Katie

When you get hung up on a word (lookin’ at you, ALOP) and come to the comments just to see if you’re not alone. :)

Solved the puzzle then went to lookup waftaroms. The following comic books art words are some of the others that I particular liked: -pleads: flying sweat droplets -agitrons: squiggles representing shaking -squeans: starbursts or circles representing dizziness

In response to Deb, I solve alone BUT am not opposed to help. Being in community with others is much more fun than just testing my own skills! I have a friend who loves baseball and I send him every baseball themed clue, whether I know the answer or not. His first response is always AROD, followed by the correct answer. It’s always funny! Thanks for a delightful puzzle today!

I believe this would be a great first Thursday puzzle for a new solver to attempt. The gimmick requires a little extra thought but the puzzle overall is a relatively easy solve. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks!

The first pass left me with a nearly empty grid so I buckled down for a toughie and ended up with a time well below average! I find it so fun when other commenters share the same experience. This was a slow to start, smooth to fill puzzle for me and it seems like it was for others too! Enjoyable! Thanks!

Happy new year, all! Here’s to another great year of puzzling ahead! Sanity in the mayhem.

What a great week of puzzles! I loved all the theme entries today and the nod to Canada… a Yukon reference, Ottawa, Feist… then I remembered Josie and the Pussycats (and Riverdale) were filmed in Vancouver and Seth Rogan played the Green Hornet and Canadian geese famously fly in vees. I suppose if the subject in 110A were Canadian though, the answer would now be GODSAVETHEking. After all this, I certainly felt the need to pronounce 117A the way my high school English teacher insisted, shed-jyool. Thanks for a lovely Sunday puzzle!

This comment is unrelated to today’s puzzle but forgive me as I have no one else with whom to share this. I had some free time today while waiting for someone so I turned to the archives. I just finished the puzzle from January 9, 2020 and it was awesome! It has 520 comments so you can imagine it caused a stir too! Today’s puzzle and then that one?! What a day! Haha.

I really liked this theme and puzzle. Commenting because I seem to be the odd one out and wanted to add balance. I didn’t get the revealer at 39A until about half way through the solve. The only starred clue I had solved at that point was CLOUDYSKIES. It wasn’t until BUTTDIAL that I understood "self-own" as "cellphone" and the rest fell into place. Clever and fun. Even if the Eiffel Tower is in no way rod shaped, imho lol. Thanks!

I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. It had the right amount of crunch. Thursdays are, without a doubt, my favourite.

Really cool about the sea urchin. Fun treasures of doing crosswords are little stories like that.

I often do a quick pass through the clues on Friday and Saturday puzzles to enter in any gimmes. The most satisfying puzzles, in my opinion, are the ones that are mostly blank after the first pass before they slowly and steadily fall into place, like this puzzle. Enjoyable! Thanks!

I’m inclined to be a Sam Ezersky fan because he’s a young crossword prodigy and I can appreciate that lol but I don’t love his puzzles and I’m not sure why. They’re on the more challenging end which I like and they have some cute clues (lookin’ at you, fudge substitute) but they just never feel fun for me. What is my problem here?! Also, I have never seen an Elmo Halloween costume lol that was a toughie. And I’ll join the noise and agree that I don’t find LAMBSTEAK to be parallel with chop and shank.

I thoroughly enjoyed today’s solve! This is a wonderful Sunday puzzle. I did spend a few minutes trying to find the error preventing me from the happy music. Turns out it is DUCAT not DUkAT (I knew that too!) and WHACAMOLE not WHAkAMOLE.

This was a fun puzzle with a cute pay out at the end. Thank you Jeff and Desirée, for the puzzle and for being teachers! Many thanks!

Fun! And with a lovely tie in to Strands!

I loved this challenging puzzle! The SE corner was the last to fall. I had RAINcoats at 56A and I swapped many incorrect down answers in and out. A lovely challenge. Thanks!

Thursdays are often my favourite puzzles and this is a great example why. What a fun puzzle to solve!

Something tells me there’s a large intersection in the Venn diagram of NYT crossword solvers and Jeopardy watchers.

I thought this was a fun puzzle! I don’t always comment but felt the need to do so today to balance out reviews from the non-American subgroup of solvers! Thanks!

Delightful. I can’t imagine how a constructor could come up with this. Clever clever.

Lovely puzzle. Loved the additional Babe nod at 36A with THATLLDO, a saying that gets a lot of play in our house.

Loved it! What a fun puzzle though, I must say, it took me a surprisingly long time to hit the theme. Thanks!!

It took me a while to crack the SE corner because I couldn’t get absinthe out of my mind and wondered if there was something called an absintini lol.

