May 30: Themeless "Off the Wall" (Ben Tolkin, Nautilus Puzzles)
June 1: Community Oriented (vidhya aravind and carly they themsen, A Trans Person Made Your Puzzle)
June 5: Nothing suspicious going on here! (jqzx, Puzzmo)
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
Themeless "Off the Wall" (Ben Tolkin)
"Off the Wall" is aptly chosen - there's such an eclectic mix of goofy stuff in this themeless grid. DEYASSIFIES (clued as [Makes plain?]), SHAQTIN' A FOOL, THIS IS SPARTA, RECESSION POP, GOSH DARN IT (and, indeed, GOOFIER). I love this kind of grid shape with criss-crossing long entries, where the marquee stuff isn't confined to stacks. They're very hard to fill, and this is an object lesson in why it can be worthwhile to have a couple of entries like AGCY and SHA and AFTS in the short fill if it enables such a delightful solving experience overall.
Community Oriented (vidhya aravind and carly they themsen)
In case you missed it, you should check out A Trans Person Made Your Puzzle, a pack of puzzles by trans and nonbinary constructors in support of transgender charities. This puzzle was my favorite of the bunch, with some striking grid art that somehow still caught me by surprise when I got to the revealer, T4T ([Dating initialism reflected in the shapes in this grid]). And indeed, three chunks of black squares cascading down the grid are shaped like a T, a 4, and another T. I love it when there's an unexpected numeral in a revealer! The rest of the grid is packed with trans-related clues and entries, from HYPERVISIBILITY and WACHOWSKI to IT'S A GIRL, clued as ["Surprise" for some trans adults hosting their own gender reveal parties]. Particularly elegant is the stack of 5s in the top right: LABEL, clued as [Identify, in a way some queer people avoid], ARIEL, clued as [Disney character who famously underwent a transition giving her a major vocal change], and BOOKS, clued as ["Nevada" by Imogen Binnie and "The Death of Vivek Oji" by Akwaeke Emezi, for two].
There's also just an assorted range of delights to be found throughout the puzzle, like the linguistically fascinating BAKA - ["Fool" in Japanese (literally "horse-deer," describing a guy who would confuse the two] - which I don't think I've seen in a puzzle before. Or the original clues for common entries, like [Part of the psyche grounded in reality, or a sense of smugness that isn't] for EGO.
Nothing suspicious going on here! (jqzx)
I've seen a lot of themelesses with 4x10 stacks lately - it's a form I particularly associate with Adrian Johnson, who's made some excellent ones. Having constructed a couple myself now, I really get the appeal: they look eye-popping in a grid, but they're surprisingly tractable to construct cleanly (helped, possibly, by the fact that the average quality of 4s tends to be higher than that of 3s). When you're making a symmetrical themeless grid, though, making one 4x10 stack means that you have to make another one on the other side of the grid, so sometimes you get one stellar stack and one that's not quite so good.
A key part of Puzzmo's editorial ethos, though, is that there are no strict requirements for grid dimensions or symmetry, which helps make sure that every grid is the right size and layout for its purpose, whether it's themed or themeless. So there's nothing stopping a Puzzmo constructor from making one beautiful 4x10 stack and extending the grid just as much as necessary to make the themeless work. That's just what jqzx has done here, with a stack of BASIC CABLE/ART THERAPY/SCREEN TIME/HEADMASTER, where all the crossings are unimpeachable - the least good, if I had to pick was NOSTRA, but I even enjoyed that one, clued as it is with reference to Carlos Fuentes's masterpiece, Terra Nostra. The best crossings are the pair of FALSE STARTS and TAKES THE BAIT, which in turn cross the mini stack of UNDERBAKED and TOMFOOLERY. Just fantastic gridwork. And it feels very atypical of Puzzmo to me, since so few of their puzzles are wide-open themelesses - but in a more important sense, it's very typical of Puzzmo in its efficient use of grid space and design.
