Mortiser

To be a commender You have to remember That after an aria "Well Done!" has gender.

A person can discover the trickery and thrill in the larger process of solving but then get completely stymied by the small but critical difference between TCM and TMC.

Departing NYT columnist Deb Amlen is referenced in one of today's Washington Post puzzles by Evan Birnholz. A worthy tribute.

Don't do this puzzle when you're hungry, or you'll enter brioche rather than chignon.

When I discovered the vowel thing,I realized that some folks are much further and deeper into word and language interplay than I will ever be. Remarkable to have that level of structural command over an entire grid. And with less than 60 clues, which is a sign of a brainy, challenging 15 x 15 puzzle.

If this level of difficulty is a NYT debut at 16 without excessive references to typical teen cultural interests, I have no trouble calling it the work of a prodigy.

When alternate words fit and create a seemingly logical cross, you can get in a jam. There are such things as "prizebots" and a "bar" is a reasonable goal to shoot for, whether it's high, or in the current moment, desperately low.

Corn dogs, bangers, donuts and Taco Bell - I'm headed to Statin Island. To be counseled by my concerned relative Auntie Oxidant. Who will push the chia and tilapia. And forbid the sloshing.

Thank you, Joel for the great job you did as puzzle editor (and constructor) in Will's absence. In my view, you got continually better at the job as you went along. Not knowing anything about the situation, as time went by, I began to sense that you might have the job for quite a while longer. My thought was that if so, the helm was in very capable hands. The NYT is fortunate to have an ample well of talent in this department.

If Alexander was a red headed country star, his stage name would be Rebus Max Entire. Seriously, I enjoyed the puzzle. A higher rebus count than I've seen in the past, but I liked that it kept me on my toes right down to the last clue. And that the rebuses worked in both directions, which isn't always the case. Oh, what a busy farm he built When first he stocked it without guilt

Patti Varol is a good puzzle editor. Glad to see her get one of her own published here. Her LAT edited puzzles are run by the Wash Post. A few weeks ago, the Post reformatted their online puzzles into an awful neon color chiclet tile design with each puzzle load preceded by a mandatory ad. As a longtime Post subber, I refused to even view those puzzles and sent the department comments about it. The Post has now made the online puzzles more palatable, so I'm glad to say that Patti's edited grids are back in my daily life.

With couple of "entries", I pictured the Church Lady putting her fingertips up to her pursed lips and murmuring: "Oh, my".

The answer to the classic kid lit question "Is Your Mama A Llama?" is "No, But My Orca Pod Is An Octad".

When I found out that 14 across was not sofa (how could it not be / how many things do some people have named after them or not named after them?), I lay down on the Chesterfield and phoned home.

I can't say enough about the masterful conceptual levels with this one. The publication date, truckers, Sputnik I and the grid itself. Great interwoven alignments.

I always loved the deviousness of having just one rebus in a puzzle (I only found one). It triggers the brain to think: "Oh no, where are all the others? What did I miss?" "There must be more. In fact, maybe someone got rebus happy (it happens) and there are too many." "Now I've got to go back and check all my fills to see where I've gone horribly wrong." Personally, I don't need any encouragement when it comes to overthinking things.

Today's word found in both the NYT and LA Times/WaPo crossword puzzles is: "Lola" (the bunny from Space Jam).

Constructors have a lot of license with some words. There could be a new rendition of Let's Call The Whole Thing Off that would go something like: "You spell Khadafy and I spell Gaddafi" "You spell hummus and I spell hoummos" Then you get to "babaganoush", and things really start to open up.

Like driving with the windows down in a light rain, I enjoyed the puzzle on its own merits and disregarded the difficulties entirely.

Whether by design, chance, or solver shortcomings, this was one of those puzzles where alternate words fit perfectly and seemed spot on in some places and then became devilish to dispute and disprove with crosses. I decided to not worry and blast away with fills whether correct or not, and enjoy the process of impeaching them when needed. Much easier and more pleasant to do online than on paper.

