Chris

This is easily the hardest Tuesday I've ever played. Naticks all over the place. Lots of obscure proper nouns like ADOLFO, SARA, IMAN, lots of extremely awkwardly phrased words that still don't make complete sense to me like AT A LOW EBB and every theme clue. A lot of really nichey knowledge like GESSO, ONIONSKIN. This took me as long as a Thursday or Friday but without any satisfying lightbulb moments, not a good puzzle at all IMO.

I'm already seeing other commenters had the same problem I did, bottom left corner. GOHAM and ESME. I've never read a Twilight book, but I still know there is a character Edward Cullen. If you did not read the books, there is no way you could possibly know there is another Cullen named ESME. And then 'GO HAM', that might as well be YASSIFY. Combined with IMSODONE and TOGOCUPS, answers that aren't that niche but are awkward enough that nobody is getting them without most of the crossing clues. And thankfully the jewelry theme that helped me get BRODY by figuring out BROOCH or I wouldn't have gotten that either.

Good puzzle. First Saturday I've gotten in six weeks. Last square I got was STUPA/PUTTEES cause I haven't heard of either of those and they phonetically work with any vowel.

I liked the puzzle, but quite possibly the hardest Monday puzzle I've ever seen. Just to have BATIK, BLINI, and LAPAZ all intersecting each other. And BOERS and SATEEN. Most Mondays I just bulldoze through, today I had like three squares at the end I had to cycle all grammatically reasonable letters.

Anyone else notice ETSY is an answer in almost every puzzle lately?

This Tuesday was less direct than you'd usually expect for a Tuesday. Not all that hard, 16 minute solve for me, but had a few vexing corners. For example, I thought 31A initially was LEOTARD rather than UNITARD which made the down clues confusing. And there's some long crosses like ONTHEDL where until you get it, the letters you see next to each other makes you think you got a cross clue wrong.

Really punishing puzzle for anyone who doesn't know Wicked songs. I figured out the letter rearrangement theme but pretty much the entire bottom half was Naticky for me. Lots of trivia proper names and a lot of short phrases crossing them which felt like reaches.

Good puzzle. I got STEAL A KISS quickly enough to catch onto the theme early which helped. Lots of hints that were just the right amount of misleading to make it feel great to figure it out. Center north was the toughest part for me. I was so focused on the O in OUTS being the missing O that it took me forever to think of SHUTOUTS. And GUAM/INCA/ACURA/GIS was a compound Natick for me. In addition to confusing myself over MATED because I didn't think of "Beat in chess" as a past tense form.

I liked the symbol clues, those were very well done. A lot of the clues today felt more like obscure vocabulary quiz. HUMDINGERS, NOISOME, ESPIAL, DINS, MOCHI, and they all seemed to cross each other and cross other awkward or proper name trivia clues like GAH, IRENE, EHOW, BERNARDO, ASSES as an answer for "Nincompoops", somehow knowing the name of the city Iowa State is in. Other than the theme clues, I was not a fan of today's puzzle.

I liked the main theme, currently have not finished it. I got all the theme clues already but sit at about 85% complete because there's a ton of Naticky proper noun clues in the puzzle. The name of a co-Nobelist, the painter named John, Lenape people from New Jersey, a Paramore hit. Also I don't understand the LOUD OUTS clue. I was thinking LINE OUTS. Even Google doesn't seem to know what LOUD OUTS are besides a podcast.

Good puzzle, a lot of tough areas though faster than average for a Saturday (And I don't get the majority of Saturdays). The east area was the tough area for me. First seeing the Norse tree clue and thinking "How is that not Yggdrasil?" with no idea what kind of tree it was supposed to be. And that in the same square as LEA/AGHA which is a huge Natick for me. Also I was sure for a while Faculty was STAFF but equally sure the crossing clue was DINING so got really confused there. Then I had SACHELS instead of SACHETS and wondered for a while what the hell SPALS were. And had no idea what a CASBAH was so thank God for the Clash putting the word in my brain. But most of the puzzle was a pleasure to solve and got a nice immature giggle seeing SEX TAPE right in the center of the heart.

A little surprised everyone is calling it Monday-Tuesday level. I finished faster than my Thursday average but not anywhere close to Monday-Tuesday speed. More like an easy Wednesday (Especially compared to yesterday that was full of Naticks). Fun puzzle though.

