SUNDAY PUZZLE — This is the Sunday debut of Christopher Adams, and his third effort for us overall. He contributes to other publications and does plenty of independent construction (and has a website with content and commentary, if you feel like exploring more of his stuff).

I found this grid to be a real change from the last several Sundays because the theme is so subtle. If you don’t see it, and don’t want to give in and read the explanation, try reading Mr. Adams’s notes first. He doesn’t give anything away, but for some reason they helped me attain my satori this week. Also, keep an eye on the puzzle title and break it down into two parts.

Tricky Clues

I found the fill today pretty tough, but very sprightly. The symmetry made me worry that KARAOKE BAR and SONDHEIM were both somehow involved in the theme (they weren’t). There were difficult crosses for me in two corners — OZARK and AZERA, and GREEDO and HRE — and a little bit of misdirection in AGTS for EGOS and SNAPPER for SNARLER (I think I had a shark PUP in mind for that mistake). There were lots of nice touches like PAX ROMANA next to HOMO, CHAMPAGNE crossing NEGRONIS, and COTE by MARSH; very thoughtful cluing throughout.

Mr. Adams is a force in the trivia world, too, but definitely went easy on us in that department — entries like TAHOE, YEAR ZERO, RUBAIYAT, SEGO and maybe RODEO were all the sort you might need to come up with in a pub contest. But they wouldn’t be grand-prize stumpers, I don’t think.