Scott

Sauteing is not particularly associated with zucchini, nor is zucchini particularly associated with sauteing. Felt like a borderline unfair misdirect that resulted in that entire section being a total loss. I probably should have clued in with our good friends the UTES but I had SPRING instead of SERTAS sooooo it was a mess. Next time!

I would like to encourage folks who feel discouraged by the difficulty of late week puzzles (and by the posted solve times of advanced puzzlers). This took me slightly less than one hour to solve without lookups. I have been solving crosswords intermittently for a couple of years. I do not think I will ever get to a sub 10 minute Friday like some were claiming yesterday (that one took me slightly OVER an hour without lookups) but I do feel that I can chip away at puzzles that would have made my blood run cold six months ago. Keep it up everyone and if you have the time and inclination you should try to push through without lookups and test your limits. It's a great feeling to stand triumphant over the smoking corpse of a Saturday.

My first thought for "kerfuffle over beach footwear" was SANDALSCANDAL which didn't fit but I'm still pretty proud of it. Fun theme. I got stuck with an E making HASTE/LACE instead of HASTY/LACY so that completely ruined my time but a good puzzle nonetheless.

A year ago I would have given up on this puzzle after the first pass. It took me well over an hour but it's a nice feeling to get it with no lookups. I do wish the theme red herrings (top earners, roman gods, etc) were related in some way to the clue but that's probably asking too much. Nice puzzle!

This was my first clean Thursday solve. I loved it. The rebus became clear pretty quickly when some of the crossers revealed most of velocity and terminal and I knew it couldn't be anything else. I went with a guess that it was going to be TV on all the double clues and it really fell into place after that. It unclear what to do with the rebus squares on mobile. Mine accepted automatically but I'm not sure why or how. I did enter both a T and a V in all the rebus boxes even though the complete puzzle showed "vaylors version" and "vunnel vision" and, particularly amusing, "verminal velocity" which incidentally I think would be funny if clued as "the speed of pests". 😂. All of this is to say the rebus was very satisfying and I'm still fairly new so I think the complainers are being a little dogmatic but hey aren't we all sometimes. Maybe a toggle setting in the options would make people feel better. I certainly do not want to know in advance so it would have to be something individual. Thanks for a fun puzzle. 🥂

This comments section is hilarious today. Here is a disambiguator for everyone who finds themselves confused about the puzzle or about big box stores in general. Big Box stores are large, box-shaped stores, usually located in outlying suburban areas, often in close proximity to other similar stores (in aggregate, these are referred to as Big Box Developments, or something similar). This is in contrast to a shopping mall—where many stores are located in one building—or main-street style shops, which have individual access but are smaller scale. Walmart, Costco, Ikea, BestBuy, Target, HomeDepot, etc. are the prototypical Big Box stores. Big Box stores are not (necessarily) stores where you buy large things or large numbers of things. The term refers exclusively to the size and shape of the actual building. The stores listed in the rebus squares, are not all Big Box stores. The gimmick is that they are stores and they are placed in boxes that are slightly bigger than standard crossword boxes. This might have been more straightforward if they had been consistently either all big box stores or all not, but let's assume these were the ones that worked and leave it at that. The visual pun of the rebus being a store in a larger box would not have worked without the visual emphasis. While it is often nice to be surprised by a gimmick, this one had to be visual or it would not have made sense. This is probably more annoying than helpful but hey. Take care out there!

Whenever I actually manage to solve a Thursday I come to the comments and inevitably find out it was an easy one. Oh well. I thought this was clever and quite fast and fun with a few hiccups to keep it interesting.

It truly didn't occur to me that undieruns might be an athletic event. First and only thought was skidmark related. It seems I wasn't the only one to misunderstand the intended relationship between streaks and undergarments. 😅

I enjoyed the puzzle. Crunchy for a Monday. It was unclear if this puzzle was the actual mechanism by which the constructor came out to their parents, which obviously doesn't matter but I'm curious. Happy Pride everybody. Take up space. Damn the man.

