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THURSDAY PUZZLE — Thursday crosswords are, bar none, my favorite puzzles of the week. When my schedule changed a couple of years ago and the columns for Monday through Wednesday were picked up by the amazing Rachel Fabi and, later, the equally awesome Sam Corbin, the first thing I did was call dibs — that’s the professional term for making an editorial decision — on covering Thursdays. I added Fridays to my column roster because I can’t resist a good themeless puzzle.

The intense creativity and diversity of theme material on exhibit on Thursdays does it for me. Not everyone appreciates it, and I get that. Some solvers believe that a crossword puzzle should be one thing, and one thing alone: a puzzle where words cross. No rebuses, no fancy writing outside the grid or in the black squares for them. All they want is to simply sit with their coffee and enjoy a tête-à-tête with a pastime that, in their opinion, is supposed to be purely intellectual.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The only part I disagree with is that the “tricks” that are mostly found in Thursday puzzles are not challenging for the mind. It’s one thing to solve crosswords to see whether you remember which 12th-century pope was which, but deciphering a theme that involves lateral thinking is also an excellent mental workout. It just works different brain muscles than a test of memory does, which may also be an important part of staying sharp as we age. Just ask any personal trainer: You can keep your muscles strong and your aerobic capacity high, but it’s just as important to maintain physical flexibility.

John Donegan’s puzzle is a great example of the importance of lateral thinking. We’ve seen this theme idea before, but Mr. Donegan offers an interesting twist on it, even if he does tend to repeat himself.

Today’s Theme

The four theme entries in Mr. Donegan’s puzzle need to be written into the grid in rebus style, but it’s not the kind of rebus where you insert more than one letter in a square. This is the kind of rebus you probably solved in school.

The theme entries are phrases that include the words “once” and “twice,” and the nouns in each entry are written out as many times as the phrase requires.

At 20-Across, for example, the answer to the clue “What a multitasker might kill” would be “two birds with one stone,” but there’s not enough room to write all that out. We need to shrink that down to its bare essence and write BIRD BIRD STONE.

Similarly, at 39A, the phrase “once bitten, twice shy” is the answer to the clue “Reluctant to relive an experience,” but we need to shorten that to BITTEN SHY SHY.

If you would like some help on the other two theme entries, please click on the links to see the answers.

32A. What it’s impossible to be in

54A. Top-grossing movie of 1987

Tricky Clues

31A. In this puzzle, “Digital number?” refers to the number of digits — in this case, fingers — we have on our hands, and that is TEN.

35A. Get out your poodle skirts and saddle shoes for this one. Bobby-soxers were adolescent girls in the 1940s and ’50s who wore ankle socks (also called bobby socks) and idolized certain musicians, beginning with a young Frank Sinatra. A popular event at the time was the sock HOP, a dance at a local school or community center. Attendees had to dance in their socks because they were asked to remove their hard-soled shoes to prevent damage to the floor.

61A. A very short story about the regret of hitting SEND before being ready: I once sent a business email to a man named Michael from my phone and, just as I hit send, it autocorrected “Dear Michael” to “Dear Mucus.” I didn’t get the job.

62A. This is very clever, and a great example of why you always need to think about other definitions for a word in the clue. “City of Paris?” makes you think immediately about, well, Paris, but where can you go from there? Fortunately, the question mark gets us out of that tight spot: The Paris in this clue is the Greek mythological figure of TROY, not the French capital.

3D. I happen to disagree with this clue, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. In my household, soup is a perfectly fine ENTREE, especially if it’s a hearty one. Here are some easy recipes for those busy weeknights, courtesy of our friends at New York Times Cooking.

10D. I’m sure that most of you like to think of the puzzle editors as mature, cerebral professionals, and in most cases they are; except for whatever involvement they had with this clue. The answer to “Bottoms out?” is MOONS.

19D. When we talk about the “Maker of small front-end loaders” in this puzzle, we are talking really small. The answer is TONKA.

36D. Do you put your feet up when you solve puzzles? Good, then you know the answer to this one. OTTOMANS are the “Ones giving you a leg up?”

41D. Today I learned that I can blame the Sputnik satellite for my inability to help my kids with their math homework. The launch of Sputnik by the Russians in 1957 shook Americans, who were largely leaning on their technological “superiority” in order to feel protected during the Cold War arms race. The U.S. educational system received an overhaul — including the introduction of what they called NEW MATH — courtesy of the National Defense Education Act, which helped more students to attend college.

Join Our Other Game Discussions

Want to be part of the conversation about New York Times Games, or maybe get some help with a particularly thorny puzzle? Here are:

Spelling Bee Forum

Wordle Review

Connections Companion

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