Jacqui J

Q: Will we see another puzzle from Daniel? (Shakes the MAGIC 🎱) A: Reply hazy, try again. Q: Will we see another puzzle from Daniel? (Shakes the MAGIC 🎱) A: Concentrate and ask again. Q: Will we see another puzzle from Daniel? (Violently shakes the MAGIC 🎱) A: Outlook good Clever theme that was well executed. Who didn’t ask their MAGIC EIGHT BALL silly life questions?! Such nostalgic memories of an innocent childhood. Congrats on your debut, Daniel. I hope to see more from you.

As I mentioned in my reply to John, I don’t understand the shade being thrown on this puzzle either?! I thought it was fun - I like Scrabble and Spelling Bee and who doesn’t like a good anagram? I almost got a PB tonight, but who cares? Some puzzles will be in your wheelhouse and others will be more challenging. I always appreciate what a constructor must have gone through to get to the point that their grid gets published. Thank you, Neville, for contributing to my daily fun.

I loved this puzzle. Loved loved loved loved loved this puzzle. Loved it.

PIP PIP PIP hooray. Clever crossword construction Published here today That was my weak attempt at a HAIKU 🤨 That doesn’t happen TOO OFTEN. Please don’t BOO me OFF STAGE. Anywho, thank you Victor. This was fun 😊

Too much potassium in this one 🤪 🤣 I noticed about halfway through that there were a lot of Ks in the grid and literally started singing 24K MAGIC in my head. Imagine my squeal of joy when I realized that was the revealer?!?! Thanks for making my night, Jackson! And thank you Beth for posting the link to the video ☺️

So much love for this puzzle! For those solvers who say they weren’t fans, I say that resistance is futile. My stepdad is a diehard Trekkie. At any given time, you will find something from any of the Star Trek series playing at my mom’s house, guaranteed. My late father was a fan of the original series (TOS) as well. I used to work for TRW/Northrop Grumman. One of the episodes of TOS was filmed where I worked at Space Park in Redondo Beach! The episode was Operation - Annihilate! filmed on February 15,1967. It was the final episode of the first season. I used to run newhire orientation and that was one of the fun facts that I shared 🖖🏼 I had the pleasure of meeting George Takei during Asian Heritage month. He was our featured speaker and spoke about his childhood and time in Japanese internment camps during WWII. Definitely a dark cloud in our history. George is a punster himself and would definitely appreciate this grid construction. He would give Mike from Munster a run for his money! Huge thank you to Jeremy Newton for this amazing construction. May you live long and prosper 🖖🏼🤟🏼🤙🏼

Loved this one. The link between The Real Slim Shady EMINEM and its cross referenced Lose Yourself? was clever. <a href="https://youtu.be/xFYQQPAOz7Y?si=MqKl7ujI-unmKR37" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/xFYQQPAOz7Y?si=MqKl7ujI-unmKR37</a> I originally had moi for Miss Piggy instead of OUI, but that was my only misstep. Thank you, Alex.

This deserves a A+ for constructive creativity. I shall BLEAT it from the mountaintop. No keeping it ON THE Down Low. 👍🏼👍🏼 2 thumbs up from me Thanks, Kevin 😎 Happy Tuesday!

When I opened this puzzle, I got the hugest grin. I showed my husband and literally said “remember when we used to do puzzles on the airplane and sometimes we would find one like this?” 🤣 Imagine my surprise and glee when that worked out to be the theme of the puzzle!?!? Such a clever idea and it flowed so nicely from start to finish. Congratulations on such an awesome debut. Watch out for those pranksters everyone! My younger son got me good the year he turned 10. He poured his dad a glass of wine before dinner. He asked if he could try a sip, then proceeded to chug the whole glass down. It turned out that he had poured a glass of soda earlier and let it go mostly flat so it wasn’t bubbling. We were dying when he said “gotcha - April Fools!” 🤣🤣🤣

That was one of the more enjoyable puzzles I’ve experienced. The AHAS just kept coming. I did have donkey in for “party animal” for way too long, but that fixed itself as soon as the downs didn’t work at all. Hello Kitty became popular when I was a young tweenager, so I was familiar with SANRIO unlike other commenters. My last theme answer to go in was 17A. I only had EGG and no rebus until I looked at the Jason Mraz song. The final AHA moment was recognizing it was a rebus. Such a satisfying finish. Thank you, Josh, for persisting through the year to get this published. Well done. 👍🏼

A PLUS WORK on this one, Jesse. And what a fun one this was to reach my four year streak!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ HANNA BARBERA brought back so many memories of my favorite childhood cartoons. DOPAMINE RUSH indeed. PASTA over Gordon RAMSAY made me chuckle. Thank you, Jesse.

