Bob

A BAD RAP is either an unfair accusation or conviction (or possibly music from Vanilla Ice). A “bad rep” is a negative reputation. Or at least that’s how I’ve always understood these phrases.

Surprised at how many thought this was easy. I found it to be incredibly frustrating. Even though I am familiar with the NATO alphabet.

There were too many trivia clues required to get the bottom-most theme clue without hints. It itself was a trivia clue, as I was unfamiliar with not only the show but of the type of rye bread. Otherwise a well done puzzle. For editors I hope there is some attention paid to these concentrations of trivia clues in one spot.

Got stuck on SOW instead of SOD which made me have to hunt for the “wrong letter” at the end. I knew WISC didn’t make any sense, but hey on a Friday who knows. Needed google to get me past that, otherwise no hints!

Yay no hint solve! Yesterday’s needed every hint I could get. The theme definitely helped me out. The north part was somehow the toughest for me. Solved it in about average time. Nice one!

Loved this one. Almost got it without help but got tripped up with TENON and DECON. Great fun theme. Lots of clever clues.

I wish we could rate puzzles because this one would get only one star if I was feeling generous.

I liked this puzzle a lot. I needed all the hints and still got stuck in the northeast corner. Not sure about LASE otherwise it’s all good to me! Nice one!

9 minutes below average but only solved it due to the OLDSAWS hint in the comments. Only hint I needed though, understood the theme pretty quickly and thought it was very clever as a wordplay theme.

Just needed the DINOSAURS hint to get past the fact I put ACES instead of ONES for rare golf scores. Otherwise I found this puzzle enjoyable and breezy, but not without some head scratching along the way here and there.

I am starting to think I glitched the matrix. I go on a business trip to Oregon and I get this themed puzzle to work on in my hotel room. Having Oregon on the brain already made this a very quick solve. Only trip up was having IKE instead of DDE for awhile.

Unfamiliar with CHIGNONS so I had “follow the lead” instead of FOLLOW THE HERD, and it had me stuck for awhile but I eventually worked through it. I thought it fit the theme since lead dogs are a thing in dog sledding. Also had “junk” and “spam” in mind instead of BILL which totally slowed me down up in the northwest for awhile too. Love dogs, loved the theme, good that this Monday was a bit more challenging! Thank you!

Hardest puzzle in a long time! Had to use every hint here, and look up almost every unambiguous clue, just to get started! Every initial guess I made on this puzzle was wrong. But can’t complain, there was nothing unfair about it and there were so many clever clues. Was fun even if all I could do was laugh at the difficulty level.

Tough one for me. But a good one. Maybe if there were just a couple more clues that could be more confidently answered on an empty grid, besides the trivia (which I never seem to get). Even after the hints provided here, ended up with a completely barren NW corner, gave up and started Googling. For sure, INEEDAHINT.

Awesome puzzle. I got the theme answer almost immediately but thought it meant I was supposed to have an answer including the metal, and then remove the metal to make the answer fit, which really confused me for awhile. Needed the first GROWING OLD hint to realize I had it the wrong way round. Honestly that answer was “growing” more obvious over time as I solved other clues, but somehow it still didn’t click that I had the theme backwards. My only fuss otherwise was that I had LESMIs initially which made MAZDA impossible to guess for some time. This was great thanks!

The theme is the best I’ve personally seen so far, but that might be saying little since I’m still a newbie. Only after reading this article did I realize that each 3-letter dial represented a school subject. Now for that awesomeness, I suppose I’m able to forgive the horrible sin of LITCHIS.

Sorry but this crossword contained way way too many trivia clues, and can we figure out a different clue for OLE?

Even though I once got an honorable mention ribbon in dressage as a kid, I believe I wore jeans… never heard of jodhpurs before today, but that’s why I come here. Also got the idea from MICKEY that there must be some trick, but it unfortunately coincided with jodhpurs. Needed a few hints, or maybe I just got impatient as usual, it felt challenging but doable in the end. Lots of goodies in this one.

Great puzzle. Frustrating as heck at first as I didn’t get enough across clues to figure out the trick. Came here to the comment section and learned that two free letters are being handed to me! Then it became one of the easier Thursday puzzles but a lot of fun!