Some will say this was too easy for a Friday Puzzle but to me it was fun and who doesn’t need more fun in their lives?
@Laura Early results from xwstats.com seem to back us your hunch, but things may change as the day progresses: 🌎 Global Stats Difficulty Very Easy Median Solve Time 9:57 Median Solver 31% faster ⚡93% of users solved faster than their Friday average. 73% solved much faster (>20%) than their Friday average. 🐢7% of users solved slower than their Friday average. 2% solved much slower (>20%) than their Friday average. Anyway, why can’t a Friday puzzle be both fun and challenging? Some think more challenge makes it more fun.
@Laura Personally, I have a lot more “fun” doing Friday puzzles from 10+ years ago in the archives. Btw the structure of your comment, and the fact that it has gotten so many upvotes, is interesting — you are essentially acknowledging that this was an Easy puzzle, but asserting that this isn’t a bad thing. I just don’t get it: why can’t the Easy Mode clues stay in the Easy Mode newsletter?
Truth be told, I’m a sucker for tall stacks (or long stacks in this case). They do often make for faster solves, since a few crosses and they all fall into place; but I’m still in awe at their construction especially when they are so fresh and well made as today. I have no idea how anyone creates these. So I still tip my hat to the constructor for this fast but fascinating puzzle. Emus ate my first attempt so apologize if there’s another version which ends up posting.
@SP And I posted this before reading the column. This is a debut? Wow double hat tip (hat trick) to you Coz.
@SP I know you as a gamer so here goes (and this is completely off topic regarding the puzzle): I just platinum'ed the Finnish indie game "Dysmantle" on my PS5 and found it great fun. It's available on PC, too. It's a post apocalyptic survival adventure, revolving around the protagonist being able to wreck the world around him for resources. The story is engaging, the world full of adventure, there are some easy but fun puzzling elements, and the progression system makes sure you keep getting stronger all the time, which is very enjoyable. If you buy the DLCs on top of the base game (and they're all cheap and fun), you can have a dog, a cat or even a flippin' *TIGER* as a companion! I found the graphics simple but very decent for an indie game (I usually can't abide indies because of how bad they look with their rudimentary graphics). If you don't mind grinding, you should enjoy it.
That was easy and hard at the same time. And it had no gimmicks. Hallelujah. Nice puzzle.
@Keep It Simple Please Friday and Saturday puzzles almost always have no theme and no gimmicks.
Great looking grid, like a barely pulsing ECG or the polygraph of an honest sort! The spanners filled in smoothly thanks to gentle cluing, and I couldn't help but wonder if Leonardo Da Vinci had moist towelettes at hand when he ordered, a la carte, some cadaver ribs to dissect. I suppose, having played lead clarinet in our high school marching band, that at one point in my life I stood at the reedy. It's a good puzzle that has both EWE and EWER. I kept waiting for EWEST to complete the set. Speaking of this puzzle, on TV tonight I saw LARD and SHAMS as some guy MADE A CLEAN BREAK from reality, liberally applying his special Sauce Americaine to everything he spoke of. No, nothing is sacred: look at the ruins. But no more Dr. Doom here. As they say in Dune, "The spice must flow!" [Does as a group] -- fabulous!
john ezra, Honest sorta polygraph, at the reedy, and your penultimate paragraph: this post was the ewest! Loved it.
@john ezra And EWEST would be clued as "most disgusting" and that would trigger a ton of the complaints from the same folks who have disliked semi-invented 'ER' answers? Bring it on!
That was a wildly impressive grid, and daunting to look at. Surprisingly easy, but so well done, with straightforward cluing, and no clunkers. Loved it
Okay okay, I say I don't notice or care about grid layout ('design") but it sure was impossible to miss this. Lots of pretty long space. And it was all relatively fresh, clever, and junk free to boot. (Thought for sure the sweet sandwich was yet more oreos, but it wasn't. Whew.) Unfortunately it all went pretty fast and easy in the end, as these long spanners always seem to go. Still a proper Friday challenge, at least at first blush. At least the spans weren't all obvious to me without a few crosses. Excellent cluing and such a clean grid. This is one impressive debut. Bravo.