Yeah this was quite a lot harder than recent Mondays. Chignon/Herd was where I got stuck. I had LEAD and was pretty sure AOIL wasn't a thing but there were one to many variables in that section for me today. Cheers

Lol respect for a theme that is a homophone of 4 specific varieties of a specific variety of bread. As a bona fide fan of a good Reuben (and having eaten them at maybe 5 different NYC delis), I approve. Fun crossword. The theme didn't really add a ton to the solve, as others have mentioned. But I appreciated some of the clues. Nice misdirect at 53D x 65A. I had AWRY and had a heckuva time finding my error. Which is apropos considering the theme itself was A RYE. I'll see myself out.

It seems like the sincere effort of the constructor has been lost in the drama of the comments. I am guilty as well. Dana if you are reading this I hope you don't take it personally. It appears that many of not most people prefer not to be surprised by certain kinds of challenges. I had fun with the puzzle and I had fun in the comments too. Take care!

A panicky moment when I got to the end of the crosses and had hardly anything filled in 😳. Lots of tricky clues on that first pass but it filled in pretty quickly on the downs. A nice simple theme with a surprise when you bite into it. Fun idea and really nicely executed.

My first clean Sunday solve. Took about an hour and was really enjoyable. Felt like a big Wednesday. I'm glad that they're a little less intimidating once in a while. It's a confidence boost for us noobs.

The last couple days are starting to make me feel like I can do trickier puzzles. At first I thought it was a similar trick to yesterday because I knew it had to be heart transplant but it didn't fit. I tried HEARTTRANS, which fit and made me think the trick was that there would be a missing word at the end of each theme clue or some such. The crossers disabused me of that idea and I eventually got to the revealer, which opened up the rest. It was a nice aha moment when UPSANDDOWNS clicked and I realized the circles had to be significant. I'm sure more seasoned cruciverbalists saw it a lot sooner though, judging from the significant number of 'easy for a Thursday' comments. NOTES: • Sad to say I originally put STEVIE for 1D, which worked with EST and encouraged me to follow the trail to a dead end before remembering that it was an ARETHA album, which I have listened to many times (sigh). • I truly don't know if I could have completed the puzzle without 26D. It was almost the only longer clue that I knew for certain and it really helped anchor the entire center. I can understand why anyone unfamiliar with Harry Potter would have struggled that section. Although I think we are at a point where—well-deserved authorial controversy notwithstanding—Harry Potter trivia should likely be considered General Knowledge. Peace!

I audibly gasped when I opened up the puzzle. That is a lot of white space. Honestly thought I didn't have a chance but I got the three easier quadrants on my own before bringing my wife in for NW backup. That corner was above my pay grade but we are a pretty good team and managed a gold star in 45 minutes. I understand some of the negative comments re the weakness of the tiny center connecting the four almost entirely distinct quadrants, and the fact that a puzzle largely generated by a python script somewhat lacks a soul. But hey it was a fun challenge and certainly a better use of time than doom scrolling.

For some reason I read the clue for 77a and instantly knew it was NESSIESEENINSEINE. One of those glorious moments that is a result of being on the exact wavelength of the constructor. Until then it was looking pretty rough. That one gave me the gist of the gimmick and I was on my way to a clear solve. One hour and five minutes, but still, on my way.

This was a really lovely puzzle that made me feel both frustrated and smart. All the best puzzles do that and this one met me in exactly the right place. Tons of fun cluing that clicked when it clicked. And a clever little theme that didn't require the rosetta stone to parse. One thing that stood out for me. I will echo the sentiments that BRUH is not a positive exclamation that stands in for bro or dude. It is a sarcastic/disappointed stand-in for "seriously bro?" but you say it completely deadpan without the upward inflection. My qualification for knowing this is that I am the father of two boys, ages 12 and 14. Otherwise known as 'taking one for the human race'. You're welcome and thank you.

Maddeningly one square away from a gold star. I had ARDENCE, which seems to me of similar legitimacy to the actual answer. I just figured NOSILE must be some new-to-me word along the lines of puerile or sterile. Dagnabbit! This one gave a good fight. The theme pulled out a lot of line before I was able to reel it in. ESCAPE/SIDESTEP was the one I figured out from the crossers and the others were not too difficult once I got the pattern. This felt like a good level of difficulty for a Sunday although I'm sure some will disagree in both directions. Thanks team!