Kind of a weird puzzle for a Tuesday. Most of it was fairly easy. But it had that EL GRECO/GIGI crossing that's a major Natick. Plus it had a lot of answers that seemed designed for the first instinct with the same number of letters to be wrong. Like ETHEL Waters instead of Muddy. MINIPIG instead of Piglets. PITH instead of Rind or Peel. Gave me a lot of confusing moments when the obvious crossings didn't work. I did appreciate LEVIES crossed with LEVEE.

Pretty good puzzle, at first I was looking for the mixed clues to be some sort of semantic combination of those companies as opposed to anagrams. Nothing particularly hard or misleading for a Sunday.

Fun puzzle. Easy Tuesday puzzle overall. There's one little part I got hung up on. For the 'Humor can be this' question I had DRY instead of WRY and for the football question I had TDS instead of ADS. Leaving me D_ITECTSTLE for the restaurant question but making every other crossing clue work. Still took me only just over 11 minutes, but I have to laugh at the fact that I made two one letter mistakes that were equally valid answers and happened to fall on the same line of an answer I had heard of but was not familiar with the clue.

I liked the puzzle today, tough but largely figure-outable. The only real Natick square for me was DAX/XYLEM because I am unfamiliar with the German stock index and would never expect a word to start with X. I tried cycling every letter but also made the mistake of assuming a vegan product would start with VEGAN and not VEGEN.

I enjoyed today's puzzle. Not often the theme can make you go "Ugh" but still seem awesome. My original guess for the mixtape was EMO and that happened to be the right answer for the clue right beneath it. Also one of those puzzles that didn't rely too much on proper nouns, super awkward phrasing or overly common fillers. I rolled my eyes thinking the son of Seth would be ESAU again, turned out to be ENOS.

Love the theme with GOODNESS GRACIOUS GREAT BALLS OF FIRE. There was a few clues I got entirely with crossing clues like EEO as an acronym I've never heard of and OPI the makeup brand. The square that gave me the most trouble was CATERS/CAPS OFF. First I had TOPS OFF and never heard of CAPS OFF as an alternative to that. And because I kept seeing the "Does dishes" clue in terms of washing them instead of serving them I was wondering if it was something like WATERS and maybe the down clue was some new slang term I didn't know.

This is by far the hardest Monday puzzle I've ever seen. Five or six clues that are from super obscure spheres of knowledge. ELIDE? ANGI? What the hell is a LULU and who knows the acronym UPC? Way too many obscure acronyms, this is like a Wednesday,

Good easy Monday puzzle. A bit funny to see TERSER as an answer after that was the last word I got on Friday. Also not the first time the last word I got right was ELON, referring to the college and not the billionaire. I first put down OASIS not realizing it pluralized to OASES, and it was my one square 'Amiss'.

I'm not a fan of this puzzle. I liked the optical illusion theme, that part of it worked. But WAY too many proper nouns, a dozen of them Naticks. And some with alternate valid answers that seemed more well known than the correct ones. For example, six letter Steve from "Battle of the Sexes". Steve Harvey ALSO did something called Battle of the Sexes and the Steve Carell movie I'd never heard of. Then the patron saint of sailors, where STELLA is a patron saint of sailors but also STELMO. Getting the wrong answers first made it take forever to figure out those regions of the puzzle. Really frustrating puzzle for anyone who doesn't know Justin Bieber songs, obscure movies, biblical names and patron saints.

Very good cluing today, misleading but clever with that 'OOHHH' payoff you want. I had a real tough time with OENOPHILIA cause I hadn't heard of the word, I kept thinking it was about Cincinnati Reds fans and the crossings were tricky. While I have heard of Singapore Sling I hadn't heard of GINSLING so I kept triyng to make it SINSLING or GUNSLING. Then I kept thinking PROP ART instead of PLOP ART. Then in SW area for the Swiss army knife clue I kept thinking it was OMNITOOL or POLYTOOL which made it tough to get any of the crossings until LIFESTYLE CREEP finally clicked.

I loved this puzzle. The kind of puzzle where you stare at a clue for ten minutes, finally it clicks, then the letters it fills in answer five other clues in succession. Cool theme that works well, lots of figure-outables, not so many obscure proper nouns.