When I saw the three sets of spanners, I thought I was done for. I went across first and my grid remained empty for a bit, but then the gimme of LEONARDO DA VINCI opened up the middle of the grid for me. In the end only the top third gave me trouble, but I handled even that, without outside help, completing the puzzle in Wednesday time. "Does as a group" was a cool clue. SMOREs are unknown over here. I've never had one. Apparently they're delicious so maybe I'll get to try one some day... Marshmallows only arrived in Poland after 1989, but they're not popular, at all. I remember when I first had them in the early 1990s, having only seen them in American shoes before. They were OK. Of course Poles love their campfires. We roast kiełbasa over the flames, and we bake potatoes and apples in the cinders and hot ash. In the 80s and 90s my parents and I always had a huge campfire at my grandma's allotment in the spring, when we burned twigs and branches after trimming all the apple trees and berry bushes. These days, with many people being aware of climate change and air pollution, the practice is understandably less widespread.
@Andrzej Marshmallows were better many, many years ago when they actually contained mucilage from the marsh mallow plant.
@Andrzej Do you celebrate Walpurgisnacht? Our Czech friends always invite us over to roast sausages over the bonfire to keep the witches away.
@Andrzej as an American, my (unpopular) opinion is that s'mores are completely overrated.
@Andrzej To my mind, S'MORES are extremely sweet and too messy and a waste of chocolate. I think there's a nostalgia factor to them because people had them when they were kids. You're not really missing anything.
@Andrzej In defense of s’mores, I find them thrilling. I only ever had them on camping trips growing up. You don’t eat more than one or two. You run around your campsite to find exactly the right stick to roast or toast your marshmallow. You set your marshmallow on fire! And, at just the right moment, before it falls into the abyss, you blow out the flames, sandwich your squares of graham crackers and chocolate around it and slide it off the stick du jour. Then, you still can’t (okay, shouldn’t) eat it right away, you need to allow for the square of chocolate to make contact with the molten lava of marshmallow for long enough to partially melt it and get to the ooey gooeyness of a connoisseur.
@Andrzej Kielbasa is one of my favorites. Add boiled potatoes and sauerkraut and you got yourself a real meal.
@Andrzej I’ve always thought s’mores were vile confections, even as a child. But then, I’ve never liked marshmallows. I’d take some roasted kielbasa, though. I, too, found this puzzle extremely daunting at first. But once I decided to flip my usual method and do the Downs first, it became pretty simple. I guess that’s a lesson to me: don’t get caught up in routine!
@Andrzej for the Grande smore, try a Reeses peanut butter cup, instead of a chocolate bar.
@Andrzej S’more’s were fun when camping with Girl Scouts, especially before anyone else knew about them. Now I think it’s easier just to pop a Moon Pie in the microwave.
To quote Nelson Mandela, "It always seems impossible until it's done." Looking at the practically empty grid, I thought I'd have to give up at some point, or at least do a "check puzzle." Much to my surprise, it got neatly filled in, in thirds, from the bottom up. I had such a good time that I even took a little break to listen to "Anatevka" from Fiddler on the Roof. I can't see or hear anything that sounds akin to "a little bit of this, a little bit of that" without thinking of that song. <a href="https://youtu.be/RWiRetxeviw?is=JT7javlouCn6vJvO" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/RWiRetxeviw?is=JT7javlouCn6vJvO</a> Congratulations, Coz Berlin, on a mighty fine debut, and thank you. I loved the way you played with the language in your clues, especially [Dated many years ago?] for OLDE. Big chef's kiss for this foodie puzzle!
I had nothing until LEONARDODAVINCI, and the three grid spanning triple stacks looked daunting. But, the downs were fairly easy, and before long the spanners became obvious. As someone who spent a summer cooking in a Hunanese restaurant, I’m kicking myself for not getting SCALLIONPANCAKE right off the bat. Although this turned into a quicker solve than I hoped for, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The long entries were bright, and there were some nice clues for the shorter fill. I was a fledgling baseball fan when Rod CAREW was the model of a great hitter. He had impeccable bat control and could seemingly spray the ball wherever he wanted and seldom struck out. How the game has changed. Thanks to advent of advanced analytics, most batters swing for the fences, and a much higher percentage of at bats end up as strikeouts, and wining the batting title has become a diminished accomplishment.
@Marshall Walthew I really miss the days of a walk or a single, a stolen base, a bunt up the first base line to advance the runner, and a score on a sac fly. The worship of the home run has really damaged the game for me. A home run is exciting for about two seconds. But watching a runner score from second on a liner to the wall and a play at the plate is enormous fun. Especially when you're at the ballpark and can watch it all unfold.
This is my first ever comment (after solving hundreds if not thousands of puzzles), and it goes in honor of a first time constructor. What a delight this puzzle was. CAST, and, above all for me, DEER, were utterly fantastic. Tricky yet solvable. Refined yet silly. This is exquisite. I’m repeating myself but “Does as a group?” It just doesn’t get better than that. I hope you frame this in your house!!!
