Sunday, July 28, 2024

fun but almost impossible to see which clue is highlighted and active through all the colors.

Why must people be so negative whenever we're given such a unique (and wonderful) theme? Was it a bit challenging to see? Slightly. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

And the gold medal goes to… Paolo! How often does one gasp “oh wow” when first opening the puzzle? The BLUEPRINT gave the blueprint for how this would work, so it wasn’t the hardest thing ever, but it was fun to zip around the rings filling them in. The hardest thing was navigating the colors to know which entry I was on. Got a little dizzy- just like I would if attempting any of the amazing physical feats the Olympians perform. Oh well we all have our talents. Today I won a gold medal in raspberry picking.

Unfortunately, I can’t read much of this puzzle. The colors make it difficult to see where the numbers are and where the answers go. Does anyone else have a similar problem? I’m wondering if it would be clearer in print.

Well, I SAY! Now that was fun!! Really enjoyable!! Yea, it was harder to know where you were on the grid, so I had to rely more on actually looking at the box numbers but I think it was worth it! I figured out the trick at MAGIC because (as a huge Harry Potter fan), I was annoyed that the implication was that any MAGIC was malevolent... and then came the AHA! And then came the chuckle, and then came a flurry of filling in the colored squares. Most of those filled in easily once I got the trick but a couple had to wait for crosses. Today we got OLIVE and ONION! Hold the OLIVEs for me but I'm always glad for ONIONs! I didn't make good time... I was actually over average. I'd say it was a combo of struggling a bit to keep track of myself in the grid until I got used to it and there were some tricky spots for me, as usual. There were a small handful of answers I just didn't know, which sometimes crossed with others I didn't know. A couple times I thought I might have to do a lookup, but I kept at it and worked it all out without helps. Huzzah!! I was perplexed for a while, never having watched Dumb and Dumber but I loved SILENT B once I got it! Also loved EAR CANAL (Channel with only audio) and TAKE THE BAIT (Get hooked). But really, the whole thing was very fun! And though I was surprised to see G SPOT show up in a puzzle (I SAY!), I'll take it any day over the clue for FEMININE SIDE in the Saturday puzzle. 😃

I loved this puzzle! Sure, solving on the phone required some patience and zooming in due to the colors interfering with the highlighting, but it was absolutely worth it. I meandered around the puzzle, as I usually do until I know what's going on, but (Blue) BAYOU gave me the big aha, and I was suddenly energized to fill in all the rings. Aside from the rings, all the fill packed a nice punch and came together beautifully. Thank you, Paolo, for a brilliant puzzle! And now, I'll be on my way to other things, because TIME AND TIDE wait for no one. But I leave you with Freddie Mercury: <a href="https://youtu.be/D0MH00SNlSU?feature=shared" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/D0MH00SNlSU?feature=shared</a>

Cute theme, really hard to read in the app. I often couldn’t tell which clue I was on. I toggle between the across and down clues continuously because I’m one of those “cross solve only” folks (is there a term for us solvers who can only attempt a clue if it intersects a previously solved clue?). So not being able to see which clue I was on was an annoyance in an otherwise fun puzzle. Also ran this one by my red-green colorblind son and he couldn’t distinguish the colors. Not a biggie; he’s used to struggling occasionally in a color-based world. But I’ll always throw some awareness whenever color is fundamental to a game that color-based play doesn’t work for a significant portion of the population. Hats off to all of the other people with cone differences who had an extra challenge today!

Pablo Pasco wins gold medal in Sunday Crossword competition. Bravo!

This puzzle rings true. (It'll test your medal!)

I can't believe how much work must have gone into this puzzle. The four words in each of the five circles that made sense with the circle colors was genius. Hats off to Paolo Pasco – excellent job!

