This kind of gimmick turns me off totally. My local paper printed this with the typesetting correct for only three of the theme clues. I was able to discern the theme from the first theme word, but some of the others were not obvious, not only because the typesetting was wrong, but because I thought the words were not well-chosen. They were not common phrases. It is this kind of gimmicky puzzle on which the NYT has increasingly become reliant. I suppose the Times printers got it right there, but this is certainly one that shouldn't be syndicated IMO since there is no quality control over how it is printed elsewhere.
