Divs

Loved the theme! Once I got ZZ TOP it was so much fun figuring out the theme entries (I hadn't heard of FUZZY WUZZY so that stack of ZZZZs fried my brain lol). But i have to complain a little about that NW corner. Oof that was natick central for me!! A fairly obscure ancient civilisation crossed with an American soccer team crossed with a TV/ radio announcer's name? Needed a couple of look ups to get out of there! Which was annoying after being able to figure out the rest of the zzpule!

Surprised by the hate for this puzzle! I thought it was a delight Utter confusion at first and then the moment it clicks and then the fun of solving the down entries once you know the trick. I was smiling as it all fell into place and that to me is good puzzle!

That was a lovely Wednesday puzzle! The fact that 'shampoo' comes from Hindi and has Sanskrit roots was a fun lil bit of trivia for me as a desi :) I hadn't made the connection until today!

Looks like I'm in the extreme minority today! I'm got Chelsea PERETTI easily once I had the I from ITTY because of being a huge Brooklyn 99 fan (Nine nine!!)-- a proper noun clue i knew for once! And i actually found the theme intuitive as clued... didn't feel backwards to me. I guess it was just a case of being on the same wavelength as the constructor!

Agree that it was harder than usual for a Tuesday but entertaining as well! Loved the clue for OMAN :)

Clearly I watch too much TV, because I had HANNIBAL instead of CANNIBAL for the longest time, and it was only the fact that ACHRA was not an African capital that finally clued me in. Also, good to see WADI on here! I usually struggle with the US-centric geographical trivia, but this was a nice bit closer to home :)

So tempted to respond to people who didn't like this one with 'joy kill you' :D Folks different for strokes different!! I for one absolutely loved it. I always do all the across clues first so you can imagine how my heart sank at the start. Thankfully I gave up midway and tried the downs and found I had not lost the ability to do crosswords after all lol. It clicked into place with PUT IN REVERSE, and then I was smiling the rest of the way. So fun, so fresh!!

The perfect Friday with some wonderfully clever cluing!! I started out with barely anything on the first pass, but then it all fell into place so neatly. Lotsa fun wordplay, no naticks... Absolutely loved it ❤️

I'm recovering from minor surgery and feeling fairly woolly-headed so I for one was very glad for this gentle Friday with some lively cluing :)

Fantastic puzzle! Made my brain hurt in the best possible way. Loved the AHA moment when the theme came together. I stared at MANGLES (the first theme entry i got with crosses) for the longest time before it clicked. And then the others fell into place beautifully. VIKINGSHIPS and LIABILITIES made me laugh :) One of the most satisfyingly crunchy Thursday themes in a while!

I felt like the missile clue was in poor taste given current events. Or maybe it's just been a hard few weeks in my part of the world and I'm being a touch sensitive.

That was quite a 'punny' Sunday... the themed answers made me chuckle! TAJ and AGRA stacked one over the other was a nice touch :)

Fun fact for the day! Koreans say 'Amma' and 'Appa' for mother and father, which is the same as in the South Indian language of Tamil (my mother tongue). There are some other surprising parallels between the two languages... I'm not quite sure how that came about! Anyway, that stacking of APPA over DESI in the SW corner felt like a nice little nod to that connection... I don't know if it was deliberate, but it made me smile! :)

Oh thank God everyone found this one challenging. I was quite defeated by it, couldn't get a foothold at all. Like Caitlin said, it was a throwback to when I first started doing Saturday puzzles. Haven't struggled this much in a while. Finally folded and looked up the tough clues in the column. Then clicked on comments thinking that if everyone here was talking about how easy it was, I would just cry 😂😂

As a DESI I wasn't phased by YAMA :) Loved that neat lil GITA and SITAR crossing, not far from WHYOMING! It took me a while to get the theme, and when I did I groaned so loud at some of the puns my husband asked if I was alright 😂😂 Such a fab debut!!

Oof this was a tough one for me. Between a revealer that was absolutely no use in figuring out the seven theme entries (chance and chants??), and a couple of personal Naticks (HERA - RAMSHORN, SAAR - STEELERS), I simply could not finish it without a handful of look ups. Not the most satisfying Thursday solve overall, since the trick - when I finally read the explanation in the column - felt pretty meh to me. The NASSAU and the ANA clues were clever though!

Today I realised that 3 of the 4 main Seinfeld characters have 6 letter names 😁 Confidently put in Kramer and muddled that corner initially lol. Also very confidently put in Dr. Suess for 62A and stuck with him for an unnecessarily long time 🙄. A bit of a brain fart morning for me with what was a fun, straightforward puzzle overall!!