Any puzzle that includes lots of Qs is automatically a winner in my eyes. I’ve mentioned my affinity for the letter before. I have 2 of them in my name. I have a file of puzzle ideas, and Ode to the letter Q was on it. I guess that’s out the window 🤣 I initially had Athleisure for ACTIVEWEAR and VIBEd before VIBEY, but otherwise this was a very smooth fill. I completed this puzzle while sitting on the plane that was taking me from LAX to PHX to see my son for his birthday. Well, I finished it well before the plane left due to the 3.5 hour delay. The incoming plane was 45 minutes late to LAX. Then there was a leak on one side of the plane that maintenance had to fix and test. Then our captain timed out for the day, so we had to wait for another pilot. Then someone vomited on the plane and maintenance had to return to replace seat cushions and seatbelts. About 15 people decided to cancel their flight at that point and got off. Then they had to confirm each person who was still on the plane. Twice. You can’t make this stuff up!!! I could have driven here faster than it took from the time I left my house for the airport to the time my plane finally departed and landed 😡🤬 At least I get to see him this weekend, just bummed that I missed his birthday dinner 😢

Oh my. I had an error in mine that I finally got corrected. I had misspelled CLEO initially as CLiO. That left me with Di_ for [Start to do?] I thought to myself, the NYT can’t possibly have DIL as the answer here, right?!?! 😳 I finally got the answer to [Eclipse, for one]. Oh, DEE!! 🤣🤣🤣😅 Phew! I must have giggled at myself for 10 minutes. Thank you, Jesse, for a FUNFILLED experience on my end. Happy Friday. Enjoy the long weekend!!!

Color me impressed with this tricky Thursday grid. I love that you added O but deleted the X for the themers. Then the two revealers crossed each other. And how cute that OXO was in there! My grandfather bought an ACURA Legend in 1988, replacing his 1977 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. Yet again, the puzzle brings up a long ago memory 🥰 Thank you, Kareem! XOXO

I just had to pop in and say how much I appreciated the work that obviously went into the construction of this puzzle. The animation at the conclusion was the icing on the cake. Jeremy Newton absolutely nailed this shot - hole in one indeed ⛳️. Favorite Monday puzzle since I started solving regularly about 3 years ago.

For everyone thinking that there is a tense issue with LAY, this is straight out of MWD: Lay is often used where lie is considered standard, as in "I'm going to lay down for a quick nap." The use, which dates to the 14th century, troubled no one until the 18th, but since then, people who care about such things have tried to teach the rest of us that a person lies, not lays, down. Lay in the related use means "to place (someone or something) down gently in a flat position." It requires an object; there must be a thing or person being placed. //Lay it down. //It's time to lay the baby down for a nap. Lie, on the other hand, does not require an object; instead, the one lying down is already in position or is moving or going to move to such a position on their own. //The cat lies there every morning. //You can lie down on the sofa. The tenses of the verbs complicate things further. Lay becomes laid and laying //She laid the baby in his crib for a nap. //They have laid it all out for you. //I'm laying out the fabric. Lie becomes lay, lain, and lying: //The baby lay asleep in his crib. //He has lain there since noon. //A note was lying on the table when I came home. On a separate note, Pennywise is a SKATE PUNK local band right here in my neck of the woods. Jim Lindberg is heavily involved in the Beachlife Festival here in town which is an annual three day concert. This year’s headliners for each night are Duran Duran (Friday), The Offspring (Saturday) and James Taylor (Sunday)

