"Free for All XXXV," by George Jasper

Constructor's Comments

In a nod to my comic book years, I added PHANTOM ZONE to the grid after starting with ANTIPASTO and PALEO DIET and was fortunate to have HEISENBERG fall into place.  I noticed that I had the right number of blank squares in an 11-letter Down fill to incorporate WALTER WHITE, allowing this themeless puzzle to have a sort of mini-theme in two of the longer entries.

The SEPTEMBER entry began as SIX-MEMBER, to be clued as [Minimum-size jury], which David felt might be a bit of a stretch, so a change was made there.  The lower-right corner was also improved to rework an awkward construction by David's suggestion of JUVENILIA, a word I've never seen in a crossword puzzle and that conjures up a distant connection with PHANTOM ZONE, at least to me.

"Tolkien's Forest," by George Jasper

Constructor's Comments

This puzzle started out as something more than simply adding ENT to the ends of the theme entries.  I had originally hoped to tie ENT into the theme entry GIANT in the middle row as referenced in The Lord of the Rings and clued as "Like the Tolkienian forest added to the ends of 3-, 5-, 15- and 28-Down" but had some trouble incorporating acceptable surrounding fill words.

David was able to hint at the ENT theme entries by adding a very nice puzzle title that describes the sense of the puzzle without giving too much away.

"Back Porch," by George Jasper

Constructor's Comments

I was just going over the many possible combinations of letter exchanges when the CH to P struck me as one I hadn't seen before and that was loaded with possibilities.  Since these types of puzzles are fairly common, I figured if I could come up with at least five theme entries, the puzzle would have a better chance to pass muster with David.

Fortunately, with a little help from David's fine-tuning of the upper left corner, the puzzle fell into place.  I had one small concern that SNAPCHAT/SNAP PAT might not be familiar to some solvers, but evidently it's common enough.

After about an hour trying to come up with a puzzle title, "Back Porch" just popped into my head and seemed to work nicely.

"Prism," by George Jasper

Constructor's Comments

I had some trouble incorporating the PRISM reveal into the bottom section of the grid without having a ripple effect disrupt the last theme entry, one that I was finding difficult to replace.

David suggested using PRISM as the puzzle's title in order to keep the current theme entries intact, saving me substantial rework.

Editor's Comments

This puzzle's title is the key to understanding its theme:  The word prism can be reparsed as "PR is M."  Tricky!  In addition to finding four amusing theme entries, George mixed in six (!) long downs to spice things up.  I especially like TIM DUNCAN, DOT MATRIX, and LOOSE ENDS.

UNCLE ALBERT was a new one for this millennial, but after doing some research, I came to the conclusion that many solvers would know it.  After all, the song Uncle Albert is from hit #1 in the '70s, and his name is in both the lyrics and the title.  These are just some of the factors that go into my "Is this entry familiar enough?" decisions.