fill around … dang it! Wait. We figured out a reasonable fill around BEANIE / BRER! Nothing up our sleeves — oh.

Bah. Now DERBY crossing ROGER is producing problems.

Starting over … yes! No.

And once again because the regions around the first and second themer-crossings don't mesh and again … and again ... throw in a third region requiring themer crossings ... iterate until infinity …

So much for This Magic Moment.

What is magical, though: Sam's work ethic and his total dedication to kaizen. Most constructors spend nearly 100% of their time developing their grid chops, but Sam has also put serious effort into his cluing. Many of the clever riffs today are his. It's a joy to open up a set of clues he's drafted and experience some delightful bit of punnery that's new to me.

– puzzle by Sam Koperwas and Jeff Chen

My latest YouTube obsession is the Takedown Twins, a pair of New Englanders who ingest massive amounts of food. I've tried to convince my identical twin that we should start a YouTube channel, but Alex has a peculiar aversion toward Feats of Abomination. Doesn't he know the real-time streamers' motto, YOU ONLY LIVE (rhymes with "give") LIVE (rhymes with "hive")?

Feels like there's a crossword theme in there somewhere …

"Repeating word" themes go back for decades, and editors don't take them much these days because they can feel a tad (warning: pun alert) repetitive. (Double) AGENT alone showed up again in 1999, then a third time in 2001.

However, I like Philip's effort to distinguish his execution, incorporating the repeats into longer phrases. YOU ONLY LIVE (TWICE), (DOUBLE) BLIND STUDY, GOODY (TWO) SHOES are all excellent base phrases. Nice touch to have one implied word at the beginning, one at the end, and one in the middle, to help make the trick a tad bit harder.

With just three themers, I expect a ton of great fill and a squeaky-clean grid. PISCO SOUR / BILLY BOB / DOOFUSES / FRIVOLOUS does the trick for the first criterion. Smoothness wasn't as DREAMY, though.

Kicking off the northwest corner with BROT is a toughie. Given that Will Shortz has never allowed it during his era as editor, I'd have guessed it'd be on his list of "puzzle-killers." It's a shame — the other ETHNO, NEER, EST, STET material would have seemed minor, but BROT brotens them all. Perhaps a black square at the S of SLEEPY would have allowed for a cleaner product.

It's difficult to distinguish yourself when in "repeated words" territory, but I appreciated Philip's attempt. And it was great to get a couple of clever clues, especially ROUGE making you (literally) blush, and a VET as a "pro who calls the shots."

– puzzle by Philip Wolfe

The Great British Bake-Off makes me happy. I didn't know what LEMON CURD was before bingeing every season, and now I've tried my hand at making it! Although my resulting lemon curdle haunts me to this day, I still say GODSPEED to delightful Mary Berry for all the innocent joy she's given me.

Funny that Paul Hollywood's yin to Mary Berry's yang shows up today. IRON RULE indeed. My nightmares are filled with him unable to keep from gagging upon tasting my signature bake, tsking a great British IT'S TOO BAD, WHO'S NEXT?

My GBBO obsession might have made me go a bit NUMB.

Star Baker clue in [Place to drive, if you're so inclined?] That's inclined, as in an ONRAMP tilting down! That's some "tricky" MAGIC ACT, all right.

I appreciate the creativity elsewhere, although I burned so much time for [Drugstore brand named for its target area]. What brand is sold only in one U.S. region? Ah, that's the target area of the body, i.e., upset tummies treated by TUMS.

And BITON is a cross between … bichon and "Coton de Tulear"? Almost as baffling as the clue for QUBIT (quantum bit). It is tough to clue the latter more directly … I might have bent the rules and used "quantum" in the clue to make it friendlier.

Smart use of "pyramid blocks" on the sides of the puzzle, allowing Kyle to get down to 68 words. The NW and SE corners would typically be a factor of three bitonqubits harder to fill cleanly without them.

I like my Friday themelesses to be more accessible and breezier than struggling with so much Saturday-level gridding and cluing, but there was still a lot to enjoy.

