Nick

Obnoxious bias that the NYT puzzle continues to constantly hawk hebrew / jewish religious clues in puzzles something like 3 days a week. I’ve done the puzzle every day for the last few years and this type of obvious bias of who gets to be ‘visible’ and who doesnt is shameful imo. I’m jewish and not every single one of us needs to be ‘represented’ on a nearly every-other-day basis in the crossword. the only regularly occuring term that references arabic / islam is EMIR, with the very occasional generic name thrown in (I think the PLO got mentioned twice in the last year though, which was a pleasant surprise). Meanwhile we’re regularly expected to know the names of prior Israeli PMs, hebrew first and last names, religious terms with spellings that throw anyone outside the culture like ‘BNAI’, (crossing with hebrew ELI as well) etc etc. If you don’t believe me, start a tally for yourself beginning tomorrow. Tired of this like i’m tired of OREO and ETSY’s seemingly sponsored spots. I know all pieces of media have leanings and opinions, but i’m disappointed at viewpoint the crossword wants to promote and at what an absurd volume they promote it Yours truly, a new york jew fed up with this nonsense

This puzzle sucked. Luckily i’m from the US and i learned the colonies a zillion times in school, so that part i knew. but the fill was garbage. i understand the puzzle is constructed very ‘skillfully,’ so hats off and everything, but the puzzle was just frustrating and uninspiring to actually *play* - filled with loads of obscure names etc crossing each other. SABOTS crosses with BO[SC]S to make the U[SC]ENSUS; SKED with a K but CABALA with a C (and ECG with a C which is a tossup) a ‘conglomerate’ being an OLIO shoehorned in to force I[VA][NH]OE, ‘A _____’ being naturally a clue for PRIO[RI], no indication that roman numerals are used for [MD]CCC – completely lucky guess – etc etc etc Give me a fricking break. Sometimes a hard puzzle feels rewarding. 45 minutes of BS and a couple ‘check puzzles’ in on this one and i was just groaning. can’t remember hating a puzzle this much in ages. very skillful creation, very unpleasant and unsatisfying puzzle. just because you can, doesnt mean you should.

RAJ crossing IJEOMA is brutal. between that and having ‘TOBEDDYBYE’ rather than ‘GOBEDDYBYE’ i had to hit the check puzzle. i have a plastic BAGTIE so the T didn’t bother me.

idk, i didnt have a good time with this one. i really didnt like the art heist one either though, but plenty of people loved both so different stroked for different folks i guess. i really struggle with the starting region - i really didnt know TETROMINO, ITSIN, KEANE, or ANIL, and getting PRELUDETOAKISS was somewhat feasible after i had a ton of the letters but i don’t think i’ve ever heard that song. i really didnt have a good time with the ‘presents’ in the theme being just another corny pun that i had to squint at for a while before it resolved - i had gotten the tree rebuses already but i was hoping that the letters in the circle would come together with some more importance

ROUE crossing IONE on a monday? cmon. thankfully i took the right guess on NEAL / RAMA because i almost left it as NEIL / RIMA, otherwise running the alphabet to find that friggin O wouldn’t have worked. i’m down to learn a new word, but when it’s an obscure word that looks more like a typo of another word (ROGUE, who could kinda vaguely count as a ‘hedonistic sort’) then it’s particularly frustrating. crossing it with a very unusual name i’ve never heard of anyone having … what gives

Not great imo – i’m lucky i got APIASAMOA, only because i recently learned it from another puzzle. i didn’t understand why at first, but i figured it had to be right and therefore SAPOR had to be a word. CAVIL is new to me , but okay. things like IGUANODON crossing LOOPERS (vs IGUANADON crossing LOAPERS) seem unfair. i don’t know sports, so idk if IONA/NATS vs IONE/NETS would be obvious to other people. but i saw a bunch of moments with crosses like that, and i took a bunch of lucky guesses on them. also, an annoying amount of crosswordese - i know you want ORCA, BAMA, ENT, OREO, etc. i get these not because i know sports or cookies or even understand the cluing (didnt know what a hydrox was) but just because the crossword keeps fricking asking for them and i wish people would stop crossing names with names. like just that simply - don’t

Too smart for me. The double duty phi/io thing is cute but I think i’m only big brained enough for a single rebus at a time i guess

weird in between for me – I didn’t like doing this puzzle, but i respect it. I think it’s pretty well made and there are some excellent clues there (‘boundaries between areas with different amounts of coverage’) but i got stuck so many times after assembling some big chunks, and i never really got in the flow of things wholesale. i havent had to do so many ‘check puzzles’ in ages. i’ll accept that for this friday as a good puzzle even though it wasnt my cup of tea

I had a good time with most of it but that NW corner killed me and then some! I’ve never heard of BACKDRAFT, and RAP BATTLE didn’t occur to me (had a TABBATTLE as a way for people to scrap over the bill, or maybe a LAWBATTLE?), but really OCEANARIA did me in even more. Never heard of this thing, and I couldn’t bring myself to put the AR in there because i saw ‘AREA’ misspelled as an obvious no-go … plua ARYA for my stark, forgetting that ROBB had the double consonant instead of NEDD, SEAR instead of BAKE, and I thought the Grand Tour was an F ONE RACE So much doing and undoing, i had to start ‘check puzzle’-ing left and right because even though the rest of the puzzle went down nicely i barely ended up with any anchors to get that corner

I had a good time with most of it but that NW corner killed me and then some! I’ve never heard of BACKDRAFT, and RAP BATTLE didn’t occur to me (had a TABBATTLE as a way for people to scrap over the bill, or maybe a LAWBATTLE?), but really OCEANARIA did me in even more. Never heard of this thing, and I couldn’t bring myself to put the AR in there because i saw ‘AREA’ misspelled as an obvious no-go … plua ARYA for my stark, forgetting that ROBB had the double consonant instead of NEDD, SEAR instead of BAKE, and I thought the Grand Tour was an F ONE RACE So much doing and undoing, i had to start ‘check puzzle’-ing left and right because even though the rest of the puzzle went down nicely i barely ended up with any anchors to get that corner

i’m pretty into animals and I’d never heard of a COATI before so i learned something new. still didn’t love this puzzle – ‘hello SIRI’ didnt cross right with a ringtailed LEMUR, (and OKAPI have striped legs but i now know not ringed tails) so i knew something was off. never heard of jake LAMOTTA or ROLAIDS before (RELAIDS and LAMETTA) sounded reasonable, as did lots of crossings. weirdly difficult tuesday, which maybe i should be happy about? but i didn’t enjoy it.