This was the perfect Friday! Had next to nothing on the first pass and then somehow it all fell into place beautifully. Loved the clueing... As a c-section mama the one for CESAREAN had me laughing out loud! The kid in me did not want to leave. I was in the hospital for two days (I was past due and fluid levels low) while they tried to induce labor. But no, we needed that CESAREAN to bring her out! 😂

I guess I'm in the minority in that I knew the song well. My kid loved it as a toddler... she used to sing it as "24 magic carrots' and I found it so cute that I never corrected her 😊 But i am in the majority in that I struggled mightily with all the proper nouns and naticks in the fill... needed a ridiculous number of look ups to complete that NE corner. So even though the theme revealer made me smile, the fill itself was a bit too much of a slog to be enjoyable for me.

Fell a couple of minutes behind my Tuesday average purely because I spent so long staring at XAXES and wondering what the heck it could mean 😂. I'm with you Sam, don't wanna see it again any time soon! Excellent puzzle... a bit challenging for a Tuesday perhaps? I actually thought it was a Wednesday puzzle while solving. Maybe that was just the XAXES effect though 😂

Loved this puzzle, and the puns had me grinning as I figured them out. (Loving the puns in the comments too!!). The fill was also perfect for a Sunday. But i have to say, i stared at EXGI for SO long, trying to figure out how it was related to VET, and certain I had something wrong in the crosses 😅

Hmmm this one didn't spark joy for me. I did realize that answers had the same letters as the clues, but I kept looking for additional patterns of some sort. Got the letter bank thing only after reading the column, and it felt... less than satisfying. The problem, I think, is that if you don't already know the name of the star in the answer, it's very hard to figure out, even with the letters. I got most of the familiar names, but struggled with SAL MINEO and ELAINE STRITCH, since i haven't heard of them. I think the theme would have worked a lot better if the answers weren't proper nouns. Then they'd be easier to deduce, like a spelling bee within a crossword! Just my two cents.

Absolutely loved this puzzle! Some of the clues made me smile ( DIAPER was a funny one!) And I thought the theme very clever. I picked up on it pretty quick with PELICAN (which was my favourite of the lot!) I did confuse myself for a bit by putting REEVEs instead of REEVE and AUM (as it's often spelt in India) instead of OM, but eventually figured it out.

Struggled a bit with this one. Quite a few proper nouns I wasn't familiar with, and I finally needed a look up to complete it. Tough for a Wednesday! The theme was cute, and the revealer made me smile, but it bothers me that JIGGETY JIG doesn't really fit the pattern. Am I missing something? I mean, 'JIGGETY' isn't a superlative the way BOSS or MODEL or even QUITE A is.

I think I had the most number of corrections ever for a Monday! I managed to make every silly error others have mentioned - pOODLE instead of DOODLE, SNOb for SNOT (yet again!), AND i put in NOvat instead of NOTAX because Eve Paison seemed quite a reasonable name for an athlete and I'd never heard of the SXSW festival so STSW seemed equally weird 😂

Such a tough but satisfying puzzle. Absolutely loved when the long entries finally fell into place. OPEN MARRIAGES made me chuckle 😊 Can someone explain ALAI for me? Got it from the crosses but I've never heard of this rhyming game!

Oh that's where this week's Tuesday puzzle went :) No complaints here! Any puzzle featuring cat lady HELLO KITTY is fine with me <3 Also happy to see AYO again, and glad I didn't have to struggle with the spelling her last name this time lol

Such a good Friday puzzle!! Had very little on my first pass, struggled to get a foothold for a while, and then somehow, one by one all those tricky clues clicked into place, and I was smiling as I filled in the answers. Loved how light it was on obscure trivia and proper nouns, especially in the longer entries.

Loved the puzzle! A quick and sweet treat just like KITKATMINIS :) Filling in KABUKI THEATER and TONKATSU after figuring out the theme reminded me of the bag of matcha-flavoured Kitkat minis I picked up during my visit to Japan... I was so sure I'd love them, but somehow they didn't work for me!

That was tough! The trick was cute and i managed to get a few of the themed entries but even having gotten CEDAR from DANCE AROUND didn't help me since I didnt know CLARENCE DARROW. Didn't know ARNOLD PALMERS either. I wish so many of the themed answers weren't proper nouns/trivia related. Gave up at some point and just revealed the final bits. Not my favourite Sunday.