– puzzle by Kyle Dolan

★ I can't quite put my finger on this theme … wait a sec, I sure can! Handy idea to imagine FINGERPAINT as tying together phrases in the form of (color) + (finger term). Unbelievable that there were three colorful (sorry) phrases that did precisely that.

Constructors are always searching for El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, the Platonic Ideal of theme perfection. Here, that might come in the form of something like GREEN THUMB, (color) INDEX, (color) MIDDLE, (color) RING, (color) PINKY. It quickly becomes apparent that that's a fool errand, so the question then follows: is the theme worth doing as is, even though THUMB is a specific finger while KNUCKLE and PRINTS are parts of fingers? What about the inelegance of KNUCKLE being singular and PRINTS plural?

Objections overruled; suck it Plato! The creativity of connecting KNUCKLE, PRINTS, THUMB far outweighs the nits.

Impressive debut gridwork. I wasn't surprised to hear that Roy has a technical background and applied it to his filling process. Such a smooth Monday solve, along with enough pizzazz in HOT WIRES, SHIPS LOG, EGG NOG, NPR NEWS.

It confuses me when I hear old-guard criticism about reliance on tech. I think it's helpful to go through the filling process with a piece of graph paper once, so you get a sense of the inherent challenges, but why would you stubbornly stick to a typewriter if you could use a computer? Are you still using a landline, refusing a smartphone?

Some great Monday-accessible clues, too, a treat to riff on Oldman and Newman for OSCAR, and Stevie Nicks and the Knicks playing at an ARENA.

Novel theme plus excellence in gridwork and cluing. Looking forward to more from Roy.

– puzzle by Roy Greim

Why do I love up and down stripes so much? They win me over almost every time.

Not surprising, given how Charlie Brown-y I am.

Neat that TWENTY FOUR HOURS and SLEEP WAKE CYCLES are both 15 letters long. It's fortuitous enough when two theme answers are equal in length, allowing thematic symmetry, but both of them being grid-spanners gives so much more flexibility than if they were 12-14 letters. Note that the singular SLEEP WAKE CYCLE would need to be placed in row 12, thus compressing the themers and creating yet more challenges.

Will Shortz isn't taking many themes requiring diagonal entries these days because of all the fill compromises they tend to require. Filling a subsection like the middle is easy if you only have one Across entry to work around, but when you pin letters into fixed locations like D I A N R, you strip away many possibilities. Smart to deploy so many black squares in the center to section off the most challenging part of the grid.

Using up so many black squares creates snags elsewhere, though. With the word count already pushed to the max of 78, you must work with big swaths of white space in the bottom corners. When the diagonal C I R takes away flexibility, that region becomes much harder to fill.

With all the technical constraints, it's a fine result to escape with minor dabs of FAA GYN LOA SLC.

What a beautiful clue for ONE DIME! I confidently plunked in ONE CENT, but that's the smallest denomination, not size. Along with so much great wordplay in "the 1%" as LOWFAT and horns on both impala animals and Impala cars, there was so much more wordplay fun than we usually get on a Tuesday.

Great DAY to NIGHT touch. I admired Karen's solo debut.

– puzzle by Karen Steinberg

Existential identify crisis! Who am I? I am what I am. I AM THAT I AM!

I had a humorous moment, visualizing JEAN VAL JEAN stealing green eggs and ham with Sam-I-Am.

Creative use of mirror symmetry, neat to see in a debut. Crucivera shines inspiration so infrequently, and then she reminds you that she is one of the cruelest of the Old Gods. 11, 13, and GLORIA GAYNOR is … 12. That's a Greek tragedy in the making.

Thankfully, you can break up GLORIA / GAYNOR 6 / 6, and left-right symmetry saves the day. It does make it more difficult for the themers to stand out like beacons since GLORIA is shorter than MAIN LOT, and the multi-word LIP SYNC seems like it should be more of a themer than GAYNOR.