I enjoyed todays puzzle. It took me a bit because the first theme clue I thought I had with FLIP HOUSES instead of FLIP A HOUSE. But once I saw I OWE YOU ONE I figured out the state theme and the rest of them fell into place. Lots of well worded clues today, only a few nichey proper nouns and all of them with reasonable crossing clues.

Fun puzzle, maybe a bit easy for a Saturday but a couple sticking points. GENEVE vs GENEVA. Then having STILL MOVING for a long time over STILL MOOING and having no idea what started with SV for "Higher power". I've been to New Orleans 20 times and still somehow needed KR_W__ to think of KREWES. Then thinking SAYIT instead of SAYST, I think even for old timey speak that's an awkward word. And of course I knew it was WELL LA DI DAH immediately but there's like five possible spellings of LA DI DAH. I only looked up like 2-3 answers, I generally only look up proper nouns in areas I have no knowledge in when I have most of the crossing clues already.

Good puzzle, a lot of answers that did not go in the direction you expected but still made total sense. Usually when there’s longer answers they are harder to get for me and I need most of the cross clues first. In this case though I got all but one with only two or three cross clues and they gave me anchors for the harder cross clues. Bottom right gave me the most trouble because I had no idea what a glazier is.

This one took me longer than usual for a Monday. Top center area felt a bit confusing just because I felt TODAY was a strange answer to "Now" because it represents a broader period of time than just the current moment, I am not familiar with QUICK OATS, DO A SET was a bit awkwardly phrased, and OHO feels like a reach to call it a word.

First I want to say that the nitrite film that was extremely flammable hasn't been used in decades. Big plot point in Cinema Paradiso. This was a fun tough puzzle for me. A lot of two word figure-outable answers like SUN RIPENING. You know you have good clues when you stare at it for ten minutes then immediately realize it meant something a little different than you expected. Like I had PLEA DEALS for a long time then the region fell into place when I realized ARMS DEALS. A few Naticky squares at the end. Like I had GRAND PIANO for a while before figuring out FORTE PIANO purely from crossing clues, who the heck has ever heard of a FORTE PIANO? And some obscure proper names like ROSAMUND and COMANECI. I don't look up answers I don't know but if I'm 80% sure I'll look it up to confirm and I did that quite a few times today.

That was a bit tricky for a Monday puzzle. Wait, it’s Thursday? Finished in 7:37. My Tuesday PR is not that fast. Good theme though.

This was a bit tricky for a Tuesday. A lot of really clever clues, and not a lot of proper nouns, but a lot of weird acronyms, short multiword phrases and slangy stuff. AS OF, UM HI, IN RE, weird answers like that. Plus I was so sure the "Show extreme fandom for" was SHIP instead of STAN it took me a while to figure out that corner.

Good puzzle today, felt more like a Tuesday than Tuesday but good cluing. I did end up looking the last name of DOROTHY and ELLE because though I knew exactly what characters I was looking for I had no idea what their last names were. I need to remember the word EMBANC this time because I'm pretty sure I've seen the exact same clue in the last month or two.

I wasn't a big fan of today's cluing. Especially in the bottom/right corner. ANYHOO instead of ANYWAY when it was crossing HE/THEM which made more sense as WE/THEM. And then the MOOT point, MOOT doesn't mean 'Debatable', it means 'Irrelevant to the issue'. If you were going to do ANYHOO instead of ANYWAY there should have been some kind of 'Folksily' tip in the clue. The main theme was fine but there were just lots of really awkwardly phrased and some even inaccurate clues.

Fun but easy Tuesday, more like a Monday. Might have been a PB except one time I solved a puzzle when I was off Wifi and when I got back on Wifi it gave me credit for a 2 minute solve which is now my "Record". Very good clues though.

I thought it was a good puzzle overall. I will say if they’re going to do numeric answers they should do it less rarely so it’s easier to see as a possibility. The area I didn’t like was the left middle. I thought at the crossing of RACE, ATAD and ACK, ATAD and ACK had multiple plausible answers, and the cross clue that would fix them as one RACE was a huge reach as an answer for Pit A Pat.