@Henry Welcome to the party, come back soon!
@Henry, I don't comment frequently, but I couldn't agree with you more! You have described it perfectly: Tricky yet solvable. Refined yet silly! "Does as a group?"!!! I loved it.
Its bark was worse than its bite, but that was a daunting first few minutes! I found “Does as a group?” particularly cute. Really fun puzzle!
Oh, yes, it is ultra-hard enough to make a triple-triple-stack puzzle of any sort, and harder still to make its quality pass the Times puzzle bar. And even harder yet to make the nine spanners sing. Usually several of them are dull, forced in because they were the only words or phrases that could work. But look at those spanners today, all rich with color and interest, even those MOIST TOWELETTES. Wow! Hardest of all is to get the stacks’ crossing downs clean; usually there are several or more gag-worthy crosses – but not today, IMO. A very, very, impressive NYT puzzle, and even more so because it is a debut. I find it incredible fun during a solve to fill in a spanner with as few crosses as possible, and today there were nine such opportunities. Your puzzle, Coz, was like a playground, and I felt like a kid, again and again, “Hah!” after “Hah!” Congratulations on your debut, sir, and thank you for a most splendid outing!
P.S. -- In case anyone was wondering, the largest Times spanner stack occurred once – 12/29/12 – a quintuple-stack by the stack-meister Joe Krozel.
Torn as I am by the ongoing level of difficulty discussion, I'm really not looking forward to the comments tonight. I've noticed the phrasing of some of the grand masters here is getting more nuanced, more "between the lines". I'd rant and rave, but I can't get enough oxygen to do so. So I better just chill. By the way, when trying to calm someone down, you say "take a deep breath". What do you do if the act of taking the deep breath is the very thing that is alarming you? I'm exaggerating here, but my little Eden is a really, really depressing, and stressful, place at the moment. It looks like pictures of Pittsburg in the 1950s. I'm using fans and furnace filters as makeshift air filters. I have no idea how well it's working.
@Andrzej I didn't leave you any straight lines tonight, I don't think. My post from last night got taken down. I'm guessing it would not have had I not pointed it out. Oh, well, I can't say I'm too surprised. When you play with fire....
@Francis When fires were making our lives miserable here, we kept the doors and windows closed and the air purifiers (one upstairs, one down) on round the clock. The worst fire here was the Oakland Hills Firestorm (also known as the Tunnel Fire) of October 1991. It burned 1,520 acres in the Oakland and Berkeley hills, destroying 3,469 homes and apartment units, causing 25 fatalities, and resulting in an estimated $1.5 billion in damages. The sky stayed dark but we live in the flat, not the hills, so were not immediately threatened by the blaze but heavy dust and bits of debris rained down. Some of our friends lost everything—block after block of beautiful homes were gone. Fire fighters said that if they had not been able to control the fire before it reached the Claremont Hotel, a white, antique, multistory wooden landmark that seems to float in the hills, there would have been nothing to stop it from burning all the way to the Bay. We were lucky.
@Francis If you have any N- or KN-95s left over, they will help if you're feeling it.
@Francis If you have to go outside, please go to Amazon (or your preferred delivery service) first and order a respirator. Even short term exposure to that outside air cannot be good. An air purifier is also a great suggestion. We keep a couple going year round to help with allergens, and they’re very effective if you remember to change the filters (an ongoing challenge for us). I don’t know about your makeshift setup, but I expect its impact would be very limited. An air purifier can cover an entire room. I can’t even imagine how difficult this must be, on top of everything else you and your fellow Minnesotans have been through lately. (HeathieJ, you ok?) You all deserve some good news, and I hope you get it. Soon.
@Francis We did fans and furnace filters when we faced this, too. We had the bad luck of fires coinciding with a full plumbing replacement, so the garage door had to stay open and they had cut holes in all the walls. The smoke just poured in. I had to call into work that day (wfh) because it was so bad I had to go lay on the downstairs floor to get a much relief as possible. I wore a k95, too. Wishing you and all the others going through this good health and good spirits.
Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! Fun, not impossible, and so witty. Thank you.
@Sophia Jones Loved “Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!”
