New York Times, Thursday, February 10, 2022

Hello, puzzle people. I hope you've tolerated (maybe even enjoyed??) my first puzzle in the NYT. I live and work on a dairy farm in Western MA, and I also write publishable crosswords, apparently.

There's a lot I appreciate about this puzzle — the theme density, all of the animals that found their way into the grid, the shout-out — albeit indirect — to the USWNT. At the same time, my preferences and priorities as a constructor have evolved a lot since I wrote it, and I'd do some things differently if I were making it today. For starters, I would avoid the entry ODS (it could have been replaced here with STY, something I realized a bit too late). I'd also consider sacrificing a theme answer in exchange for a grid with fewer black squares and/or a substitute for POLKA DOTS that better conceals the string DOT.

Three things, in particular, made this grid a tough one to put together:

1. at least one theme answer had to cross the revealer DOT THE I'S (at the I);
2. themers with DOTs couldn't contain any I's; and
3. except for the six DOTted squares, the rest of the grid had to be free of I's as well.

With all of those constraints, I'm happy things worked out as cleanly as they did.

I'll leave y'all with a few clues of mine that didn't make it into the final version:

• GLAM [Glittery kind of rock]
• ROOM [Film for which Brie Larson won an Oscar in 2016]
• LEGO [Cause of foot pain for many parents]

Happy solving :)

I almost UNITED the UNDOTTED words today.

Tricksy concept, DOT THE IS interpreted as "transform any I in the grid into a DOT rebus for the Down direction." Took me so long to figure out what was going on that I went ity. Great rebus finds, though, AVOCADO TOAST so hipster, JUDO THROW evocative, and YOU DO THE MATH another snazzy phrase.

Note how August always used phrases that broke DOT across words — that's typically one of Will Shortz's criteria for these types of puzzles. Something like AMUSING ANECDOTE is not as interesting.

At least that's what my kids tell me.

Flipping rebuses go back decades, Jim Horne immediately recalling a brilliant one in which Liz Gorski played with ON/OFF SWITCHES. That gave perfect rationale for why the rebus should work differently in Across and Down: ON and OFF rebuses switch! I didn't mind not knowing exactly what to write in those special squares.

I had a more difficult time rationalizing today why I should be using I in one direction and DOT in the other. What to write in each box? I finally shoved in I/DOT, although that looked vaguely I/DOTic.

Strong construction, the end result both colorful and clean. A construction secret: although it's much harder to solve a flipping than a normal rebus, flipping ones are much easier to construct. Simply enter AVOCAIOAST and fill around it as per usual.

Don't get me wrong. That doesn't take away from the care August put into the grid. Easy to GUSH OVER mid-length entries like DOG LEG, GUNSHY, OZARKS, and RHESUS.

I found the concept confusing enough that it didn't generate a clean, sharp a-ha moment, but it was a nice change of rebus pace.