Tara

Anyone else think PANTS is a perfectly reasonable answer for "Fly traps?" That hung me up for a long time.

Brilliant puzzle. Such a great idea for a theme!

Not me having AR in the center of the answer for "That really stinks!" and filling in a F and T ... Great puzzle and loved the novel theme execution.

Not me crying while reading the constructor notes... This was a beautiful puzzle and tribute, Adrianne. Thank you for sharing both with us!

I knew there would be some mixed feelings about this one, but I honestly loved this puzzle. It took me a while to figure it out, but RICEARONI was the clincher for me, because I recognized the "ONI" from the clue above. Once I had that, everything fell into place and it was fun to work out the WORMHOLES. The colour-coding helped a lot!

As a (very long ago) former flute player and not knowing TIGONS are a thing or who Lady Magic is, CLINKED was one the last to drop for me. *feverishly searches back to high school brain to remember if the keys might have plinked a little? If I blinked while playing?* Big face palm when I got it. Great puzzle!

TIL that aardvark and anteater contain the same number of letters. Great puzzle!

Neat theme. Inuit is already plural - it means "the people" in the Inuktut language.

Deb, I share a love of the word spelunk. It made my morning to see it here.

Just chiming in to say that I really appreciate and enjoy Sean's columns. As for the puzzle...I don't really understand all the negative comments. It wasn't my favo(u)rite puzzle ever, and I felt like I had to brute force it a bit... but the revealer actually did help me suss out some of the theme entries, as soon as I had a couple crosses that were the same letter. A fair Thursday, I'd say.

I was onto the theme fairly quickly but am sorry to say I really did not enjoy this puzzle. Perhaps I was just not at all on the same wavelength of the constructor, but most of the "trick" entries were a big stretch from common words (L'Ancome? Salome? Alamo Dome?). And some were two words and others were one. Not much consistency. Plus some of the clueing just felt unnecessarily vague, as opposed to misdirecting in a fun way. I mean, cOMmon!

dating myself here, but CDS are also stored in plastic protectors, and how am I to know that WCI isn't a console of some kind? Ha. That mistake took a while to find. Also very much agree with the Wounded knee comments.

Love the "major undertaking" clue.

This was a complete delight for me. Sometimes I'm just on the same wavelength as the constructor and this was one of those days! Thanks, Alina.

I'm not normally a Roman numerals fan, but I really loved this puzzle. The theme answers required the perfectly satisfying kind of mental gymnastics. Great clueing, if a little on the straightforward side - as clued, I agree with others that it might have been better suited to a Wednesday.

I really loved the clueing in this one!

The revealer made me lol when I got it. Great idea for a theme!

Great Sunday! I usually find Sundays tedious without being difficult, but this one hit the right note for me. Thanks!

Jeez. Chill out, people - crosswords are GAMES. Personally, I loved this puzzle. There are plenty of crosswords that aren't my cup of tea, but knowing the amount of work that goes into constructing puzzles, I sure wouldn't write a negative comment about them.

Ouch for the Stanley Cup clue! - every Canadian Great puzzle otherwise ;)

For a crazy moment when I filled in the two BLANKS and glanced back at the opening ZA I thought... could ... could there be the exact corresponding number of each letter in this grid compared its number of Scrabble tiles?! But no, of course that would be impossible. Fun puzzle nonetheless.

I'm 50 and played this game as a kid! Not so modern ;)

I loved this theme - perfect wordplay, IMO. Even with the COMmon starts (ha), each answer took me a couple crosses to figure out because of the changed pronunciation, which made it such a fun challenge. Thank you!

What a great Monday puzzle! Thanks, Alana.