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Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is high in Paris.

Themeless crossword constructors think hard about their 1-Across answer the same way novelists deliberate over their opening sentence — they want it to shine, to entice, to be memorable. Not every first answer will be "Call me Ishmael," or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," or "I was born twice."

Today's 1-Across is pedestrian: ESTATE LAW. So, what's a constructor to do? Give it an outstanding clue. "Subject of some family planning" sends your brain off in the wrong direction. Plus, it hints at sex. (Just me?)

And speaking of sex, when did HOOKED UP start to imply a coital connection? It used to be such an anodyne phrase. And AMBI gets a sex clue at 8-Down. Maleska would be aghast.

"2003 search-and-rescue target" is a great clue for NEMO, and because of my Y-chromosome bias, it took me a while to see "Clutch, e.g." as PURSE.

Here's a tip for working out short words in themeless puzzles. Most short answers have been so overused that obvious clues have long ago been worn out. "Nwodim of S.N.L." is tough if, like me, you haven't watched that skit show since the early 50s, but there's a good chance that, even though the clue might mean nothing, the answer is a word you've seen many times before. Alternatively, it's a nice EGO boost if you knew that one right away.

Ah, Ms. Hilson. Her name is KERI. Don't hate her 'cause she's beautiful.

– puzzle by Claire Rimkus

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is participating in Zener card experiments.

My impression is that Rudyard Kipling isn't taught so much in school anymore, at least in America. You'll know he wrote The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories, but he was also an influential poet. DANNY Deever is about soldiers watching the execution by hanging of one of their own. It sticks with you.

On the other hand, lots of people die in ROGUE ONE at 50-Across, and it's not sad at all. The only good Storm Trooper is a dead Storm Trooper.

The clue of the day is "Lead-in to hickey," which, as luck would have it, crosses DIRTY MINDED.

And now I'm going to kill your joy. DOO has been clued similarly before by the great Merl Reagle, who called it a "Prelude to a hickey." That brings me to a complaint I sometimes hear: XWord Info is bad for crosswords because it makes it too easy to surface prior art that nobody would otherwise remember. Pointing out repeated themes or clues is pointlessly pedantic.

There's another big complaint people have about this site which I'll share in a future post. Perhaps you can guess.

I leave you with this cringy Blast from the Past courtesy of 18-Across.

– puzzle by David Distenfeld

Constructors, let's see if we can improve Jeff's search results by learning more about the Finder. The IJI pattern is tough, so we might not get anything useful, but maybe we'll learn some useful techniques.

• Jeff already did the basic search for *IJI* but it's often a good idea to try that same pattern with the OneLook button since it uses a different database. Any chance you could use Shijiazhuang or Kharijites? Probably not, but worth trying.

Jeff wants answers with some combination of three I and J letters, but not the boring III. For that, we need RegEx. Let's break it down.

• Letters in square brackets means use any of them, so [IJ] finds any words with either an I or a J. Nearly half a million results, but it's a start.
• Numbers in curly brackets means repeat that the specified number of times, so [IJ]{3} finds words with three letters in a row that are either I or J. It's the equivalent of Jeff's *[IJ][IJ][IJ]* and it has the same problem — those boring III words we'd like to exclude.
• Exclusion requires something called a negative lookahead that we haven't talked about before. Put what you don't want to see between (?! and ). Using that, our final query is (?!III)[IJ]{3}.

– puzzle by Trenton Charlson

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is shredding a solo with his ax.

Caleb Rasmussen had a Tetris-themed crossword a decade ago. Should Caleb sue Brandon? Should the famously litigious Tetris company sue the NYT? There are some interesting copyright issue parallels between Tetris and crossword puzzles.

You can't copyright "ideas" (like the rules of a game), but you can copyright expressions (implementations) of those ideas. That might seem clear, but it is open to vast interpretation that often has to be settled in court. Tetris Holdings, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc. confirmed that Tetris owned the shape of the pieces (called tetriminoes — that name now trademarked) and the exact 10x20 field size. If you make a Tetris clone, you will get sued. Even if the company doesn't consider you a threat, they have to take active steps to protect their claims, or they will lose them.