When I saw Paolo’s name atop the grid (I love his clever puzzles), and saw the grid itself – rectangular, colorful, and with what looked like a this-will-be-fun-to-crack complicated-looking network spanning the middle, I smiled with anticipation. Not just inwardly smiled, but the real deal. That network turned out to be not so complicated, but I was already charmed, and the good mood held throughout the fill-in. Paolo loves to wordplay in his clues. This is the man who once took an ordinary answer – HELMET – and made it extraordinary through his clue [Knight cap]. Today he did the same with RENT (clued “Number for a letter?”), GREENHOUSE (clued “What has a lot of room to grow?”), and NONS, (clued “Negative Nancy words?”). That last one is SO clever. Sure, punning on the French city Nancy has happened aplenty in crosswords. But here, Paolo beautifully misdirects, because a “Negative Nancy” is a thing, like a Debby Downer and Doubting Thomas. So, Paolo’s clue double hides the Nancy pun – brilliant! Fun to see ARCANA hiding in EAR CANAL, and lovely to see the gorgeous phrase TIME AND TIDE. Good vibes all around. Paolo, this had to be a tough tough build. Thank you for putting in the effort, because it sure paid off for me!

A clever idea that I’m sure was difficult to construct: For each of the five colors, you need four five-letter words that are are part of common things like (BLACK) MAGIC or (RED) SCARE). Then, you need to put each one in the right part of the grid in such a way that you can fill the rest of the grid. This puzzle essentially has 23 theme answers, counting the revealer and the hints at 17A and 20A. All those fixed answers make it much more difficult to fill the grid well. So it’s too bad that the colors made it very difficult to solve in the app. I turned off overlays almost immediately, and that helped a lot. Still, I expect this would have worked much better in print. Great constructor note, though.

A puzzle that immediately draws a smile when you see the colors and the rings. Once you grasp the concept, it is perhaps too quickly solved for a Sunday. But, I'm feeling the Olympic spirit, so this was enjoyable. Plus vite, plus haut, plus fort – ensemble.

Puzzle was easy; theme was cute; data entry was absolutely miserable! As others have already said, the color handling made it nearly impossible to see what row or column was being highlighted in the web version of this puzzle. It was a real chore. Admittedly I was already pushing the limits by doing Sunday puzzles on a cell phone screen, but today's interface was punishing. Please don't do this again. The pain was not worth it for the modest gain of cluing simple answers like blue birds and yellow bellies. Puzzle overall was fine, although really too easy for a Sunday by my expectations....

In case anyone is wondering, the normal Sunday grid is 21 x 21, and today's is 19 x 23, making today's puzzle four squares fewer than the usual Sunday. You're welcome. Et tu, emu.

Great puzzle! Really rough for the colorblind, though. Really really.

I continue to be disturbed by the choices to include clues legitimizing the occupation of Palestine. It's not an "Israeli desert," it's the al-Naqab desert in Palestine.

Echoing many others, the theme is fun, but it's absolutely impossible to see what clue I am on in the mobile version! Doesn't matter if I'm in dark or light mode or how bright/dim the screen is.

This was a fun Sunday with a well executed gimmick and great cluing. I have aging eyes too, so I solved it on my laptop with my reading glasses on. You smartphone users know the joke about the man who goes to the doctor? "Doc, it hurts when I do this!" he complains, and the doctor replies "Well, don't do that!"

Okay, clever. I may be yelling at the clouds, but I prefer a good old fashion black & white grid.

Well, how can you not love a puzzle whose 13th column begins with DENIAL RIVER? Et tu, emu.

I appreciate the creativity of the grid, but I had to quit after a few clues. MY EYES.

I was just going to do a little of the puzzle before starting dinner. But I was having so much fun, I couldn't stop. I was a wee bit dense about what was going on with the fill and the colors at first, but Linda Ronstadt and Blue BAYOU was my big AHA moment. I see OLIVE is back as a pizza topping, crossing the Green ring. My personal preference would have had it crossing the Black. :) Thanks Paolo.

Almost 9 min. slower than my Sunday avg. I couldn’t see what square my cursor was on, or whether I was solving across or down in the Games iPad app. Lots of stray letters for me. I eventually realized that I could turn off the overlay, but then I had to turn it back on to get [blue]print, [yellow]pages, etc.

