SATURDAY PUZZLE — Once a month or so my poor brain makes a connection that makes me think this job is teaching me a little something. When I picked up this grid and saw its constructor, said brain said a little “opa!” and some neurons got fired up over Trenton Charlson and his lavish letter usage. In two and a half years and 15 puzzles, Mr. Charlson has debuted BBQ JOINT, FUZZY NAVEL, ZEBRA FINCH, ANTI VAXXER and DETOX DIET, among others.

Somehow, though, Mr. Charlson makes his grids flow quite effortlessly. The rigor of the grid today didn’t even occur to me until I read his notes, although I did notice something beforehand. This constructor has had a couple of pangrams recently, meaning that every letter of the alphabet is used at least once in a grid. Today’s falls short by one letter, but if I tell you which one I’ll spoil the whole thing.

Tricky Clues

That northwest corner was marvelous — JV SQUADS was guessable and set the tone, then JR PACMAN was sort of an endearingly retro surprise (there’s a whole Pac-Man family tree, it turns out). Imaginative threads ran all through the rest of the grid, I thought, with hardly anything cheap or blah. I doubt I was the only one with “gab” for GAS, and a few other clues mildly misdirected me — ALGA, TISSUE and IN DEBT, for example. I remember battling PIXY STIX in an earlier puzzle — that “Y” just seems wrong.