CHANGETO sounds like the arch-nemesis of "X-Men" villain Magneto. Something about the verb-preposition arrangement was so unexpected that even when it was clear that the first word was CHANGE, I wasn't quite sure what the next two letters were going to be (?). Weirdly, the toughest answer for me today was CHANGETO (5D: Replace with). The theme is the attention-grabber, and when your theme is successful, the rest of the puzzle simply has to not fall on its face. There's a lot of your typical 3-to-5-letter stuff, but it's mostly clean and you don't really notice it. an "easy") grid that has so many interesting longer answers. The difficulty level felt more or less appropriate for a Tuesday. The question " WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?" seems very much the right phrase and yet my brain fumbled with it for a bit.
Got FORECLOSURE, couldn't finish it off without crosses. Got SOFTWARE, couldn't finish it off without crosses. I found the puzzle a little tougher than usual largely because I had trouble finishing off the long themers. While the themers aren't always scintillating, they hold up fine, and since the requirements for inclusion in the theme set are so narrow (needing REC at the center and needing to cross two other themers at exactly the right letters), it's slightly surprising the themers hold up as well as they do. The meaning of the revealer is precise (those RECs are very much in the CENTER of their respective answers) and the arrangement of the long themers in a relatively intricate interlock pattern (with every themer intersecting at least *two* others) makes this puzzle that rare feat: an architectural achievement that is also a pleasure to solve. Ironically, not dreck! Thought this one was really NIFTY.
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