Speaking of LIP SYNC, I loved the effort to elevate the puzzle through the clever clues. Many Wednesday solvers can grapple with [Not really sing, say], even without a telltale question mark. That makes an already strong filler entry in LIP SYNC that much better.

And kicking off the puzzle with [Starter home?] in the northwest corner — that's a Kickstarter of a clue for EDEN.

It's unusual to debut short entries and even more rare to debut ones that other constructors might want to reuse. (I've heard some constructors bragging about debuting short entries … that happen to be a partial. No no no, Crucivera curses you!) PPE — personal protective equipment — is so timely.

I've never known a JORG, but it's so similar to George that I hardly paused.

I had difficulty succinctly expressing the theme, so it's good that XWord Info has a Jim Horne. Both of us appreciated these famous declaractions of self.

– puzzle by Addison Snell

H2O -> H (to) O makes for a strong "letter swap" rationale. It's been a minute since we've seen a numeral in a grid, so I'd say I dig-it.

"Letter swap" puzzles are so old hat that you have to do something special to make one stand out. The numeral in H2O helps, but it's not enough. Thankfully, some of Alan's transformations were eye-opening — it turns out that there aren't as many pairs of words that work with the swap. (You can use our Replacement Finder to see for yourself.) I'm no oenophile, but I recognized SOAVE enough that I could appreciate the cool SHAVE to SOAVE change.

I'd have loved some longer words or examples involving a space shift — like LOST IN THE SHUFFLE to LOST IN THE SOUFFLE (I'm currently hooked on "Iron Chef") or BITCHIN' CAMARO to BITCOIN CAMARO.

In the past, I've been critical of Alan's puzzles when he goes too low in his word count, ending up with excessive grid glue. Today, I appreciated the cleanliness, only some MEADE AMOR. However, given that this is a Thursday puzzle and there are only four themers plus a short revealer, more color would have been great. I think he could have taken out the black square between OMNI and NOME, for example, and added pizzazz while keeping it as smooth.

A straightforward letter swap isn't my Thursday ideal, but using a numeral helped make it more interesting.

– puzzle by Alan Arbesfeld

Last year, Christina Iverson asked me to go in on a themeless featuring YOUR OTHER RIGHT. I loved, loved, loved that as a seed entry. The NYT team ultimately thought our final product didn't make the cut, but I was still happy to see it debut today. Such a smile-inducing phrase.

It will be when my kids finally figure out left vs. right, that is.

I admire the attempt at a LEFT / RIGHT mini-theme. Great that LEFT is on the left, and RIGHT is on the RIGHT, too. The phrase WHAT ELSE IS LEFT, though … I'm sure it gets said, but I wouldn't strive to seed a themeless with it. I'd have adored the mini-theme if it had been something like YOUR OTHER LEFT and THAT AINT RIGHT.

There are only 12 long (8+ letters) entries in the puzzle, some of which are one-worders. There's nothing inherently better about multi-worders, but editors seek them out since they often bring the heat. RESCUE DOG is excellent! ELECTIVES isn't as strong.

Of course, not all multi-worders are created equal. TIRE FIRES does appear to be in the language, but the Wikipedia article only has a short reference to today's slangy usage.

The cluing helped elevate the solve, Matthew and Nam Jin's time and effort show through. MASSEUSES is pretty good for a single-worder, but when you get tricksy with [Their customers lie for them] — wow, what a delight it becomes! The same goes for the everyday TOOTHPICK, a literal "stick in one's mouth."

Well above average in cluing delight. Even with the sky-high bar for 70-word themelesses, an adjustment to the mini-theme, and it'd have been in POW! territory.

– puzzle by Matthew Stock and Nam Jin Yoon

AT SIXES AND SEVENS so perfectly describes math confusion! It also applies to my six and seven-year-olds, who are at sixes and sevens regarding my algebra and pre-calculus puzzles. I know they're only half-Asian, but come on!

I'm (half) kidding.

Over a decade of crossword construction, I'd never considered the pattern ?? X AND Y (where a question mark represents any letter). Neat that it's a fairly tight set — I couldn't think of many more that fit the pattern; only IN FITS AND STARTS.