I’m not disputing that 66D is correct but the province abbreviations always feel so awkward, especially for Alberta. In part because the 2-letter postal abbreviation of AB is used in most applications but also partly because the abbreviated version in the past was Alta. with Alb. being the French abbreviation, at least in my experience. Okay. That’s my nitpick. Very fun puzzle. Otherwise, I enjoyed it.

Delightful puzzle

Deb, all the very best to you. Thanks for your contribution to this community! It’s really the best corner of the internet. (Quick shout out to Adam and Rafael who had a lovely puzzle, overshadowed by other news! Thanks for a nice Friday!)

Constructors are so clever! Loved it. (Took me embarrassingly long to find SKiDADDLE crossing UViA.)

It’s always enjoyable when I come to the comments and see discussion and grumbling over a word that didn’t catch my attention at all. In this case, TAXICAB has done it. I love the explanations, from detailed history of the TAXImeter CABriolet from @Parrick J. to the succinctly put "taxi means shuttle, can means car" from @Michael M. Thanks for enriching discussion! Both valid but I disagree because language changes. TAXI and CAB are the most commonly used in modern language and, importantly, without distinction. I’d say TAXICAB has become redundant. Such fun!

Well! A PB for me… faster by 3 minutes than my last! I was surprised at the happy music because I was not confident on some of my answers and fully anticipated several squares to need revisiting.

Great puzzle. I loved the LIFEOFJAWS clue. I went through the puzzle twice though and could not find the error keeping me from completion. I resorted to checking the column and quickly found that I was missing a zed in FUTs and ANTs. Funny the things your brain allows.

I didn’t understand the theme until I’d solved the whole puzzle. Then I went back over each and had the aha moment.

I loved this puzzle but didn’t get the happy music upon completion. I found my error at 71A: SEdTO… I can’t believe I entered ZEd instead of ZEE at 65D. I’m always careful on theatre and centre and favour and colour, etc… this one shouldn’t have tripped me up at all! And yet! :) Great puzzle! Thanks!

Personal best for a Monday but honestly I don’t think I’ve ever just sat and focused solely on a Monday crossword. Good for me.

Great puzzle. I suspected a rebus or trick with VIVIENLEIGH. I think my favourite puzzles are ones that start slow and build up. If I don’t get many clues solved in the first pass but end up with a pretty good time, I’ve probably enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks!

Thoroughly enjoyable puzzle! Thanks!

A very nice touch with the 14 rows and 15 columns. Lovely.

A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle.

Who are we kidding? TAXICAB is redundant but so is TAXI and CAB. It’s all Uber!

I had trouble straightening out the centre: SISI, ORRIS, ARLES, ESOS, PLATOS. I took a little side trip to Google for today’s solve. Nonetheless, an enjoyable Sunday! Thanks.

Enjoyable puzzle! Surprised to see all the haters. To be fair, I can’t find the error keeping me from actually finishing it. But the grid is full and I thought it was fun. I’ll come back later and figure out my miss.

Nice puzzle. I got a little stuck in the SE corner. I cleared out the few answers I had and started afresh after a few minutes of struggle and it all quickly slid into place. I’m not sure what was holding me up on the first go. I came to the comments for the SCHTICKY response. So far, there’s not much noise! Colour me surprised. Have a great weekend everyone!

I enjoyed this puzzle and finished it in a short amount of time... and then spent a long time finding my errors. I started second guessing everything: PAEAN or PAEoN, FAINT or FeINT, MADAMA or MADAMe, ANNIKA or ANNItA? Made it to the music, in the end! :) Thanks!

This was an easy puzzle though I didn’t love OPENENDER, the single PEC, and EMEND. I am familiar with the word EMEND but I always think it so unnecessary, given the functional and phonetic similarity of amend. Plus, it looks awkward lol like it’s incomplete lol. Team amend.

Loved loved loved this puzzle!

Such clever inner palindrome entries! Well done!

I really enjoyed this puzzle! I didn’t get the revealer and theme until almost the end. I think because the SE corner was near last to fall for me. I have never heard of HART for stag. Head of lettuce was a great misdirect. Have a great day all!

This was a toughie for me but I managed to solve it with no lookups, except to verify that BESTREW was, in fact, a word. I added 6 minutes to my average time but I actually thought it was a really solid and enjoyable puzzle. Blame for the long time is in my foggy brain this morning. Enjoyable nonetheless!

This was such a fun puzzle to solve! I loved all the puns. I also loved the poker clue teasers until ANTE finally showed up in the final down clue. Brilliant. The clue for TSARS was great.