A sign of the state we're currently in as opposed to where we could be: I instinctively filled "Blood Vessel" as "Warship" when it should have been "Kinship". I was working bottom to top, so I hadn't gotten to "Warrant" yet. There was a lot of good referential range in this one. The double meaning clues were brain stretchers, with "Padlock" requiring the most elasticity.

A little harder than the usual Tuesday, but not as hard as a Thursday. The main thing I liked about this one is that there was a moment when I was sure there were rebuses that I hadn't figured out yet, but as I kept solving, I found that there actually were none. Often, it's the other way around, and I have to be led unwittingly to the rebus water trough. I imagine the mind of the constructor making the process more enjoyable by doing things like locating "Iman" and "Oman" close to each other. Clustering similar or thematic words and being able to jockey them around when the opportunity presents itself.

Perfect weather timing for this puzzle on a rainy Thursday. Once I recognized the challenge, I still had to figure out when and where the implications applied (not down on the O's and H's and not across on the O's). Kiriakou-approved puzzle: no waterboarding. Norwegian commando-approved puzzle: no heavy water. The chemical dimension to this was fun, but we mustn't say it was easy, or someone will construct a puzzle around a steroid molecule.

I learned a lot doing this puzzle and found some of the cluing and fills to be great, but felt bludgeoned by the overall theme. I don't think we need this thorough a tribute to the subject. I don't want the NYT puzzle world to be populated solely by older folks like me. There does have to be some generational continuity and survival of the species. But I remember what a cultural break there was when arcade games became popular and I found myself, as a member of the pinball generation, staring at people just a couple of years younger than me who loved them and thinking: "Really? You find this captivating?" I realized that there was going to be some distance between age groups that should have had more in common with each other. My younger friends were heading down a divergent impulse and reaction path. The sounds, the visuals, and the amount of twitch involved with arcade games prepared us well for all the cultural rock skipping, jitters and loss of attention span that have followed. Thankfully, a good NYT crossword that you can settle into is still a welcome antidote and respite from the ever quicker and shorter blips that fly past our brains every day. All day every day. Also thankfully, every day, someone discovers something analog of substance that blows their mind and changes their life.

Always love a puzzle with just one or two rebuses. Extra points for stashing them at the end of the grid. You've almost escaped from the harrowing maze and suddenly, there's Leatherface blocking the exit. Nothing wrong with having the same rebus word doubled side by side. Eidetical twins.

Today's word found in both the WaPo and NYT crossword puzzles is "Urdu".

Really weak cluing on 1 Down. Not a solid reference at all.

I loved this puzzle. Seeing the clues for the publishing dates immediately spurred the brain to think of what happened in those months and years. If you thought you knew what the historical event being referred to was, you still had to figure out the wording and spelling of the headline. 1948 was especially fun - it was a big year, and the publishing reference could have been an event in India, Czechoslovakia, or Palestine among others. No way to know what the event was until a few letters got filled in via crosses. I'm sure there will be some haters and I've hated puzzles in the past myself, but this one sat just right in my experience, with good cluing that made for fairly brisk fills.

I think it would be OK for the constructor to stay on a steady track and let another seven years go by before submitting puzzle #3.

I liked that the theme fills ran in both directions. I sometimes struggle with vertical trickery - I feel like I'm trying to read an old Chinese newspaper. Solvers can take the Sheltand Islands approach to this puzzle. If you liked it, you can refer to it as a Whatsay, Mademyday. If you couldn't crack it, you can walk away muttering Muggle Flugga.

If I could type at a computer keyboard with work gloves on, that's how I would solve this puzzle. Just another Sunday chore around the house.