It's even neater that each phrase can be punnily applied to an apt subject. That second criterion makes this idea even tighter, since IN FITS AND STARTS might only apply to some Laff-A-Lympics quick-change relay race.

Three themers is below average these days, so I expect incredible color and ultra-clean fill. SPIT TAKES, STAR GAZE, LADY BIRD, CUPHOLDER, oh yeah! The spacing is perfect, alternating up down up down across the columns. Sets the stage so well for smooth short fill.

I paused at NHLER and slowed further with minor DYS ELLS PDT. ONZE is tough foreign vocab for newb solvers, too (although my French friends down the street will love it!) — is it worth the snazzy Zs in OZZIE? That question has no right answer, though I much preferred the ZZ in RAZZ because they came with no associated price to pay. It's so much harder to fill a region like the south, with STAR GAZE taking away flexibility.

It's not every day that I see an interesting letter / phrase pattern that feels crossworthy. Nice theme for a Monday debut.

– puzzle by Phoebe Gordon

I enjoyed the collection of "(body part) THE (noun)" metaphors. Every single one of them is a sizzler, too; phrases I'd happily give check marks to in a themeless.

Not a surprise to get such nifty gridwork from Andy, who's the editor over at the New Yorker crossword. Those puzzles tend to have a more avant-garde feel, with entries like KUBLAI, LOCI, AEGIS, OPORTO, ALBEE, ISHTAR (clued as the Babylonian gate), and BENET to be expected.

I'm not sure that makes for a friendly experience for newer NYT solvers. None of the crosses throughout the grid felt unfair, though, and it's useful for people to be pushed sometimes. How else are you going to develop your solving chops, newbs?

There was so much awesome long fill: SAUERKRAUT, DOG HOTEL, BIL KEANE, AIR BUBBLES, RAGE QUITS. Talk about ADORATION! So impressive to thread six(!) long Downs through five themers.

I'd be a total ARSE if I minded some ATESTS EEC TABU as a price. Even OSO is on the cusp of crossword respectability, considering the cartoon my kids are starting to obsess over.

I spent too much time investigating if the themers could be arranged in anatomical order — FACE THE MUSIC at the top, FOOT THE BILL at the bottom — but that quickly proved impossible. Neat that Andy could find a matching set, period. I frowned a bit that TOES was the only +S form, but there's something fun about the image of a bunch of toes down at the bottom of the grid.

– puzzle by Andy Kravis

Boston, Mass, our fair city — the memories of Car Talk bring me such joy. Even decades later, I'm still MISSING THE MOCK that the humble duo brought. Such amusing self-deprecation.

The Northeastern dialect has been done many times in crosswords. Searching for commonly played-on words is an easy way to dig up examples. If you enter *COD into our Finder, you'll get a ton of "bogus" listings (where the entries are struck through), meaning that we don't add these entries to our Word List because they shouldn't be reused. In this case, GREETING COD, BIRTHDAY COD, and DISCOVER COD all come up. If you're not seeing these words on the Finder page, make sure "Show bogus entries" is checked.

That isn't to say there's no room for more, though. PICK A COD, ANY COD is a great entry that makes for a hilarious image. And MISSING THE MOCK is funnier than ACCENT MOCK or PASSING MOCK.

When dipping into a well-fished well, it's more important than ever to work in great fill. ICE ICE BABY, IN CRISIS, NICE SHOT, I SUPPOSE SO make for a fantastic quartet. Neat to get some mid-length bonuses, too — I RESIGN, and FERNERY aren't entries you see in every other crossword, and LIL KIM, MUMBAI, and KRONOS make the product even shinier.

I'm no geography buff, so STAFFA looked bizarre, but it's a place. Perfect clue, too, making me want to read up on the auspicious-sounding Fingal's Cave, written about by such luminaries as Verne and Keats. And, of course, it inspired Mendelssohn's popular Overture.

Other excellent cluing touches, too. I've seen HORA a hundred times, but I've never heard it clued with a "chairlift." And such beautiful repurposing of a common phrase, too, with [Got the point?] used to describe SCORED.