The puzzle itself was fine. My main complaint is that because of the colors, I had a very hard time seeing where I was on the grid (or even if I was situated in the down or across direction). Thus, there was a lot of time wasted correcting mistakes. It was frustrating and visually disorienting. I wish that either lighter colors had been used or the rings could have appeared upon completion of the puzzle.

It was fun but very hard for older eyes to see clearly!

What a great puzzle. I stayed up late to finish because I was enjoying it so much. I enlarged the print/grid so I wouldn't go blind trying to read the letter boxes. Once enlarged, it was easy to read. The different colors were clear. Joe Flagliano must be a genius. I'm so impressed with this creative and very lovely work of art. A gold medal achievement. Thank you for a delightful evening puzzling. Blue Bayou ear worm going on. I love the way Helen Ronstadt sang that lovely song. She died too young. G'night from Texas.

A reminder that the Negev desert is also called al-Naqab in Arabic, and the indigenous inhabitants were forcefully removed from their lands. To this day, the state of Israel does not recognize the remaining Bedouin inhabitants and has been relocating them into government towns. Disappointed the Times did not list both names for the desert in the clue. It matters, now more than ever.

While clever, it was made EXTREMELY hard to solve online in the colored rings area, since it altered the highlighting color of the squares for the selected clue. It makes a pretty grid, and enables the color-oriented puns making up the rings, but adds unwanted minutes to the solve time. NOT A FAN

We have a winner! I opened the app and just laughed at the setter’s Olympic-scale ambition — almost chutzpah!, and then I enjoyed working through the clever way that ambition was realized. I’m glad to say that unlike the real Olympics, the flag was not upside down — now that would have been real chutzpah! In case you missed it: <a href="https://time.com/7004336/paris-olympics-opening-ceremony-error-spotted-flag-upside-down" target="_blank">https://time.com/7004336/paris-olympics-opening-ceremony-error-spotted-flag-upside-down</a>/

Loved this puzzle! I did have some trouble navigating the middle (because of the colors and highlighting of the answer boxes) but it only slowed me a little. I enjoyed the Olympic theme (I had ring instead of flag for a bit at 114A) but didn't pick up on the added import of the colors right away. I entered MAGIC (38A) but was iffy about the negativity in the clue and entered ROBIN (40A) while thinking they must have dropped Red from the name. But then, at GIANT, I figured it out! I scurried around filling out all the clues in the rings. I struggled with only one: 43D [they fly over the rainbow]. I was thinking of the military air shows Blue Angels and couldn't get that out of my head until the crosses showed me the way! Thanks to Paolo for being so patient waiting for publication of this very well constructed puzzle and thanks to the Games team for the colors!

There does not appear to be a place for Strands comments (I could be wrong) so I am going to say it here: Today's Strands was absolutely wonderful. It made me happy.

Very nice puzzle but I found it visually challenging to see where I was on the grid solving it in the NYT games app.

I was fully expecting someone to post: "Who ever heard of an OTTOMAN SET???!!!" Then one of the Resident Correctors to post: "Well I googled it and here's a link bla bla bla. It's in the dictionary here bla bla bla. It's also in Wikipedia. Neener Neener." Dang. I leave disappointed.

This puzzle became so tedious as my vision issues made it impossible to keep track of the cursor and highlighting across or down. Ohh, ahhh, rings, gee. Why couldn't they have filled in at the end of the puzzle like some of your other gimmicks do? And don't say print, the colors didn't print well and it looked like mud. Just. Do. The. Puzzle.

I'm not one who usually complains, but this puzzle was hard on the eyes and gave me a headache. I solved this problem by working on it in short stretches and taking breaks to focus my eyes on something else. It helped immensely and I ended up solving quicker than my average time. I loved the theme, and was giddy when I realized what was going on in the rings. By coincidence I was watching the opening ceremonies (on replay) while doing the puzzle. Thankfully the crossword didn't take nearly as long!