“The One With The Benefits” is how I will remember this puzzle 🫶🏼 Friends is the show of my generation. I’m the same age as the main cast, so it was very relatable to me and my group of friends. We were all just a couple of years out of college, starting our careers, dating and just figuring out life. My kids now enjoy watching the reruns and finally get some of my references (like speaking in the manner of CHANDLER who couldn’t BE more funny) 🤣 And who doesn’t love a good rendition of SMELLy cat 😹 JOEY with his How YOU doin’? 😏 And finally, who here didn’t find themselves clapping 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 during the opening credits? <a href="https://youtu.be/sLisEEwYZvw?si=PehZ4IZtvx9ZXS0L" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/sLisEEwYZvw?si=PehZ4IZtvx9ZXS0L</a> Thank you, Rich, for this wonderful tribute to one of my favorite shows 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

I just had a weird number coincidence happen that caught my attention. Today is my 1542 day streak of solving these puzzles AND I solved this one 15:42 faster than my average 🤯 I just shared the screenshot with my family I was so excited 🤣 I’m sure they’re rolling their eyes at me 🙄 Anyhow, I enjoyed this one. I retired my Irish DANCE MOM status this past year. I will kind of miss creating those crazy wig updos for my daughter, but I’m appreciating getting my weekends back. Thank you, Adrian and Christina!

Definitely felt like I was on Rebecca and Rafa’s wavelength. What a pleasure this was to solve. The entire west side filled in with two errors - DEAD LINeS before DEAD LINKS and ibeAm before REBAR. TIL why my son wore green and black regalia when he graduated from medical school. I had no idea 🤷🏼‍♀️ I thought maybe it was his school colors?! Looking forward to seeing what you have NEXT UP in the queue for us!!

I figured out the trick when I entered ORE-IDA. Once that dash (hyphen) was in there, and I came to 112A, I immediately realized that the two places I had “line” had to be replaced by dashes. If you entered “line”, none of the down answers made any sense. Furthermore, the revealer basically tells us to put in the dashes in five locations. I guess I don’t understand why so many people are angry about this. If they read their down clues, they would realize that none of those answers were correct if the word line was there. Kudos to Harry on this clever Sunday puzzle. I really enjoyed it!

The only liquid gold I have ever heard of was breast milk. It fit, but I read the clue a second time when the crosses didn’t work and then saw cooking byproduct?! 🤣 🤣 Okay, time to put the thinking cap back on. I’ve been laughing at myself for the last thirty minutes for that epically wrong answer. PASTA WATER makes so much more sense 🤦🏼‍♀️ Beautifully constructed puzzle. Thank you for starting off my weekend with a laugh at my own expense!!

What a fun spin into the New Year! And now the song will be stuck in my head… Finished the puzzle and no happy music. Scanned all of the across answers, looks right to me. Scanned all of the downs until I saw 59D crossing 69A. I had SNOb/GELb DOH! 🤦🏼‍♀️🤣 Thank you to Seth and Jeff for kicking off 2025 in such a ‘spintacular’ fashion. Cheers 🍾🥂

I think [Periodic __] would have been a great clue for TABLE. I enjoyed all of the different ways the theme letters had things in common, but also unique from each other. Tight theme. Thank you, Joseph. Happy hump day, crosslandia 🐪

I was definitely on the constructors’ wavelength on this one. My only error on the first run through the acrosses was entering tepId for UNHIP and then realizing it was actually the answer for 35D. I loved those two answers crossing each other. I thought TOOTH for canine that bites was clever as well. Rebecca and Adam, BE A PAL and collaborate more often. I truly enjoyed this one!

Fantastic work, Tarun! Even more impressive that you are a mere one year younger than my middle child. Congratulations on your debut and your acceptance into SDSU’s Honor College in Neuroscience - both notable achievements! I also have a degree in neuroscience from UCR - a fascinating field of study that I’m sure you will enjoy. I hope to see more of your construction in future grids as your studies allow. I loved this one to PIECES.

Wonderful grid spanners today! I tried to fit Speedo before THONG, trIM before SKIM, STop before STEM, and scalp before DERMA 🤣 But I happened to make a PESTO pasta tonight for dinner! And today marks the day I became a mother 31 years ago. Happy birthday to my oldest son ☺️

Fantastic debut, Katherine. I loved seeing ESQUE in the puzzle. I’m partial to the letter Q (my maiden name also starts with a Q). I never learned the second verse of Yankee Doodle, so TIL HASTY PUDDING. Nice, tight theme. Looking forward to seeing more from you ☺️ Happy Monday!