I've solved many Boston accent puzzles, but this debut still did enough to keep me interested.

– puzzle by Josh Kindler

A new constructor got in touch with me a few months ago, asking about a puzzle based on DROP DOWN MENU, where themers ending in various drop-down menus literally drop down. Although it was a fine concept, I cautioned that Will Shortz is taking very few "turning" puzzles because they've become incredibly overdone.

Once again, it shows what I know!

Solid execution of the idea, Anne Marie and Eric choosing three colorful phrases. I'd happily give pluses to HIGH PROFILE, SCHOLARLY REVIEW, and STORE CREDIT if they were in a themeless I was evaluating. It's not easy to fill around intersecting themers, and wise deployment of black squares helped keep each of the three regions small enough to fill relatively smoothly. There's a tough piece of French vocab in MAI around the second themer's bend, but SPIDER-MAN's presence more than makes up for it.

Better yet, SPIDER-MAN's clue lends so much humor. [Noted web developer], indeed! I love that it didn't require a telltale question mark, so innocently pointing you to some JavaScript coder.

Same goes for [Hanging out, say]. Devilish way to describe clothes DRYING on a line.

It's odd to place the revealer as the third of four themers, though I can understand the rationale — shoving STORECRE/EDIT into a corner means that you can fill around it with less interconnection to the rest of the puzzle. That did allow for more bonus fill — VETO POWER, BIG GAME, DART GUN, even PARK IT — so I didn't mind the weirdness of an early revealer as much as I usually would.

There's not enough to distinguish this from the large body of turning puzzles, but the deft cluing touches and extras in the grid helped keep up my interest.

– puzzle by Anne Marie Crinnion and Eric Bornstein

★ Jessie and Ross! With all due respect to my dear wife, who's turned to the Dark Side of word games (she's unapologetically obsessed with the Spelling Bee and Wordle), I bend the knee to today's royal couple of crosswords.

Fun Sunday puzzle to celebrate their big day, too. I enjoyed figuring out that the five roads led to Rome, and I appreciated the four ways they hid ROME: BICHROME, AERODROME, ETHAN FROME, IMPOSTER SYNDROME. I wouldn't have guessed there were so many different types of *ROME entries. The only other strong one I could find was PALINDROME, but not all solvers are selihphiles.

What made the puzzle stand out was its technical merits. I've had many people ask me about ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME puzzle ideas, but figuring out how to pull one off has always been the trouble. Note Jessie and Ross's use of diagonal symmetry, which allowed them to so elegantly intersect a road and a *ROME entry at their ends (we've highlighted the themers to illuminate the skeleton). It's a perfect way to execute the sense of finality carried by the ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME revealer.

Diagonal symmetry allows for some flashy touches, too. Given that some themers are shorties and/or not that colorful — BICHROME feels a bit black and white, for example — spicing up the grid is a great thing. Although you risk muddying up what is theme and what is not, the sparkle of HERO WORSHIPPER and RORSCHACH CARDS is well worth it. Diagonal symmetry plus the short themers in the upper left make this possible.

Certainly no IMPOSTER SYNDROME, Jessie and Ross are the REAL DEAL, the crossworld's residents of PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. I can't wait to see what delights they bring us in the future.

– puzzle by Jessie Trudeau and Ross Trudeau

Haters of this theme type call them "Vowel Movements," while others appreciate the supervocalic poetry. We have seen a ton of vowel progressions over the years, but there are a few factors helping this one (warning: pun alert) make progress:

Consistency. Every P+(long vowel sound) is only one syllable. No PRO-test from me here.

Neat spellings. "Pru" sounding the same as PROULX? Love it. Same goes for "pre" and PRIX. My French friends down the street might be overinfluencing me these days.

Misdirects. Only one themer uses its vowel (PRO and the O) — no PRAY, for example, which would make the theme drabber. It wasn't clear to me that we were making a V.M. until I got to PRO.