I’m so glad I have overlays off as the default in my app. In this case, not because it makes it easier to tell where you are in this puzzle, but because it adds another element to figure out in the puzzle (I also don’t look at the title until I finish). With overlays on, it is clear from the start that the Olympic logo is depicted, making the theme pretty obvious. With just grey (all the same shade) it is not clear at all what is going on or even that the shaded squares form five interlocking rings. I got RING BEARER pretty quickly, but FRODO BAGGINS was one letter too long for 114a 🤓. I soon figured out that colors had to be prepended to the shaded answers, and then soon after that realized it must be an Olympic theme. Though not knowing which five colors were used in the Olympic logo or the location of those colors added a little more guesswork. It was super-fun to figure those things out as I worked through the puzzle. I love a puzzle within a puzzle, and without ever seeing the colors (until I turned overlays on after completion) I got to enjoy that extra challenge. 😊 As a result, my experience solving this puzzle was a 10 out of 10. Even with the extra challenge though, it was a pretty easy Sunday. I finished in about 60% of my average time.

Color-blindness is the least recognized affliction in the US, even though there are more colorblind Americans (12 million!) than there are blind Americans. Color-based crossword puzzles are one of many instances in today's world with which the colorblind are forced to struggle. One would hope that, in these enlightened times, the needs of the colorblind would receive their proper due and appropriate adjustments would be made. This is not sour grapes on my part. I completed today's puzzle in under 28 minutes, which is pretty good considering the burden I bear. #AttentionMustBePlaid!

Colored boxes made this really tough to navigate.

I wonder just how long it took to find a set of words that fit both the color and the crosses (and were straightforward to clue). A feat of Olympic proportions!

With respect to the distinguished constructor, Pan-Arabism and nationalism are usually contrasted, the former denoting a supposed sense of kinship transcending national identity, the latter an allegiance to the particular country of one's birth. Otherwise, typically excellent puzzle.

Also, if you haven't watched Severance starring Adam Scott... Do yourself a favor, the first season was excellent! The second season will be coming out soon! I cannot wait!!

I loved this puzzle. Wonderfully clued and clever. I just wish the colors were more subdued…..it was sometimes hard to see.

Generally an enjoyable and clever puzzle. Finished roughly ten minutes under my Sunday average but since I solve on my tablet I also found this a bit frustrating, since I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out where I was in the grid, because it was often unclear which squares were highlighted. Yes, I know the squares are numbered, but on my tablet the numbers are generally quite small, especially in the larger Sunday grid. Don’t get me wrong: I did enjoy it for the most part but maybe in the future the editors and coders (I assume there are coders) could take the issue of colored squares into account. I did, however, chuckle at 81 A [BLACK] OLIVE, because of the mild arguments about it as a pizza topping on Friday. On Friday, olives-on-pizza is a divisive issue; today it’s supreme. I guess it is a great, big, diverse world after all. (And I am in the “yes” camp for olives on pizza.)

Good puzzle. Very tough to see/follow in the colored squares on the aop though.

In the digital version of today’s puzzle, I found it difficult to determine what cell I was in, where the current answer goes, which spaces were highlighted, etc. The colors did not work well at all.

Cool puzzle but my vision is perfectly fine and even I struggled with keeping track of where the active clue was in the app.

Fun puzzle, but tough to see

That is what I like to refer to as a “good, hard, steady slog” with lots of puzzlers that slowly reveal themselves with time, patience and the occasional break. A couple of stand outanswers that made laugh/smile: SILENTB EARCANAL Excellent puzzle imho.

Reading all the complaints I’m glad I decided to solve on a big iPad! Big beautiful puzzle with a clever theme. Yes it could be difficult to see the active square but I just paid attention to the highlighted clue. I think that’s a small price to pay for such a creative design. Ottoman sets is a bit of a stretch and I took the bait and put in RAMPS for CANTS at first. I’m aware of Cant, the verb and its gerund, Canting from high performance rigs and keels in sailing but didn’t know it was a noun too. How about that light show on the Eiffel Tower? Well done Paris!