part of a southpaws ring repertoire crossword

He was off his bobble-head type upper body movement as well as his flash-dance footwork and lateral motion. However, last night, there was a striking difference from Pacquiao’s customary ring repertoire. For the first half of the bout, Pacquiao was the aggressor and landed the more impactful punches. I'd much rather have a snazzy themeless than a dull theme.At the opening bell, Pacquiao attacked Ugas, jumping in against his much taller opponent with trademark fast flurries. It is challenging to present brilliant themes week after week, so an occasional themeless puzzle can help fill the gaps. I haven't been a fan of the themeless Sunday, but I've softened my stance over time. As visually pleasing as the black diagonals are, the grid design doesn't do Robyn any favors. A fun clue can elevate them - PROPELLED literally so, with - but they're not even close to something like NOT EVEN CLOSE.Īlong with a ton of mid-length filler through the middle like HEDGED HOGGED BONDED WINKED COOLED WORKED BINGED, it's not my favorite of Robyn's work. Not the most suspenseful or enticing of entries, especially given that editors prize colorful multi-word entries. There was a lot of potential left on the table, though, with a lot of long slots taken up by neutral material: If ECONO, MER, NEET are the only entries a certain annoyingly picky blogger who wishes he could get a funny nickname like the BIEB (Justin Bieber) can point out … Incredibly clean. RETAIL THERAPY (I so badly wanted to debut this evocative entry!).Awesome stuff that's new to the NYT crossword: That's about what you'd expect, given that a 21x grid has about twice as many squares as a 15x, but it's still such a huge quantity of long slots to work with. A typical themeless features about 12-14 long slots (of 8+ letters), whereas this super-sized one sports 24 of them. So, keep your fingers crossed for me, and hopefully, I'll be back soon! But I'm not crossing 'Sunday NYT Puzzle' off my bucket list just yet… not until I get a regular themed Sunday published. Last but not least, with this themeless Sunday puzzle, I have finally hit for the cycle, with NYT puzzles published on each of the 7 days of the week. I know a themeless Sunday isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I hope I've been able to provide some entertainment and maybe even encourage a few reluctant non-themeless solvers to give a Friday or Saturday puzzle a try. Plus, I still managed to squeeze in some smile-worthy long entries, including debuts like FORGET ABOUT IT, LINE-ITEM VETO, AS I WAS SAYING, NOT EVEN CLOSE, COINED A PHRASE, HIGHEST BIDDER, and RETAIL THERAPY. Ultimately, I am happy with the fill, and although the white space consists of many crossing 6s- which aren't necessarily the most sparkly entries- I tried my best to provide amusing and clever clues wherever possible.

I believe this puzzle is version #19 of 22.

With that grid, I spent another 2-3 weeks filling it over and over and over again until I was satisfied with the content, saving any version that I thought had potential.

Eventually, it became clear that I was getting nowhere I decided that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and 'borrowed' this framework from Patrick Berry's 2018 126-word themeless grid (with a few adjustments, bringing it to 130).

I spent two weeks spinning my wheels with different layouts, word counts, and seed entries. But when contemplating a themeless 21x, for better or worse, I needed to get out of my comfort zone and try an open grid with a low(ish) word count. Low word counts and big white spaces have never been part of my repertoire. To accomplish this, I typically have to break up the rest of the grid with shorter entries which then results in high word counts. When I'm constructing themeless puzzles, I like to jam in as many long, fun/cute/conversational entries as possible.

Part of a southpaws ring repertoire crossword