NYT Tuesday 22 August

[rhu]

I'm curious how people feel about the theme of Tuesday's puzzle. I felt kinda cheated -- the doubled words felt like they artificially inflated the word count and the ratio of white to black squares (i.e., "WORDS" would count as both 3D and 17A even though it's only one word and five letters), and there was the odd sense that most of the theme letters ended up triple-clued but one from each word ended up unchecked.

I'd constrast that with the "famous crossings" Sunday puzzle from a few months back, where the crossing theme was similarly subtle but the entries were more interesting.