Only 33 comments 1.5 hours after drop. I’ll take that as a good sign that the comments are not inundated with too easy. But honestly. Who cares. This grid was just. Chef’s kiss. Nine spanners?!? All of them fun! -I do need to lookup what American sauce is though. Please tell me it isn’t the ‘special sauce’ on Big Macs and smashburgers. -why is ‘will’ italicized in the clue for 64 across? -should clue for 41A be accompanimentS? since towelettes is plural? Even if they weren’t all fun, this is still amazing construction, I would assume? I like the added difficulty that each triplet section didn’t connect to the others. My natural solve was top, bottom, then middle. This was an awesome grid. I can’t imagine how many many hours this took to build. Part of me is sorry, the solve was so quick. Editors could have turned this into a monster if they wanted given how separate each section was. Thank you Coz!
@Weak My take on the TOWELETTES is that what comes with my ribs (as a singular accompaniment) is a few moist towelettes. They usually come as two or three. Like my side order is fries. I think it was devious rather than an error.
@Weak I too, was confused by TOWELETTES. But then I imagined ordering ribs and getting one single, teensy wet wipe to manage the sauce situation. We always receive a hearty handful. So, that’s my take…
@Weak If this had been published a few months ago, I’m sure there would have been a considerable chorus of “too easy”. The people who are really committed to commenting here seem to have gotten tired of the “too easy” forum dynamic, and now hold back 90% of the time (and many others, such as myself, have just quit commenting 90% of the time). But between you and me: if they had sent out the clues in today’s puzzle in the Easy Mode newsletter, do you think anyone would have noticed?
@Weak Italics, like bolding or underlining or *asterisking* is a way of intensifying a word; if spoken, "will" would be louder/emphasized. hope that helps.
Fine debut, Coz Berlin. EWE have been published. Quite the complex construction, if not the most difficult solve. The triple triple stacks were fun to see but -- or and -- not hard to fill. Speaking of fill, after filling it, I may need another meal.
Congrats on the debut Coz! I can only imagine how difficult making a triple triple is, but you made it look easy with lively, fun spanners, and minimal glue. Usually a stunt puzzle comes at some expense to the solver, but this was a breezy delight to solve. Thanks!
Legions of spanners are always intimidating, but I bravely faced all nine of them. Dodgy prop clues, but straightforward, if you let your mind roll on, and they dropped in, one after another—voila, the spanners became the easiest entries in the puzzle. Coz Berlin, this was a charmer—funny, thoughtful, and just off enough to slow me down and make me think. Thank you, and congratulations on your debut.
My first thoughts seeing that expanse of white was ‘Help’. I didn’t start well, as the Chinese food item is unknown to me. I’m reading it as an onion pancake? Sounds, um, unpleasant. Breathed a sigh of relief with LEONARDO, but I confess, it was a tough gig for me, perhaps because it was Gin Club last night so am feeling just a MITE hazy today. My absolute favourite clue was the Does in a herd. Laughed like a drain at that one. A thoroughly enjoyable Friday fill, well done on your debut Mr Berlin.
@Helen Wright TIL "laughed like a drain." *Brilliant* simile! Thank you.
@Helen Wright a scallion pancake is actually pretty swell if you like allium. don't knock it til you've tried it. I bet you have a chinese restaurant somewhere nearby.
Gorgeous stacks! I always wonder how on earth a constructor can devise these? It would seem impossible without an enormous amount of crosswordese and other junk, and this puzzle is completely free of all of that. Kudos. It was challenging and fun to solve -- harder than recent Fridays have been and I welcomed that. Although it feels like a century since I last watched baseball, Rod CAREW was an OLDE-time name that popped immediately into my head. That was a big help in the top stack. Are they still using LARD in pie crusts? Isn't it unhealthy? KATO of the O.J. trial. Exhibit A in the "how quickly we forget" pantheon. But it came back to me and now I can't unsee his flowing blond mane. (He did have a flowing blond mane, didn't he?) I needed all the crosses for PAWS (54A). Is that a funny way to clue it or what? I loved the pitch-perfect clue for IS NOTHING SACRED? One of the fairest clues I've ever seen. And a really good clue for our old friend SNL. It looks brand-new. Stacks are usually fun to solve and this was especially so. I'm sure we'd see even more of them if they weren't so darned hard to make.
@Nancy Re KATO More scraggly than flowing locks in my recollection, but that's the guy.
@Nancy I thought you were a Cat Person?! That was a nice gimme.... Charlotte the Kitty has long white "stockings" and adorable black "toe-beans"--as CrossWorld terms them-- Adorbs, of course.
My guess is this was easy for a Friday. But the clues and answers were superb. The play on "Does" was grand. Delightful solve.