I enjoyed this puzzle, I thought there were very clever clues and the trivia mostly had good crossings. Clues like BRAINDUMP and ANECDATA were fun to figure out. The one area I struggled with was the top left. I did instantly get CHARLIE XCX but some of the down crossings were a bit odd. Like I didn't know what Prolix meant so I thought the answer was going to be some obscure niche term I'd need the crossings for. And since it took pretty much all the crossings for me to think of JACCUSE and SNAUSAGES, I ended up with one letter mistakes like ANNA instead of ANNE and SCAB instead of SCAR and didn't see a problem with the word resulting in TARSEB.

I enjoyed the vampire puns. Mostly an easy puzzle. When I got ICET through crossing clues I was like "Who the hell is ICET"? Then looked it up after and only then got it was in fact ICE T. Only one square I had to get by guessing all letters. ELIS/CIO. Still don't understand either of those clues.

Good puzzle. On the easy side for Wednesday, I flew through most of it quick. I did get hung up a little in bottom left, just because I originally had BITS instead of MEGS and don't know anything about the Boston Symphony. And the other clues in that area are sort of ambiguous multi word phrases like YA DIG and SO DO I.

I thought today's puzzle was a bit middling. Puzzles are best when you get the 'Lightbulb moments' where you puzzle over an indirect clue for a while and when you finally figure out you think "Ha, thats clever". All the indirect clues in this puzzle when you figured them out were more "Oh, ok. I guess that makes sense." Is there somewhere you can find a list of 3-5 letter beauty products? I need to go there and memorize it for future crosswords. Feels like they're the last squares I fill in every puzzle.

Really good clues today. I love it when it focuses on "Figure-outable" clues instead of niche trivia. Clues that are a little misleading but make perfect sense when they click. For a while I had STOOD instead of SATUP and PUN instead of ERR. It helped that a lot of the long clues today were on the easier side, I got SPIRAL GALAXY, T MINUS ZERO and GHOST STORIES without any crossing clues. I liked the BABY GROOT clue, at first I thought it was some obscure side story owned by Marvel.

The clue that hung me up for a while here was SYNOD, as I have not heard of a SYNOD and also I haven't heard of that use of the word YEN, NAGS or RAGS seemed to fit equally, and I didn't know enough about crank cases to get OILPAN without all the other cross clues first. The corner with TETLEY also took a while because I'd never heard of TETLEY and a few of the cross clues a few different things could have fit the space. Overall a medium gimmick and a tough puzzle for a Tuesday.

The puzzle in general was pretty good, I found the theme a bit meh. The lower left corner were a whole lot of Naticks for me. I had no idea those two cities were considered GAY MECCAS and they crossed SEROTYPE, ECRU and LANCET, all very niche knowledge. And two of those crossed TUTS which I was sure was TSKS because that answer has been used so much lately.

I really liked this puzzle, a lot of clever clues like the SNL clues and the WOMBS one. The PICKLEBALL theme was neat but I got all the rebuses before I figured out that clue. I found the top left corner of the puzzle a little Naticky. LATOSCA, ALEX, BAJA MEXICO. I think New York Times employees severely overestimate everyone else's knowledge of the first names of journalists and podcasters. We just so frequently see "Journalist (Last name)" and because their world is journalism they expect everyone else to have that knowledge.

When I got to the 3/4 mark in 11 minutes I was thinking "This is the easiest Friday of all time". Then I got stuck for so long on the bottom left corner. It still seems super easy by Friday standards. But GOSSIP GIRL, OREO COOKIE, FEEDER TEAM and DARK ACADEMIA had me really struggling. For a while I had GO GET EM instead of GO FETCH. Then I found GO FETCH, doubted it, tried other things. Then crossings like ICEDAM, RIALS, SODONE. Still very easy by Friday standards but that corner of the puzzle felt like Friday.

A little tougher than usual for a Monday. Good puzzle overall but two Natick squares for me. OORAH/ADO for one, I still don’t get how ADO is a kerfuffle. Then ERMA/MANX.

Good puzzle today, quick for a Sunday. My first guess for the theme was Real Housewives just because it fit but got UNDERCOVER BOSS as soon as I saw CEO as a circled theme. My only "Something's amiss" was having KARAT instead of CARAT, I did not know the difference before looking it up after and I know there was another puzzle this week where I first answered CARAT and had to correct it to KARAT.

Fun and easy puzzle today, 19 seconds shy of my PB. I didn't understand the theme until reading this column but wasn't necessary to get the answers.