SUNDAY PUZZLE — All work and no play makes a crossword columnist punchy and weird, and I’m about to go on my first real vacation this year, so if you are here because you are looking for something sub rosa and complex about this very gorgeously engineered Barkin/Barocas grid, well, come sit by me. I spent the good part of a sunny weekend afternoon trying to connect all the dots, and now I think I might have lost my mind completely.

Back on Earth, Howard Barkin and Victor Barocas are both Sunday constructors and competitive crossword solvers, as Will Shortz notes in the introduction to the print version of this grid. In fact, their meet-cute story has to do with getting placed next to one another at a contest by virtue of their last names, and the rest is history, or it will be when you are finished with this puzzle.

Tricky Clues

There was some terrific fill today. Fun trivia (CENTS, who knew?); nice puns, like STEREO, AMEN and TOAST; and hardly any gotcha names, an unusual perk on a Sunday and probably because of the theme.

21A: You would never use “alcohol” in an entry with a clue that also used “alcohol” so “blood alcohol” would not work here, although it’s established that your reflexes worsen and that your REACTION TIME goes up with alcohol consumption.