Some games are copyrighted, and some aren't. The maker of Sudoku didn't protect his invention and never made a penny despite the huge popularity of that game. The KenKen inventor was more careful and presumably has made many pennies. Wordle had prior art and so isn't protected, but the NYT gave "low seven figures" to its inventor for the Wordle name and for the URL, which now redirects to nytimes.com.

Crossword-like games were published as far back as the 1870s, and nobody claims they own that puzzle type, but crosswords uniquely contain themes and clues that are created anew for each puzzle. The NYT, like all publishers, claims copyright on each puzzle, and we dutifully include that mark on each we display, but it's not clear what exactly that protects. Themes, as we've seen, repeat. There are only so many ways to clue words like ALAI. The complete grid and clue set seems like it deserves legal ownership, but what about grids that are so similar they likely started from theft of another published puzzle? Or is that even theft?

Without a definitive crossword case like Tetris v Xio, nobody knows where the boundaries are. Timothy Parker got defenestrated from USA Today and Universal Syndicate not through legal action but by public embarrassment. (NYT neither uncovered the plagiarism nor promoted the scandal.)

I suspect publishers like it this way. If there ever were a court case that defined the rules — and copyright and patent case resolutions often seem random — then everyone would have to comply, even if the rules were stupid.

– puzzle by Brandon Koppy

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is co-hosting the 1970s program "People Are Talking."

Kameron Austin Collins aims for diversity in his crosswords. There's the outstanding black blues singer SISTA Monica Parker, the Cherokee Oscar winner WES Studi, and a non-mainstream religion. (ZEUS!) OPRAH is a visible minority, but she hasn't been underrepresented since people were talking about her in the 1970s.

LEN BARRY was the lead singer of the Dovells (accent on the second syllable), and he's as white as they come. Here he is singing "1-2-3" (the song in the clue) but check out the video of The Bristol Stomp. Note the homogeneous audience members, decked out in their finest. Is this the era that Make America Great Again wants to recapture?

Diversity is about more than cultural differences. Crosswords traditionally expect a college-level familiarity with English Literature and Western History, but don't expect me to do math or science! You might have to dig back into 10th Grade Physics to remember the IDEAL GAS LAW, but it's no more obscure than that opera singer or rapper or Lord Byron poem that you love. By the way, it's the gas that's ideal (meaning theoretical), not the law, which is only an approximation.

I love the clue "Big sponsor of golf, sailing, tennis, motorsport and equestrian events." There's no way to guess the answer. Yes, there is! Those events all point to the well-heeled. ROLEX it is, then.

– puzzle by Kameron Austin Collins

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is counting the number of puppeteers needed to manipulate Topo Gigio, in Italian!

I think I understand this one. Some answers peek out the top. You have to raise oBJECTIONS, raise a sTINK, raise the mINIMUM WAGE, and raise a fAMILY to make the clues make sense.

Down below, you have to lower the VOLUMe, lower the TEMPERATURe, and lower the PRICe to fit the clues. And finally, in a bit of classic crossword humor, you have to please, for God's sake, for once in your life, lower the damn TOILET SEAt. (On the other hand, it bugs the heck out of me that some thoughtless people leave the seat down, which is just so very inconvenient! We aim for equally balanced offense here.)

Will Shortz insists that Thursday is simply "one harder than Wednesday," but we've come to expect Thursday to be gimmick day. NYT submission guidelines say they already have plenty of rebus puzzles, so what's a gimmickologist to do? One option is to color outside the lines. Today's example was brave because there's no explicit revealer, like GO OVER THE EDGE or DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS or THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX or MAN OVERBOARD. Hopefully, you had a nice Aha Moment.

If you're curious about how other constructors have broken through the outer wall, the complete list is here.

Our OneLook finder can help find phrases that start with RAISE or LOWER.

– puzzle by Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who, though somewhat hard-boiled, is an exemplar of stick-to-itiveness.

