Tuesday, May 17, 2022, Richard D. Allen

An impressive debut today with a theme that encompasses six answers, and which works extremely well. It played more like a Wednesday for me, in large part because all of those fixed in place answers forced a grid with segmentation (see the near complete line of black squares from the NW to the SE, with the big plus-shape in the middle).

The revealer says it all. 63A: Entranced ... or what one can do by reading the starts of [the theme answers] (SPELLBOUND). Each of the other answers starts with a phonetic representation of the letters spelling "bound," in order from the top to the bottom. That's a lot of constraint! All of the answers are strong, although I note that DECAFLATTE is the only one where the syllable phonetically representing the letter in question is not its own word. I suspect that would be a major challenge.

Meanwhile, there are some fun answers in the fill. INNOUT, BYENOW, and NULLIFY are nice mid-length answers. WOOLGATHER is evocative, even if we mostly hear it in its inverse form, "gathering wool."

LOU Reed

Some fun clues as well, a little more challenging than yesterday, for sure:

1A: Kids and their parents (GOATS). Yup.

6A: Help with a job, in a way (ABET) - didn't fool me for a second.

10A: Wanted, but nowhere to be found (AWOL). That's the first three across clues, by the way.

I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, even if it took me a good deal longer than my average Tuesday time.

Congratulations, Mr. Allen!

- Colum