EARTHA Kitt and I dated briefly in the ‘60s. She even finagled a brief non-speaking role for me in an episode of the Batman TV series. It was the one where Commissioner Gordon decides to quit the force and try his hand at male modeling. Kind of an odd episode because Batman and Robin don’t appear in it at all. It’s just thirty minutes of the actor Neil Hamilton posing for photoshoots and walking the runway at various fashion shows. In one scene Catwoman is also “walking the catwalk” alongside commissioner Gordon, and they’re both wearing the same catsuit costume (it’s all part of her plot to steal a priceless diamond necklace and pin it on the commish). In that scene, I’m supposed to come out from backstage and hand Catwoman the necklace, but I kept tripping over my own facial hair (I wore a six foot long beard in those days). We did 37 takes and never got the shot, so I ended up getting fired and replaced with Don Knotts. Apparently Eartha had the same idea because she stopped returning my calls after that and moved in with Knotts a week later.
@Ace speaking of airplane bathrooms, is that you, Pierce?
That was not my fastest NYT Friday puzzle, but it felt almost as if it was. Working on the short verticals got enough letters to guess the long 15s — all nine of them — and I was left trying to figure out why S _ _ _ P was a trap. Aha! Got it.
I can't remember the last time I got a gold star for a Friday. I don't even try to attempt Friday/Saturday puzzles very often. Lucky to have picked a day with an easy one to give it a shot. :) I solved the Friday 7/17/2026 New York Times Daily Crossword in 21:15! <a href="https://nytimes.onelink.me/IM32/7owuagxr" target="_blank">https://nytimes.onelink.me/IM32/7owuagxr</a>
@V, congrats on your quick solve!
I thought that this was a great Friday puzzle! First, we are greeted with the beautiful grid, and its amazing sets of spanners. That's a great way to begin. Then, there's the solve. For me, starting from the top, it was slow going at first. That's not a complaint. That's what I look forward to on a Friday. Moving to the bottom, things got a bit easier, but still nothing was certain. I had to put in guesses without the confirmation of crosses, because the crosses involved those un-guessable spanners. But with a few crosses in, the spanners became clearer. I especially loved IS NOTHING SACRED? Lovely phrase with much resonance for me. But each area provided new challenges. Would I have to look up that Marvel villain? No! LEONARDO to the rescue. And I am grateful for the proper nouns in this puzzle. Thank you, LEONARDO; and you, too, Rod CAREW. Not to mention OTIS Redding and KATO Kaelin. Saviors all. Beautiful, fresh, colloquial spanners. Fun solving experience. Not too difficult, but not too easy either (for this solver). Right in the Goldilocks zone. Thanks, Coz Berlin! Truly, this is an amazing debut. I look forward to seeing more from you!
I'm gonna say it- I loved this puzzle!!! "Does as a group" was a phenomenal clue! Nine puzzle spanning entries is a total feat!! TGIF!
Wow I even beat the Wordplay column today. Tell you the truth, I’m a sucker for tall stacks (long stacks in this case). Fact is, they often make for fast solves, since you get a few crosses and they all fall into place. That was the case today. But I’m still in awe when they are all fresh and interesting, like today, and I have no idea how they get constructed so well. So I’ll take the fast but fascinating puzzle today and tip my hat regardless.
SP, Here's that first post you made last night (that didn't appear).
@Barry Ancona @SP Confirms my suspicion that forms of the S word is emu food.
At first glance, this grid seemed difficul but it all worked out well.
Immediately got Scallion Pancakes with no crossings. Wavelength. Phenomenal puzzle!
@Michael I immediately knew it was: (blank)PANCAKES and tasted it all the way thru solving, yum! I kept wondering what they call it on menus. Later looked at a favorite restaurant menu, it is called “(name of restaurant)’s cakes”). Google says it translates to green onion pancakes. This was a delicious delightful puzzle.
Absolutely brilliant construction. I remember the last triple triple (January 18, 2025) like it was yesterday. These constructions remain in my memory for years to come, truly a work of art.
Coz Berlin’s debut is a no-trouble treble triple. A no-Natick hat-trick. A neat feat, and a total treat. Even the constructor’s notes gets my vote. Coz daringly, dangerously dangles an email address and invites us to send the “harshest criticism”. Well, prepare the inbox for an influx of plaudits from the pundits — and crickets from the critics! A gem.
Zippity doo dah. Personal best for a Friday (15:33), almost 1/2 my average. Congrats to the constructor for this fabulous and fun Times debut.
Triple Stacks are great! My absolute favorite – thank you Coz!