Once you come to the blog and peep the theme it obviously makes sense in retrospect and there is an element of respect to the designer. But during the puzzle it's just "that's not what that song is called but the puzzle is never wrong so I'm missing something" or "that's not what that phrase is but the puzzle is never wrong so I'm missing something". I'm truly not sure how to feel about it. Again. Respect to the cleverness of the theme but I would be surprised if more than the tiniest fraction figured it out. One area of the puzzle that really got me was MOIRA crossing IRAS. Having never seen the Handmaid's Tale (didn't have the proper streaming service at the time and then lost interest) and being Canadian (and therefore ignorant of certain American tax ephemera) this combo felt borderline impossible to get correct within the bounds of the puzzle. The other one was ironically the revealer where it crossed "gumshoe". I know a gumshoe is a detective but have never once seen it shortened to TEC. Anyway. Good efforts all around but it would be nice if certain types of trivia were a little more crossable. Take care!

A little less breezy than recent Mondays. An enjoyable puzzle.

This was hard but fair. Had to call in the cavalry (my wife) and together we got it squared. That SW corner was crispety crunchety. Had everything right except had DECK instead of DESK. I was thinking ship anchor, which was I think the intentional misdirect. DORIC didn't seem entirely impossible as a name so I was stuck flyspecking all over the map. Finally turned it off for a while and the answer literally came to me in a dream as my brain clicked that it had to be DESK. Thanks for the fun 68 minutes. This was a pretty clever one.

I have a tool room. It is made out of red sheet metal and it is almost exactly the size of a bread box. Smallest room in the house and that's saying something.

Liked the puzzle. Although I've done a few Tuesdays faster I didn't find it as difficult as some others noted. Love a Paul Simon clue. There were a few tight spots but it fell into place with a small amount of lateral thinking. Probably filmdom was the stretchiest and least satisfying clue of the bunch but most puzzles have one or two of those. Nice to see a fellow Canadian around here!

Wow I guess I'm not as ready for Thursdays as I thought. Must have had a few easy weeks in December aimed at the fly by night holiday solvers. This was a wakeup call for sure. Maybe I will have to start allowing myself some hints and look ups while I get used to all the crosswordese.

No hints or lookups today felt like a win. The NW corner gave me fits! KEEPTO doesn't sit well as a thing anyone actually says in my experience. I went through every possible variation of KEEP___ before landing on that because I finally figured out OPTS and TOKES independently. Probably just me but those three clues (in combo with 20A being extremely non-obvious) weren't doing anything for me today. While I certainly did not find this puzzle breezy, as some others have suggested, I am learning to just stick with the trouble spots, start a section over, and walk away periodically. Eventually it clears up as it did today. And the feeling of triumph is all the better when it follows a prolonged struggle.

My partner and I do the Sunday together and this was really fun. She's not a rebus fan but I think she enjoyed this one.

Fun puzzle. I had to come back to it a few times. I have learned the last few weeks that I can almost always soldier through and I'm proud of doing this one without hints even if it took me over an hour. One or two gripes that have been said elsewhere. IBEENHAD really did feel cheap, regardless of it being solvable with the crosses. The clue to ICIER felt grammatically suspect vis a vis the answer (I'm not sure how to describe why -- "needs salt more" might have been better). And I would have loved a clever integration of the partial theme clues (TAKEI, etc.) It felt like it was 90 percent of the way to perfection. Thanks for the hard work!

I was a minute slower than my Wednesday average and fifteen minutes slower than yesterday so I must be the target audience they're building these puzzles for. This one felt hard but fair. Proud to say I got HALO right away. The entire middle from west to east gave me a few hiccups but fell into place once I literally deleted that entire section and started over. Sometimes I stare so long at the existing letters that I lose the trees for the forest or vice versa and a clean slate is helpful.

My Friday sample size is very small but this was approximately average for the few I have solved in the past. Happy to get the gold star and feel like I really earned it on this one. Some of the clues were serious headscratchers until they became obvious, which is the best kind of clue. And I had quite a few that were confidently wrong (Tuxedo for tophat, I'lltakecareofit for I'lldothetalking, etc). Happily I avoided the Maggie Simpson misdirect because I figured that was too easy for a Friday. Anyway. Great puzzle and an hour well spent.