Jessica Bloom

Ugh. Not on that wave length at all. A one hour slog that ended my streak because I couldn't bear to struggle with it any longer. One thing I liked was the clue for STOPWATCH and I actually got most of the bottom half of the puzzle in that hour, a little more after a few wiki clues, then that was enough. No thanks, Sam--stick to the Spelling Bee. So much just not good fill, not in the language. SOOTS? ZTILE? GALOPS? Even FRESH SALAD is an off phrase--who says that? And the supposed "conversational" fill like OKAY WHAT was missing something. Felt endlessly obscure and yes, "forced" or UNNATURAL. Perfect center word. Can't love them all, I guess. LET'S NOT do this again.

Hearty congratulations to Larry on a most excellent Friday debut! The SE corner added about 5 minutes to my time because TATTOOED seemed like the only possible answer to 52A (seemed to have been a common problem per the comments). Most of that 5 minutes I was just staring at that corner, trying to figure out any possible answers for 40-42D. But once I backed out -OOED so I could put in BEGAN (then BEGUN) and STEP, voila, it all fell into place. There seems to be some picking of nits over ARO and the clue for ETHER in the NW, but I found them pretty fair game, even if I didn't really get the ETHER clue until I read Deb's column--it seemed unlikely to be anything else. I think there was another recent themed puzzle that used that heteronym of number (#) and number (anesthesia) if anyone can find it! Congrats again Larry and thanks for the Friday morning workout! :-)

Wow, a truly impressive feat of construction. Like several others I blithely went with SOUTHEAST, didn't see the quadruple answers possible for the reveal, and blithely finished the puzzle figuring the column would explain it to me. Mind blown then. For the reveal to use FOUR perfect dual answer clues and the grid to fit EIGHT long and excellent theme entries with a minimum of gluey fill (TEENER, I'm looking at you)--what a tour de force. 👏 👏👏

Someone may have already registered this complaint but "Remove surgically, as tissue" is an inaccurate clue for ABLATE (and sorry for spoiler for anyone). An ablation does not remove tissue, it destroys it (typically with heat or electricity). Ablations are more often considered procedures than surgeries; a dermatologist ablating a skin lesion in the office does not have tissue for pathology as one would when surgically removing tissue (which is to resect or excise tissue, both fit better with this clue). This should have been caught by editors (though in general medical terms are often misses in the NYT puzzle, unfortunately). Otherwise kind of a cute homage to Friends and a relatively quick solve for me.

Came here to see if someone explained why FANS is "Strikes out, slangily". I guess many it's a baseball thing. I had to "wheel of fortune" as they say cycle the 31A/D square. Once I got it, I could see how "meet" could be a clue for FIT but it's very tricky. FANS I still don't get. I scrolled down a ways and this didn't seem to have come up (wish we could search the comments for a word).

Meh. IMO puzzle would have benefitted from less ambition on the theme density to get cleaner fill overall. I hadn't looked at the puzzle title and thought a lot of the theme entries were just poorly worded! Understanding the theme improved my impression of the puzzle, but I think limiting the theme set to ones where the meaning is really shifted and the word-break is in the middle of a word would have been better. So DISSOLVING, EXPENSIVE, and PROVISION are pretty good. PAN-AFRICAN and SUPERHEATED are relatively lame flips of compound words. And ANTE-PENULTIMATE feels like a big stretch. Going for fewer and better theme entries might have made it possible to avoid fill like CROSSEST, YESBABE, and ADDY and not putting ONETON and ONEMONTH in the same puzzle (neither of which are great fill anyway). Somewhat better solve for me than Sam's last puzzle which I think was a Saturday I really hated.

This was a dud for me, the theme kind of doesn't make sense. Making all the letters in their last names double I supposed makes the Johns "longer" but just not my kind of theme cleverness. Once I got it, it also made solving the themers too easy in a boring way (just double the letters). Plus some off cluing for my wavelength and way too much sports trivia for me, got stuck at 37D, 40A, 50A for a while. Can't love 'em all!