Interesting puzzle. The top third was difficult for me but after finishing the bottom 2/3rds it came together pretty easily. Enjoyable solve! Maybe could have been a skosh more challenging.
What an impressive grid. And what an incredible waste. The cluing for the long answers—and for the answers in general—was far too simple, and the crosses made them exceptionally easy to get. With the generally nice fill, this could have been a fantastic puzzle, but it fell flat with mediocre clues, and a difficulty that was more akin to a Wednesday than a Friday. What a shame. 4/10.
@George I agree with much of this. But, to me, the puzzle didn't fall flat, or seem a waste. It could have been toughened up, but given the grid geometry it's hard to imagine it ever being difficult. I mean, there are nine spanners that have to be rather common things/expressions/names, and all of these have to be packed full of mostly very common letters. Seems very hard to make such a pattern hard.
Not my fastest Friday ever, but definitely my fastest with that many spanners. Really liked this one. Unfortunately I can’t mention any specific clues or fill because of the latest way they’ve managed to botch the Wordplay comments section. I’d also say I’ll be keeping an eye out for more from this constructor… except I can’t even check the constructor’s name without cancelling my comment and backing out of Wordplay. For the OGs… what were the prime Wordplay years? I started around 2022, and I remember loving this forum, even if the EMUs did eat half the posts. Not nearly as easy to follow along or talk about the crossword anymore.
@Striker Trick for you that someone else posted—click on the columnist’s name in Wordplay, then click on “most recent” and the column will open up separately from the puzzle. It’s a big help.
@Striker I guess you guys are all using an app? Because opening an extra tab or window to review things separately is trivial in a browser, even on mobile....
At first my heart sank when I didn't know the first long one nor hardly any of the down clues, so I just revealed the PANCAKE in order to get started. (Scallions = spring onions in England and sybies in Scotland). Then SWATCH helped me to put in WAR but the TOWELETTES defeated me, whether dry or MOIST. But then the sauce .... nope. Some of the downs were ok , remembering SKOR, SIC ON and SCAR from before. But Heath ("open, desolate moorland") is the name of a candy bar? Did they not know their Macbeth? Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with Macbeth Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the foul and filthy air.
@Jane Wheelaghan The last few days it seems as if most of the Midwest and Northeast US could qualify as a HEATH based on air quality. HEATH bars are named for the family/company that created them.
I thought this puzzle was yummy for a Friday morning. Nice job, Coz. Keep ‘em coming. And fantastic Friday to all!
Not terribly difficult, but I found the clues exceptionally clever!
I know Rod CAREW more because of his daughter's leukemia and (unmet) need for a bone marrow transplant... I've had a few opportunities to meet him in that capacity. Wonderful, wonderful human!! My husband got to meet him once and was kinda giddy about it! If you knew my dearest love, you'd know giddy is very much not a norm for him... oh, shoot, gotta run to a meeting. eek
Loved it! Congratulations, Coz, on a fine debut. At first I thought I'd be done for with so many spanners, but, as others have pointed out, they helped me quite a bit with the downs. I can't imagine the time it took to construct this beauty -- hope to see more from you soon, Coz!😊
Awesome grid and a great puzzle, but clued a bit too easy for a Friday. I knew when I saw the grid that I would like it!
“Does as a group” — marvelous! And a hat trick of spinners. What a way to close out the World Cup
Bravo, Coz! What a dazzling stack of stacks! The gentle cluing was a sweet gift. I’m sure tomorrow’s will be tougher.
One more thing- In Sweden, when we want to buy “Russian” dressing, we buy American dressing. I’ve always wondered if Russians are familiar with it, and do they call it Swedish dressing? Spanish sauce? Danish drizzle?
@CCNY Ryba po grecku, Greek-style fish, is a Polish staple. It has about as much in common with Greek cuisine as reindeer steak with lingonberries.
Oooh, that was fun! Beautifully constructed, nicely clued, and smooth to solve. Bravo! Y’all be kind and stay cool today!
That was fun. Love the stacks! Wouldn't [Put into play?] be a good clue for CAST?
a.a., Fri Apr 20, 2018 44A Put in play? Joel Fagliano Shortz
@ad absurdum *Wasn't [Put into play?] once a good clue for CAST?
@ad absurdum *isn't [Put into play?] very similar to [Put in play?] which was once a good clue for CAST
Felt like a Sunday, and I mean that in a very good way. While not jumbo-sized, the triple triple made it seem so, and, for me, the 15-letter answers kept falling into place, one by one. I enjoyed solving this.