Gabe R

Nice breezy Monday, but I was absolutely stymied on the ALFRE/MARESNEST crossing, I’d never heard of either and was sure I had a mistake somewhere!

Really fun puzzle, the theme was a great little surprise. Hope we stay away from AI answers in the future, though.

Loved seeing Kermit and Ernie both make an appearance :)

As a programmer, I entered CSHARP without a second thought, then spent a long time puzzling out what CILCHES could mean

As someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Star Trek, this was a difficult themeless puzzle 😅

I had to smile at the clue for HEN - “a layer of 61-A” (EGGS). Did not see that one coming :)

I personally felt like this puzzle had an unfortunate combination of a hard-to-guess long quote with difficult crossings. I’d be fine with a non-obvious quote if the crossings were easy, and vice versa, a harder quote with easier crossings. I had to give up and get the theme answers from the wordplay column (the middle-left side killed me!) And I have to add, as a gen z solver, I’m sure I’m very much in the minority when I instantly knew YUNG Gravy!

Great theme, but felt a little natick-y, especially for a Monday. Had to skip a lot of the themers on my first go-round, but the revealer helped me figure them out pretty quick!

Loved it! Fun sometimes to get the theme right away and then see how well it’s woven all throughout the puzzle! Great job Mr. Motz

In college I decided to draw a giraffe every day for a year, and ended up getting really into giraffes. WORLD GIRAFFE DAY is on my calendar every year and I was delighted to see that it was featured in today’s puzzle, and also that I could instantly fill in the revealer! Thanks for the amazing puzzle, Hannah :)

As someone who lived in PALO ALTO and then moved to Hillsboro and just saw the HOPS play last week, I felt like this puzzle was made just for me!

I had no idea how “Sing Sing” could be a STATEPEN until I googled it and found out it’s actually a penitentiary! For a moment I thought that along with a state bird, state tree, state flower, etc. that states were now declaring their favorite pens, haha

Anyone else notice the night/sleep mini-theme? AWOKE, ABED, SUNUP, and NAP!

Absolutely loved the theme, especially as someone who works with code and deals with these errors all day. Also enjoyed the “bonus theme”-ish answers like INTEL and IPHONE (tech related?)

The SHACARRI/OCTAVIA/CARLOS/STELLA group of crossings felt a bit too naticky for me, but the rest of the puzzle was really fun! Especially loved seeing YODA!

Super fun puzzle! I didn’t crack the theme until I was *dall with the clues and went back and pieced it together!

The theme clicked for me halfway through and I laughed loudly enough for my wife to hear so we both got to enjoy the revealer! Thanks for the fun puzzle!

Got to go against the grain here, this was a real challenge for me today! A good 5 minutes over my average

Really fun puzzle! I struggled with CONBRIO crossing both NOLO and ACERB, but loved everything else!

Interesting to see both AITOOL and chat GPT in the same puzzle. Guess that’s the world we live in now. Overall loved the puzzle. I normally get scared when I see Sam’s name, but had a lovely solve tonight before bed. Thanks Sam!

Super fun Thursday! I was misled on the theme for a while because I first solved COURT SIDE SEATS and thought that all the hidden letters would be S, but I had a beautiful aha moment once it clicked!

This was a super fun puzzle, totally understand that it may not be for everyone, but it tickled my brain in just the right way

Super fun puzzle and theme! And very apt given the recent release of Pips! The SE corner was a bit naticky for me, had a hard time with those entries, but really loved the grid overall!

Fun puzzle! Having ADAPT and ADEPT in the same corner gave me pause for a second. WIG for “Easily removed locks” might be my favorite clue this week! And every time I see LATEST FAD I always am reminded of Stan Kelly’s cartoons in The Onion.

Super fun theme! It’s not often I start out so completely stumped, then have such an aha moment when it all starts to make sense! Glad I stuck with it!

I got ERSATZ from crossings and panicked because I was sure I had messed something up terribly. Turns out, it’s a word! Thought the theme today was super fun - almost tried fitting rebuses in before the theme suddenly clicked! I also enjoyed IDOL and IDLED being stacked on top of each other!

I absolutely loved the clue for RAGTIME, that got a good chuckle out of me. I also spent too long looking at the grid before deciding it was “some sort of weird Y.” Not until I finished the whole puzzle and saw the olive did I realize what it had been this whole time! DOH!

Really fun Friday - I felt like this was the perfect level of difficulty to end the week on. Well done Evan, Joel, and the whole team!

Awesome lightbulb moment with this one! So fun!

Love to see the PDX representation! Powell’s Books is a great place to solve a crossword :)

Loved it! Theme was great and I liked the IPOS/NYSE crossing :)

Felt like I was right on the same wavelength as the constructors today! I’m guessing at least one of them is a programmer, with UNIX, CPU, and CODE all in there :)

Delightful puzzle! Loved the wordplay and theme! Excellent job Mr Donegan!

Loved the theme! I found myself solving the bottom of the puzzle first, so I got the revealer early and had a great aha moment looking at AQUARIUM

Absolutely loved the theme - exactly what I was hoping for on a Thursday. Wonderful aha moment when it all clicked, and I especially enjoyed the IMAGE/JPEG crossing!

Great puzzle! Loved the pseudo-theme of US presidents too!

In response to Deb’s FONRITPAQOMOH, I’ve also seen JOMO - Joy Of Missing Out :)

Super fun - love the theme and the fact that Erno’s name is actually mixed up as the cube in the center :) That being said, I struggled a bit with the ATRA/ARGUS/LOUIE crossing, but overall amazing puzzle!

I think the wordplay column meant INTERS instead of INGEST as the answer for 7D