Barbara

I rarely post, so I hope Josh is reading this. This is hands-down one of the best puzzles I have experienced, and my most favorite Saturday puzzles of all time. It was a rightful Saturday, IMO - one where you at first feel the puzzle is disjointed and unwieldy, with very little filled in. Then, when you stick with it, and discover also that the Shortz editing wand has bestowed its wizardry, it all magically comes together. Thank you, Josh, for restoring my faith in the Saturday puzzle. You (and Will) have created a masterpiece.

OK, here I go posting again, when I usually lurk. I am not nearly as adept as the cruciverbalists on this chat, but I am enjoying (and solving!) the difficult Fridays and Saturdays of late. Admittedly, I think my streak of 74 is due to so many of the prior Fridays and Saturdays of the last months being so easy. But this week's Fri and Sat and last week's have made the solving so challenging and wonderful. A prior poster, @SP put it best: "I didn’t see a lot of unusual proper nouns, obscure trivia, or questionable pop culture references everyone complains about here." No Cheats, as I call them. And so fun! I did have SUSHI CHEF for 1A as another solver did. That threw me. Then I had ETHNO for -centric (16A) for the longest time until I deleted almost everything in that block and found HELIO. And someone else mentioned that for the first 10 minutes, nothing was filled in. Me too! I did say to myself, "You had a good run, so if this is the one that blows your streak, at least it's a deservedly challenging, well-edited one." So thank you, Fritz (and Will!), for reverting back to brain-stretching status in creating worthy Friday and Saturday puzzles. I know from these posts that I'm in good company.