Joseph Knecht

Today marks constructor Joe Deeney's  29th appearance in the LA Times and 15 in the NY Times .  We're winning!  Will Schortz has this to say about him: 'Joe Deeney, of Melrose, Mass., is a supply chain director for Philips, a health technology company based in Amsterdam (the manufacturer of my CPAP machine!). He's been solving crosswords for as long as he can remember.  In 2015 he was solving one he wasn't particularly fond of and thought, "I can do better than that!"'  Three years later he had his first trip to the Corner, blogged by TTP .  Today his theme asks us what we should do about Loose Change ... a problem that has lessened in recent years due to people's unwillingness to touch the stuff.  But if you think it's going to go away anytime soon, think again .  Anyway, Joe has pondered this question in depth and reveals this answer: 50A *Spot for coins, and what five letters in the answer do in each starred clue: CHANGE PURSE .  Notice ...

  Today's puzzle by Joe Deeney invites us to ideate on 4 theme clues and not accept the first thought that they invoke, but to go further and expand our minds a bit.  The MIND is a mysterious domain, IMHO not well-understood by modern science, and it has many ways to grasp REALITY and UNREALITY . Each clue tips us off that we are about to TRIP into Joe's world with the lead-in " No, no, [there's more] ...": 16. "No, no, more user-friendly than DOS. __!": PICTURE WINDOWS .  Not difficult to do.  MS WINDOWS revolutionized personal computing by creating a "user friendly" operating system.  The only problem is that the user interface (UI) has become an end in itself, with a stable of millionaire programmers who make a plethora of changes to every new release, whether they are needed or not.  END OF RANT . 25. "No, no, flatter than sharks. __!": FIGURE SKATES .  Fascinating fish.  If you're ever...