Michelle

I think the difference between me and half the commenters on these crossword puzzles is that when I don't know a phrase, I think, "Huh. I didn't know that phrase" and when half the commenters don't know a phrase, they think, "this is not a real phrase and I'm mad the crossword constructor made it up just to spite me specifically."

It’s funny how you can be completely stuck, take a five minute break, and suddenly everything makes sense. Had a lot of fun with this one.

Deb's experience was the complete opposite of mine. I breezed through most of the puzzle (compared to my own experience), but just could not figure out that bottom left corner. I had to come to the article for hints.

I enjoyed this one. I liked that the theme had multiple levels. I figured out turning the wheels early, but didn’t get the classes element until much later and that did help me fill in some letters I hadn’t yet solved.

Clue 33 led me down a rabbit hole (when was golf popularized outside Scotland? When was Twain writing?) but after some research, I think I can say with reasonable confidence, that Mark Twain did not say that golf was a good walk spoiled. Here's a good article discussing the history of that quote: <a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/28/golf-good-walk" target="_blank">https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/28/golf-good-walk</a>/

I solved WEDNESDAY PUZZLE early but was very confused because I knew for a fact it was not a Wednesday puzzle. It was really amusing when I got it.

I liked this one, but am embarrassed how long it took me to realize what was going on. I thought the three long clues were missing the word back, but then I kept finding other ones that were missing back and was confused because the clue only said it was in three places, and that was a lot more than three clues missing the word back. I didn't realize until I was basically done with the puzzle that it was three black squares that had the word back in them.

Best time today, and I wasn’t even trying. I kept chatting with my fiancé while doing the puzzle and showed them a couple of the clues (such as the Honda HR-V one since that’s our car). I don’t know if I should take this as “think how fast I could have completed this if I focused” or “look how much better I do when I’m not taking things too seriously”. The second is probably the take that leads to a happier life.

I originally had INSIDER TRADERS for 48A, which has a shocking 7 out of 14 correct letters, so it was really hard for me to get my mind around changing it when I realized not everything was working.

This was a fun one. I didn't get a lot of the across clues on my first time through, but once I got to the theme clue at the end, I was off to the races. It became a fun puzzle of, there has to be an L in one of these two spaces on this row, and the other one on this row. Almost like doing a Sudoku. It felt like an all new type of puzzle. I really enjoyed it.

I honestly had no idea what the theme was even after I finished it. At some point, I did try reading the shaded clues backwards, but was like, "KLIMT? KLEE? That can't be right." The only artist I recognize is GOYA, and I got that clue late so I didn't check it backwards until after reading the article. Oh well! Still a fun puzzle.

SNARF did throw me off. I confidently had SCARF until I had to go searching for what I had wrong at the end. Should have paid more attention to the crossing!

For some reason, my time for today is coming up as 988:20:06. I think that's probably not accurate.

I had no clue on the theme even after finishing the puzzle. My best guess was it was sound alike words, such as “hiking”=“high king” and “arrange”=“a range”. I even saw port and entity in their clues, but I just could not figure out what the id entity was, or how fledge and canine fit into this. The final answer was reasonably straight forward but boy did I not figure it out.

I was a little dumb about the theme this time. I got SCRAPMETAL before I got any of the other theme clues, and immediately thought, okay, so metal is cut out of the answers. And then got GROWINGOLD and thought, oh, they just have metal in the answers. I don't really get how that works for teeth emerging though. And then proceeded to never apply any critical thinking to this.

Sometimes I'm terribly bad at reading down answers. Today I took way too long to figure out HONESTABE. Even after I filled it in, I was reading it downwards thinking, what the heck is that? What kind of nickname is that? Hones tabe? Hone stabe? It wasn't until I typed it into Google that I saw what it was supposed to be.

I really enjoyed this puzzle's theme. Perfect combo of fun and also giving you a bit of a hint for clues you haven't solved yet.

I really struggled with this one. I figured out the theme early enough, and that definitely helped, but I don't know. I just was not getting a lot of the clues.

I had a lot of fun with this. I played a lot of Minesweeper as a kid, and I enjoyed using the numbers to sus out where the mines were before even looking at the clues.

Came so close to beating my record today!

Hard one today, but I enjoyed trying to figure out the books. TOOLONGDIDNTREAD was actually the first clue I filled in, and I got LESMISERABLES pretty easily. Took me awhile to get the other two though.

I commented this exact same thing like a week ago, but someday I will learn the abbreviation for seniors is SRS not SNS. That was again the last correction I made to finish the puzzle.

Fun puzzle. I liked that some of the penciled in words were right and some were wrong. I struggled with how they wanted me to spell aitch, but otherwise pretty easy.

I really liked the theme this time. I got a few of the words while going through the acrosses (while knowing that there would be a twist I had to figure out later), and got a decent number of downs that messed up my acrosses before I figured it out. I could tell it was specifically the gray letters, and not the white letters, that weren’t what I expected before I got the gimmick. It was very satisfying when I filled in INSIDER TRADING and knew what I had to do. Lots of fun!

It took me too long to put in GRANDCHILD. I thought of it early, but it didn't work with a (incorrect) crossing I had. When I finally filled it in just to check, everything else fell into place.

This one was way easier than yesterdays! I got the theme immediately and knowing what the down theme clues ended with made filling them in pretty easy.

I had SERVE crossing itself for both 24 down and 30 across for awhile. It worked for a surprising number of crossings.

I completed the puzzle but had absolutely no idea what the theme meant until I read the wordplay article.

Surprised so many people had trouble with this one. I often skip Thursdays because they’re too hard for me, but I quickly filled in about half the puzzle, took a break, and then managed to fill in all but the top left corner before I had to look for clues. That’s much better than my usual Thursday attempts.

I never did figure out the theme (until I read the article). I questioned simulated, which I thought should be simulcast, mopeds, and carets, but just didn't take it the extra step necessary to figure out the dips.

I had a lot of fun with this puzzle. I got “doesn’t have a clue” and “four square” easily, but didn’t take “under the sea” literally enough. I put d, because it was the end of the downward “seed” and through the “d” was under the “see”

I had 1 SET and FAB 5, and then counted the Ks I had already and was like, "that's way more than 15. Weird." And proceeded to not realize I had the numbers wrong for the whole puzzle. (Am I crazy? Fab 5 still sounds more right to me than Fab 4)

I had no idea why it was FORTYNINER. I knew that was a sports team and I filled it in because it fit, but I had no idea it was a gold rush reference.

I hate that you can’t check puzzle without it messing up your statistics. Sometimes I get to the end of a long puzzle and it says that something’s wrong. 99% of the time I typoed something (usually my big fingers hitting the wrong letter while retyping an answer that’s been confirmed in pen instead of pencil) and it’s annoying to have to hunt that down. Alternately, I’d love if we could just pick an answer and mark it to be pen instead of pencil without having to retype it. That would solve most of my problems.