Mark P

On behalf of those of us who don’t have 1969 and 1979 trivia at the tip of our tongue to anchor the middle of this puzzle, but who regularly solve Saturday puzzles, please don’t start any nonsense about how that one was too easy. That was hard.

Jet lag in Iceland for spring break is a fun way to solve my second ever Sunday on a Saturday! Strong puzzle, no complaints. Now off to hopefully spot some northern lights!

Oof, really tough solve. Shouldn’t PRAGENCIES have been clued with an abbreviation? Like many others, from there down to UPPISH was the section that held me up for an eternity.

WALTHERPPK is just a supremely frustrating crossword answer. If you don’t know it (and it’s pretty darn niche as movie trivia goes) it looks wrong, and there is no conceivable way to reason it out. Then add the crossing with TALK, which could’ve been a dozen different words, especially if you didn’t know NAST.

I struggled for a bit, then I remembered that I graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools, with really good grades.

I probably typed and DELEted the W in TWINCAM a dozen times, continually reminding myself that there are no words that start with WP. Having now finished and looked up what WPAMURALS are, I think I’ve asked this before, but shouldn’t the clue have an abbreviation of some sort? Anyway, strong, challenging puzzle other than that bit of frustration.

The MALLET section just totally confounded me…didn’t recognize the mallet itself, no clue on Ceasar or either author, STUNNER wouldn’t come to me, I liked HBO as the Cinemax competitor, and I had HOLE forever before swapping for MOLE.

I so badly wanted ONEline as “Simplest phone plan” to cross with LiNkedIn as “Enterprise enterprise” as I didn’t have much else in the SE. Overall a tough but fair Saturday!

I enjoyed the theme and thought it perfectly fair and creative for a Thursday. My only gripe was the PCB/PLASM/LOUSEUP combo. A fairly obscure phrase combined with two challenging clues had me scrambling for a while. The use of “suffix” was confounding, and I was unfamiliar with PCBs other than printed circuit boards.

I’ve seen the explanation for SYN, but can someone why SENT is the answer for “No longer being drafted, say Trial and erroring that spot combined with MAGNANI/MUDS/AGS added a solid 10 mins to my final time. The triple stacks were tremendous though, well done!

Anyone else run through the entirety of “Bob” by Weird Al while trying to solve 1 Across?

Top decile of difficult Saturdays as far as I’m concerned, without a single gimme quadrant in the bunch. Most notably, I found there to be an unusually high number of long entries with alternate answers that worked equally well. WESTINDIES, BARBIECHIC, MEATEATERS, AGEMINIMUM, TOOKATURN, ICANTDOIT, GETSSASSY. I guessed every single one of those on my first or second or twelfth pass. Which made pieces of minutiae like LUCIA and KIVA particularly challenging. Got there in the end, and there were several fantastic aha moments too, but also a bit too much trial and error brute force with the entries above.

Phew. Tough one for me. Had PROLY in for PROBS which tripped me up for a while on 44 and 49 down. And then “Marked Twain”, while I certainly admire the cluing creativity and admit it had me fooled for ages, I think it’s right on the fine line of “tricky vs unfairly misleading” as it pertains to part of speech of clue vs answer. I think “Marked a Twain” would have been fairer. I kept trying to find a noun ending with “AREA” that made sense. Otherwise solid fun challenge for a Friday.

What a fantastic theme. The kind that made me wish there were more than 3 such boxes. Does anyone recall a math-oriented puzzle like this from the past (like pre-pandemic, when I started this crazy habit) and if so do you mind linking here?

Wow, that was extremely, creatively difficult. “EMUOIL” is a bit questionable and I didn’t love the CATO/CAEN honorary OJ Simpson trial corner. But mostly fair otherwise.

Toughest puzzle of 2024 by some margin. I was fortunate to be flying back from overseas for spring break and got a few extra waking hours of solve time. Definitely needed it. As covered, the northwest was brutal, so many clues with multiple options, TAKEONE for ONEEACH, SUBTLE for GENTLE, a thousand different fishing terms for 1A. But I ended up kicking myself for not spotting 1D.

Fair, fun Sunday from where I stand. Theme was pretty straightforward especially given the visual clue but there some challenging sections scattered throughout too. My last fill in was ACE for “Delivery that can’t be returned”. Can someone explain?

Clue MIMOSA as the drink instead of the tree and I’d rank this as a top tier Saturday puzzle. But as clued, and crossed with EINAUDI, ANO and DIANA, all three of which could end with multiple vowels, felt intentionally/needlessly ambiguous.

SW corner was a brutal challenge for someone with limited medical knowledge (ANTIVENOM / SEROTYPE / LANCET / OTO) but overall a fun puzzle. I see several people complimenting the brilliance of 74D, but could someone explain it to this dummy? It’s not clicking.

Is “KULTUR” simply the German word for civilization? Or is there some other Freud association there? If the former, I understand foreign words are commonplace and completely fair game, but that strikes me as a bit too deep a plunge into the German dictionary. Especially given the presence of several other challenging entries in that region. Otherwise, strong puzzle, loved the whole middle part.

Funny/cool that 56 and 93 Across clues both show up the morning after my daughter closed her high school musical production of Annie! Also good puzzle.

As someone with a fairly lengthy crossword streak, a passion for basketball, a college credit in bowling, and a distaste for scrolling through these comments, can anyone explain how Alleyoops solves to GUTTERBALL

Random question…I know new weekday puzzles typically post at 10PM ET. Do you also need to finish the current day puzzle by 10PM ET to keep the solve streak alive, or do you have until midnight local time?

Very cool puzzle, thanks for that! Also, every time I think I have the crossword abbreviation conventions sorted out, a new confusion arises. USOPEN isn’t an abbreviation? I had ESOPE_ for an eternity.

I was convinced 22 Across “Second sight” was EVE, with AGAPE for 3 Down. I didn’t know the 2 Down river and couldn’t decide the hyphens in 19 Across. Overall strong puzzle though.

Top 20% difficult Thursday for me despite getting the revealer early. Can someone please explain “HESHE” as “Lead in to ‘they’”? I was convinced my mistake was somewhere in there but turns out it was messing up ODeN / EMEReTI