My next door neighbor uses the phrase “SOUNDS LIKE A YOU PROBLEM” on a regular basis (not necessarily directed at me, but in relaying stories about work) 🤣 We binge watched Schitt’s Creek during Covid. Funniest show I’ve seen in a long time. Lots of talent in that LEVY family! I think it’s time to rewatch the series ☺️ Thank you, Rena. Fantastic Sunday grid 🤩

I really liked the visual rebus element here. Not sure why, but it reminded me of my early years messing around with our calculators in class to create words with numbers or later our pagers to send funny messages with numbers 😉 Early emails that we sent included “images” like the theme clues. This puzzle just really made me smile tonight. Congratulations on your debut, Dario.

As I stated yesterday, I loved this puzzle. Loved loved loved loved loved this puzzle. Loved it. I am ever so grateful to Alexander as well as all constructors for providing my favorite pastime each day. And I truly look forward to this forum everyday. Happy Thanksgiving, Crosslandia 🥰

Great end to another great year of crossword solving. Just returned home from Maui for the holidays and was excited to see that Will is back. Thank you to Joel and the gang for stepping up this year in his absence. And congratulations to Michael on 25 published puzzles. That’s impressive! My kids are encouraging me to take a stab at constructing one, so my first New Year’s resolution is to submit at least one puzzle this year.

I thought for sure this was going to be DNA related based on the title AND the constructor’s first name. My first clue as to what was going on was seeing SCAR as my answer twice and scratching my head thinking this can’t be right?! Then it happened again with BRUTUS and I was off to the races. I did have RAPINE ending with a g initially (I was thinking of it in relation to pillaging). But IGNORES cured me of that. I just really enjoyed this entire grid. Thank you Gene Louise. This truly brightened my evening as I recover from the flu.

Fantastic debut, Nate. We are all Queen fans in my family, including my kids. We joke that we’ve put them through the school of rock. 🤘🏼 My middle child spent his first three weeks of life in the NICU, and he definitely got lots of rocking time when he wasn’t in his incubator. 🥰 NEONATAL NURSES are all heroes in my book. As a native Californian, I have experienced more than my fair share of TECTONIC PLATE movement 🤣 And I have ridden a MECHANICAL BULL exactly one time and that was definitely my last! 🤠 I mentioned my love of Psych yesterday. The 100th episode was 100 Clues and featured cast members from the movie CLUE as well as Curt Smith from Tears for Fears. One of the best episodes IMO. Thank you, Nate. YOU ROCKed us with this one 🤘🏼🎸

Perfect Friday feel to me. Lovely misdirects that worked themselves out. 3D was my way into the grid. As a mother of three, I have definitely UNSNAPped my fair share of onesies 🤣 I completed this one last night following an unexpected evacuation warning alert. We are approximately 20 miles south of the closest fire (Palisades Fire), so we were confused as to why we got an alert. We walked out front and several neighbors had wandered out as well to see what was going on. We noticed a plume of smoke extremely close. One of our neighbors had a fire start in their kitchen while they weren’t home. Firefighters were able to cut into her roof and put the fire out within 5 minutes of their arrival. We got a follow up emergency alert that it was accidentally sent to the whole county but was only intended for the Kenneth Fire. It was completely coincidental that we had a fire so close to us. Needless to say, everyone was shaken up. I turned to the crossword puzzle as soon as it came out and it completely calmed me down in a way like nothing else can. So thank you, Robert Logan, for saving my sanity on an otherwise crazy, emotional roller coaster of a day. I appreciate you and all constructors out there for making each of my days just a little brighter 🥹

Aww, this was Actually Cute for a Monday. Thank you, Kevin and Andrea, for this Adorably Charming grid 😍

I loved the reparsing of the theme answers. None of them seemed obvious and each brought a smile as I figured it out. I enjoy jigsaw puzzles as well as crosswords, so I liked seeing EDGE PIECES and was surprised it was a debut! I saw a link between CLIPS and MAVS as nicknames for NBA teams. I had one MISSTEP with ScARFS before SNARFS. All in all a fantastic Wednesday. Thank you, Kevin.

