Wyra

@TJ I'm pretty new to solving the whole week, so I had to look a couple things up to get toe holds. But this was a great puzzle and I loved it! How would I get better if not challenged?

@Apurv I liked it. It was very hard, required lookups to finish for me, but I thought it was fun and engaging. You're welcome to disagree, but your comments go way past respectfully expressing your thoughts. I hope once you get some space from this you feel differently. It might be good to give yourself that space before commenting in the future.

@Maks I assume you're thinking of the homeliness definition where it means cozy. It has another meaning, which is the exact opposite of pulchritude.

Past tense of tear, past tense of rend.

@Pat Bae is slang for the one you love (short for baby). Merriam Webster lists the first use in 1983, but it became common in the last decade or so.

They're referring to the Midi. There isn't a separate place to discuss the smaller crosswords.

Like Andrzej said, it really just does mean being kinda pouty after an outcome you didn't want. You shouldn't find anything bad if you Google it.

@Andrzej What a great picture of an absolutely pulchritudinous dog!

@Brendan I did the same thing. My first thought for how it could have happened was perhaps being a required textbook for a lot of classes. I don't know if that's the case, but it was the best explanation that came to mind.

I'm a newer solver, too, and this one was great! I had to look up some trivia to get things moving here or there, but was able to complete the whole thing without coming to the tricky clues hints or the forum. I try not to because I hate having the fun ones spoiled, and today I was able to do it! I don't mind filling in some proper names and such if it means I still get to suss out the ones that make you think.

We got diss track!

OG means original gangsta. Original as in the first/early artists, gangsta because the genre was called gangsta rap. Here's an article with one of the OGs, Ice-T, explaining the origin: <a href="https://www.wbls.com/news/ice-t-explains-why-he-never-thought-he-would-become-a-star" target="_blank">https://www.wbls.com/news/ice-t-explains-why-he-never-thought-he-would-become-a-star</a>/ Hope that helps!

@Steve L This is only a good work around for very recent puzzles. It's miserable when working on things from the archives.

@Steven M. Evan Edinger had a video recently about words and phrases that mean the opposite thing in the US and the UK. He covers table and moot. It's quite interesting! (I'm using quite as an American here.) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQGz6CHP4w" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQGz6CHP4w</a>

So far on mobile it seems to behaving better for me.

@Ryan That one almost tripped me up, too. Read 15 across as "_ in _ _".

@Mean Old Lady The American Woman's Cookbook was published long enough ago that it's in the public domain. You can get PDF versions online for free with no qualms about piracy. I hope you find the recipe you're looking for!

@Andrzej VR is being used to help with chronic pain, actually! Last time I looked it was still being studied, but now it's in use. I wish I didn't have such terrible motion sickness so I could try it. I'll just have to stick to regular gaming, which does help distract me.

On my puzzle it says "makes arrangements (for)", so it's correct.

I agree. There are some changes that have been nice, such as the replies to comments opening under the comment instead of loading a different page, but I also like to have it open in a browser so that I can reference it and the puzzle back and forth (I solve on mobile). It used to let me do that easily.

@Steve L This is what I do, but it's much harder to find the column on older puzzles, and more than half of the puzzles I do are from the archives. It was so much easier when I could click through from the info screen and then tell it to open in the browser so I could refer back and forth.

@Ryan I do think it would have been better as three, though. It can be read that way and then it's actually a word and not just letters.

@H.E. Agreed, the word would be glam.

@SP You might try Kingdom Come Deliverance II if you like tainted grail. I'm enjoying it a lot, though combat at the beginning is brutally hard. Lots of mods, though, if you want to tweak things. It's very immersive. It's also based on places that exist and some of the characters and events existed/happened.

@Andrzej I very much agree, I don't go for things that are hard for the sake of being hard. I have no compunctions over using mods to make a game fun. With KCDII I'm actually enjoying all the running around and the detail in the crafting systems. I'm using poison to make combat more doable. But absolutely to each their own!

@Calig Same, I was so excited I knew it!