Fantastic find in I DIDNT MEAN TO PRY. Colorful phrase, and its length (15) makes it a perfect middle-row themer. It's much easier to grid around than a central 9, 11, or 13, which would force black square placements and thus take away flexibility.

The cluing touches helped to elevate the Monday solve. Loved the newb-accessible wordplay in [They're for suckers] punning on LOLLIPOPS. Great to get freshness in the clue for RHYME, too, riffing on Prancer and Dancer but not Rudolph and Vixen.

It'd be all too easy to convince yourself that with five themers, you can stop at two long bonuses and call it good. I love the effort to go above and beyond, especially in a debut, with such color in SAD FACED, TV DINNER, ONE BY ONE — doing so without causing a BITTER END in the short fill. About three dabs of crossword glue (EER, OR IT, AJA) is acceptable for an average puzzle, and it's excellent given how many snappy long Downs they enabled.

Tough to make yet another vowel progression stand out, but this one worked well.

– puzzle by Michael T. Buerke

★ It's been years since I've solved such a novel and memorable Tuesday debut. I admired this crossword on so many different levels!

It all started with the visual element, two Os as EGGS done over HARD, over MEDIUM, or over EASY. The clusters of circles even look like FRIED EGGS, the Os sitting high like yolks. It's unconventional, and it's charming.

I also enjoyed the misdirect. I didn't understand what was going on as I was solving, so it had to be HARD to MEDIUM to SOFT, of course. I sure had egg on my face, thinking that [Virtuoso] was probably ACS because mechanical engineering HVAC formulas take virtue to chug through.

Even after understanding the theme and admiring the pretty pictures, I took an extra five minutes to admire the construction. There's way more long fill, both in the Across and Down directions, than in a typical Tuesday. It's not all sparkly — ROSHAMBO more interesting than workmanlike RELEASE, for example — but the sheer quantity seemed impossible to pull off. I wouldn't have thought about using something as long as WIFEHOOD above PRINT MEDIUM.

The mid-length fill was even stronger: two standard deviations over easy. PREGGO JANGLY STASIS tucked into a single corner? Shiny as 24 KARAT gold.

I did wonder if newer solvers might look oddly at ROSHAMBO and/or misguess the crossing with LEMMA. I used to think LEMMA was commonplace until it came up in the NYT Spelling Bee a few weeks ago, and my Harvard-educated wife asked what the hell that was. I, of course, took the opportunity to deride Harvard's lack of lemmatic abilties.

After solving thousands of crosswords over more than a decade, it is incredibly rare that I sit up straighter on a Tuesday. For today's excellent debut, I got out of my seat to clap.

– puzzle by Lillian Simpson

Cool collection of metaphors following the (adjective) + (article of clothing) pattern to label a person. Most of them are super evocative — I'd be happy to see entries like SCAREDY PANTS, EMPTY SUIT, and STUFFED SHIRT in a themeless.

TURNCOAT stuck out as not like the others, since it's the only single-worder. Also, TURN isn't as clearly an adjective.

I was only vaguely familiar with the term BLACK HAT. Makes me uncomfortable, given how the term originated — whiteness associated with "purity, cleanliness, and moral righteousness." That has so many more implications than simply being a goody-two-shoes. Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

The themer lengths are so tough to work with, the middle 9 kicking of the inflexibility by forcing triplets of black squares on either side. Then, the two 12s can only go into rows 4 and 12, further putting on the squeeze by forcing yet more black squares.

It is true that SCAREDY PANTS could be right justified (STUFFED SHIRT left), and the two of them swapped. That's still only four possibilities, though.

Given all the constraints, some beautiful gridwork. Wise choice to leave a big 4x7 chunk in the largely unconstrained lower left and upper right, which saves black squares to can be deployed elsewhere, especially in that theme-packed middle. What with BLACK HAT, EMPTY SUIT, and TURNCOAT crammed together, escaping with only the tough foreign vocab ETOILE and OMNIA is a win.

Although there were a few blips in the theme set, I still thought it was a crossworthy concept.

– puzzle by Enrique Henestroza Anguiano