I was so excited when I opened the puzzle last night and saw Lewis was one of the constructors! This was just beautifully crafted and such a wonderful collaboration with Barbara 😍 I always start Saturday puzzles on Friday nights and go through the clues at least three times across and down to see what I can figure out before putting it away for the night. The clues germinate in my brain overnight and when I open the puzzle on Saturday morning, the answers seem to leap off the page. This one was no exception. BONSAI TREE was one of those answers that I couldn’t see last night, but seemed so obvious this morning. Same with BLOW A GASKET. I also loved seeing rows like ANGIE REBA and MARA grouped together! The LOWER FORTY EIGHT was one that I figured out last night but on my final pass. So many spanners in this one! Thank you, Barbara and Lewis, for creating a perfect Saturday worthy puzzle. I truly enjoyed the solve 🤩

🙋🏼‍♀️ Hand up here for the dreaded ETALIa/NEaL crossing. I also had a fat finger typo for TOSCi/iGED 🤦🏼‍♀️ Those two errors took me about 10 extra minutes of searching to find them. That being said, I thought this was a great debut from Danna. Well done and I hope to see more!!

🤩 Adrianne, what a spectacular debut. After seeing all of those grid spanners, I decided to solve the downs first. I got ALY, ERE, RACCOONS, TOURS, and HUNG right off the bat. With just those in, I was able to suss out all three of those top spanners, and what a smile it brought 😁 I continued through the grid solving small sections of downs and then seeing if I could do the crosses. Hand up for filling in His before HER and CHeW before CHOW. The latter was my final correction for the gold star 🌟 I was just a couple of minutes over my PB on this one and I really enjoyed it! It just felt fresh and lively. I look forward to solving many more of yours! On a side note, I was strongly considering attending Harvey Mudd as many of my high school teachers suggested it for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to attend a school that was so close to home (Glendora was a mere 10 miles/three towns away). Best of luck to you as you continue your studies, Adrianne, and I am so sorry for your tragic loss as so many others have expressed here today as well.

I felt like I was on Carolyn’s wavelength. The solve flowed pretty smoothly from beginning to end. As a native Californian, we learned SI SE PUEDE in elementary school and the importance of César Chavez and Dolores Huerta to farm workers. Seeing it in the grid really resonated with me with all that’s going on here in my state right now 😞 And of course I’m now very curious to see what @Andrzej thought of this puzzle 😂 Happy Friday!

I loved this one. I am always team rebus. I love the extra challenge of this type of solve. I had one half of the rebus on three of them, some across and some down. I knew from the title that the rebus answers were going to be state abbreviations. The revealer of WESTERN UNION and the final rebus cross of ITS ON ME/NO RETURNS was my aha moment 💡 I immediately went back to the other three and figured out what there cross could be and was able to get all of my rebus crosses in. My last entry was a flyspeck changing a fat finger b to an R for SERUM. I thought I had entered SERUM initially, so it didn’t take long when I saw a b there. I solve on my phone, so I frequently have to fix answers like this. Thank you, Amie. More like this one, please!!

NONO! My favorite kind of puzzle! The revealer definitely helped with the solved in this case. I figured out L NO NO OAP first which led me to DOUBLE NEGATIVES. That helped me figure out the other themers. Loved PUSH crossing UTERI and laughed at LOOT crossing the opposing OWES 😆 This puzzle was TOPS for me. Thank you, Simeon!

I had two different crosses that I didn’t know and had to run the alphabet until they looked right to me. VAI_/_SSA as well as LOC_E/A_ERS. I tried out each vowel the 27D/41A intersection and ran the alphabet to get LOCKE/AKERS and the gold star 😅😮‍💨 I am only one more day away from achieving a 4 year streak of completing these puzzles without assistance. Thank you to Daniel for a clever theme and slightly harder than usual for me Monday!

Color me impressed. I liked TYPEFACE crossing SERIF. We have both DYNAMITE STICK and TNT. SHOJI and TERIYAKI SAUCE. IDIOT TAX had me laughing aloud. This entire puzzle is a TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE of a well constructed themeless Friday. Well done, Bryan. You truly have a gift.

From the opening clue and answer (No GUTS, no glory!) to the ultimate fall of ICARUS, this was chef’s kiss perfection. The theme answers provided a perfect visual of the rise and fall. Even though Corry is NEW IN TOWN, I’m pretty sure we will be seeing more from him. Well done and congratulations on this exceptional debut 🌟