My own favorite clue was [Contracts for shrinks, e.g.] Diabolical! Genius! I got MATRYOSHKA after I had about half the crosses--I would not have spelled it correctly without them! I had BEEF instead of TIFF for a bit but otherwise it wasn't so much misdirections as tricky clues that slowed me down. Finished it well below my average Saturday--Thanks to Mr. Leach for a fun puzzle!

Too bad my husband is not a puzzle-doer, he would love this theme! I was just impressed with the amount of theme fill (6 long down entries with the circles plus 4 other longer theme-related entries) while maintaining really pretty consistently decent fill and a few extra tricky clues scattered throughout. Really a "love letter" indeed, I can't imagine the time needed to build this tour de force. I've been enjoying the newer trek shows but this homage to TOS was really fun! :-)

Genius! And TWELVE theme entries! How did he find so many?? I've thought about words that contain their own synonyms for a puzzle, but the only one I could think of was PERSNICKETY (PICKY), and the letters aren't sequential. I like the name "kangaroo" for these words/phrases! Thanks Jesse for a super fun puzzle!

As with many (at least of the more recent commenters), super tough, didn't love. What a long list of what felt like extremely obscure trivia entries (TIM REID, STEARNS, OLEANNA, ROEG, WIE, PYE, FHA) plus clues that made entries more obscure than they needed to be (e.g. LEBANON) and fill that was just kinda off my wavelength at best (LAB SITE, CORN PIT). I was lucky to have traveled to ECUADOR which made that one gettable after just a couple letters. Some admirably punny misdirections and original cluing angles were to be found (ROAST and EIGHT, for example) but some just stretched the language past reasonable connotations (e.g., I had GOOFS for "Simple souls" for quite a while; "naïfs" are young or inexperienced, not inherently "simple".). Looking forward to tackling Sunday after this one...

I just came here to say that was fun! A quick Friday PB. Breath of fresh air. Over too soon. Thanks Hemant!

Thanks, Sid. Breath of fresh air (with a lovely, complex bouquet, as it were) after yesterday's tough slog. Even most of the sports trivia was accessible for me, a rarity!

Overall not he worst Saturday ever (I think Sam E's most recent Saturday was the worst I've tried in a while). Triple stacks were impressive and yes the editors clearly let in some iffy short fill (and truly obscure references) which left me with a couple of irritating Naticks at the end amiss. I managed to finish just under 30 minutes looking up just one of them (the actress) so given the comments I'll take it as a win and tackle Sunday. Congrats on the debut--I gives me hope to keep trying on my themeless constructions!

Overall a pretty fun Saturday, fun fill and devious but fair cluing. I was super stymied to untangle the left center (had WRESTING instead of WREAKING, somehow thought "Mighty oat" was a thing?) for an extra 15 minutes and finally succumbed to looking up 36A. So my only really issue is there was no reason to clue that word in this very esoteric way (little known character in a little known Shakespeare play with a little known quote, IMO). That word could be clued in so many other tricky misdirecting ways without invoking it as a proper noun. Also I think the clue "Lack of pop" should have been "Lack of pep". "Pop" I was trying to think more of "standing out" than "having energy". Other than those quibbles with cluing choices though it was a decent Saturday (though I hate when I end up looking something up, happens rarely these days).

Brutally tough. Waaay over my average and used a few lookups for the first time in weeks (Veet a thing or company with zero familiarity, rumspringa which I probably should have gotten eventually, and the city in Samoa that could have been a lot of things). Confess I couldn't hate it though, and felt good that as much of it came together as it did, including those sneaky ID tags. The pun of "summer" job actually I filled in in gray almost right away, though the pun is so awkward and bad I wasn't sure of it for quite a while. Then I realized yup, it's that kingdom of Saturday.