ELIA Kazan is not only crossword royalty, he was legit Hollywood royalty too. An advocate for "method acting," he directed Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, and James Dean in East of Eden. And then his reputation nose-dived when he cooperated with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Oh well, he still has 75% vowels in his first name.

ELIA has been in so many crosswords that it's increasingly difficult to invent new clues. You might never have heard of his granddaughter Zoe, but that famous last name makes the answer easy. If your grandfather is Elia or, say, John Barrymore, that comes with advantages but also expectations that must be tough for a young actress.

Themeless crosswords often include sketchy "words" like NOIRISH, but they live or die on their conversational phrases. HAS AN IDEA is pretty good, YOU NEVER KNOW and DRINK IT IN are better. EASY TIGER is outstanding. You don't expect crosswords to be that cool, and uncovering answers like that is a big part of what makes crosswords fun.

– puzzle by Juliana Tringali Golden

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is reading aloud to his kids.

It's been over three years since we've heard from Canadian constructor Martin Ashwood-Smith, and I'm pleased to see his byline again. Martin is mostly known for what is sometimes derisively called "stunt puzzles" but this one is a standard Saturday, complete with some great clues like "inheritance powder" for ARSENIC.

What is a stunt puzzle? Click on Martin's author page and you'll see many grid-spanning stacks and lots of open white space. This puzzle isn't a pangram, but pangram authors also get called out for the same sin: "making a puzzle that's fun for the constructor instead of for the audience."

This is clearly a grave moral failing. The sentiment that constructors should repress their own selfish desires to create crosswords that appeal to the masses is so obviously true, it's not worth questioning.

And so, I question it.

No other art form comes with this expectation. Can you imagine a painter or sculptor or opera composer being told that rather than do what pleases them, they should only innovate within comfortable standard forms? Fiction writers, for example, get the opposite advice. "Don't copy the formats or styles of others. Do what delights you. Let your authentic voice shine through. That's the only way to find both joy in your work and success."

I asked a few people why crosswords might be so different from other art forms, and the most interesting answer I got was that people don't consider crosswords art. To them, it's a service, like Internet or electricity. That hadn't occurred to me. But if crosswords aren't art, why not?

I'm often reminded that crossword commentators are not representative of casual solvers, but it's not just the critics who feel strongly about this. Joe Krozel, another ground-breaking innovator, was regularly both praised and pilloried for his creativity, including in online comments.

Crosswords are different, somehow. People take them very seriously, with rigid expectations.

– puzzle by Martin Ashwood-Smith

Jim here, sitting in for Jeff Chen, who is on a press junket.

The capital of LIBERIA at 34-Across is Monrovia, named after James Monroe. Quick, name the only other world capital named after a U.S. president. (You'll kick yourself if you don't get it right away.)

In case this puzzle didn't make sense, WORKS WITHOUT A NET at 121-Across means "without an ET." So, ELECTRICAL OUTLET at 23-Across should read ELECTRICAL OUTL. Uh, no, that's a red herring. the ET expulsion happens on the clues. "What's in your wallet" needs to be "What's in your wall." Similarly, "Press junket" needs to be "Press junk", and so on.

The three stages of solve on puzzles like this:

1. What the hell?
2. (Hopefully) Oh, I finally see now
3. Either "that's creative and cool" or "that's stupid and unfair."

You'll have plenty of company whichever stage three you fall into. Crosswords are puzzles, and that means always questioning your initial assumptions. The key to all the more interesting puzzle types is to keep an open mind.

Clue manipulation crosswords are rare but becoming more common. The most recent that I recall was just last Boxing Day when Christina Iverson implored us to get the bugs out.

We got some terrific clues today starting at 1-Across. "Do some backup dancing" for TWERK is perfect. "The before-times" isn't a religious reference. EVES come before holidays. "Fountain of youth" made me wonder what Ponce de León might have sought that was only three letters. I'm sure in his younger years, he attended a KEG party or two before sailing off to Puerto Rico on Christopher Columbus's second voyage to the new world.

Fun puzzle.

Despite appearances, this video is not a scene from the musical CATS at 14-Across:

– puzzle by Meghan Morris