"Take The Edge Off" is an interesting title for this column, as I thought the constructor displayed a certain amount of edge at times, which I liked. As much edge as is likely allowed here. If he were self-publishing, I could easily see him going into a quirkier, more Chaucerian Quigley territory. Sometimes, I like to look at a completed puzzle and take each word on its own to get a sense of what sort of range the constructor made me reach for. There are some puzzles that make me think: "I had to come up with all these fills in one go?". This is one of those puzzles. I enjoyed it.

Scribbled in the margin of Natalie Harp's day planner: Everybody is wrong! There is definitely an "I" in "TEAM" But there's no "O" in "NOGGIN" Especially one so wonderful...

The construction is fine, the grid filled in without understanding the italic clues, some good word choices for fills, but the cluing of the trick fills was suspect. "Spat" for COUNTER ARGUMENT and "Tressed" for HAIRY BACK...pretty weak stuff.

Thanks for the teakettle photo caption advising us not to get too steeped in stress about the year ahead. If you know a way to avoid that, please share it with us. Do you and Maggie Haberman know something we don't know? Also, the Mini crossword did not get its year off to a stellar start, sorry to say. Hoping for a return to its usual standard in the coming days.

When you have two constructors, each trying to land their own 10 rebus legal limit, this is what you end up with (i.e., overworked).

Great puzzle. I guess we should award stars. But the traditional limit is still five, I think. I almost wish that I hadn't found the clue early on that revealed the number of rebuses. Might have been more fun to carry on not knowing. PSI was my undoing, as I had PEI which worked both ways in that cross if you didn't know the numbering of letters in the Hebrew and Greek alphabets. Which I didn't. Learning enough Latin to be an altar boy in the 60's was tough enough.

OK for Joel. Is tomorrow's puzzle by Amos? Or would that be O-bad-idiah? It's fun when the constructor sneaks their name or some other such tidbit into the grid. It's like the Alfred Hitchcock blip cameos.

A salute to the Herculean puzzle constructor! Hera Hera!

Classic case of a puzzle having some seemingly easy initial fills that turned out to be about three levels of correctness below the actual answers. AILS instead of ACTS, MOB instead of APB, OTIS instead of ETTA, REDS instead of CUBS, SOLD instead of SLID, SHEA instead of BEAN, and so on. Only way I can solve a puzzle like this is to be willing to get rid of any fill on the spot, no matter how badly I wanted it to be right.

First the good news: the Waffle House photo is great. But a guy that could spell who was sitting in the back of a pickup truck with a rifle going down I-95 wouldn't have shot out the "O". As for the puzzle, it must be seasonal. A person who constructed something like this couldn't have had any leaves to rake. I only completed it because I had promised that once the message was decoded, I would send it on to the French Resistance. Regardless of how unpleasant the task. Duty is paramount.

With July being National Ice Cream Month and the natural habitat of weather extremes, hot dog eating contests and the Summer Redneck Games, it was just a matter of time before someone immortalized a puzzle with the inclusion of MOIST TOWELETTE. If you're my age, the hope is that your skin will somehow tighten as you cringe.

Some of the cluing left me thinking "well OK, if you must...". No matter how many anthropomorphic movies the Pixar studios crank out, I struggle to picture a BAR CAR referring to itself as "me". I've been in a few bar cars that were animated enough on their own without needing any help from the entertainment industry.

"Coach, it's about Pele and Ronaldinho". "What's the matter? They're on the same page aren't they?" "Yes, but they will have nothing to do with each other". "OK. If it keeps up, I'll have to tell Ticha".

Great construction theme. Cortazar-approved. The paler shades call to mind old Plymouth Savoys and Fender guitars.

Though at times the puzzle smote me, I did not emote.

Fun in general, but I understand the gripes. My issue is tending to overthink. Figuring: OK, Thursday, where are the rebuses? Added to make the verticals trickier somehow. There must be a pony in there somewhere. No need to make it more complicated than it is. Once you know your elphaba, it's as simple as ABC.

If I go to bumper cars a few times and I keep seeing the same guy who routinely devastates everyone else out there, I'll console people by saying: "You have to understand, this is his career".