Shrike

SHEESH is an apt response to much of the fill in this one.

I suspect the clue for ANTECEDENT could have been blank and the solving experience for 99% of us would have been no different than it was with the actual clue provided. That was firmly a "solve through the crosses then look at the blog to figure out what the heck it means" situation for me.

Of all the crosswords I've ever solved, this was definitely one of them.

I enjoyed the thought of an entire category of people known as SHOVERS. They just roam around, looking for things to push over.

"The fill in this puzzle is great!" IZZATSO?

I really thought the theme was a letdown after the time it took to figure it out. I didn't really have an "aha!" moment, more like an "oh, that's it?" moment.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to make this observation: In all my many and ever increasing years working in veterinary medicine, not once have I ever met a dog named FIDO.

Considering that JAMBOREE and CAMPOREE are both equally valid answers to the given clue, having the key letters crossed by a foreign language film and a rather vague genre of clothing is pretty gnarly work.

Didn't enjoy a single second of this solve. Relatively obscure proper names abound, likely due to the constrictions placed on the grid by a theme that just isn't all that interesting. Ah well, there's always tomorrow.

"Org. that discourages traveling" should have been TSA.

Dad humor is CORN? Surely you meant CORNY? Also, ORALE, really? Go type that word into Google and tell me how far you have to scroll before you find the archaic pre-13th century definition that was clued here. Truly baffling fill on this one.

DATA LOSS would not be a casualty of file corruption, it would be a consequence. The casualty would be DATA.

I'll add to the chorus and say ET ALII crossing NEIL is construction malpractice. Because ET ALIA is a fully legitimate answer to the clue, picking the correct vowel is dependent entirely on knowing which form of Neil/Neal Mr. Tyson uses. It's hard to fathom how that got through editing.

I found this one very challenging, but in a thoroughly fair way. The answers came slowly, but at a steady enough pace that I was never inclined to lose hope. Really quite solid.

Surely we could have put a fraction more effort into the clue for DEALS beyond a rhyme? I had to hunt for that first letter after mEALS didn't work, which is a rhyme that makes sense to me. The cross was no help either.

SANKA crossing KAOS was certainly a choice.

If nothing else, we can all be thankful today that we got ORANGUTAN spelled out in its entirety for once.

I'm just going to pretend this puzzle never happened and look ahead to Friday.

I originally had TRYST as the answer to "Arrangement for an heir" and, frankly, I think my answer is better. Or at least more funny!

I really thought something was going to happen with the blocked out, differently shaded squares above the key entry. A little disappointing to realize they're just aesthetics to make it look like a padlock. I think just leaving that area black would have been fine.

Personally, I think the answer to "They help you get off a lot" should have been VIBRATORS.

A nice little dash of Canadiana, not just ONT and PEI, but also AEROS. And while it was far too easy to complain about in general, I will say nobody in the history of humanity has spelled NARKED with a K. (I'm sure somebody is already rushing to Google to prove me wrong, but I blissfully do not care.)

Took me forever, mostly due to the abundance of proper names of mid-tier notoriety.

Got hung up for a while on POCKET HARD DRIVE, which is a term that I doubt anybody has used in the last twenty years and was never common parlance in any case. Otherwise the other themers were pretty fun.

While we're at it, making LAIC plural is pretty absurd too. This one needed some cleaning up.

This theme really did nothing for me. Nothing inherently wrong with it I suppose, and it wasn't hard by any means, I just found it all a little obnoxious. No accounting for taste!

This took me barely half of my average Thursday time and, in all honesty, I completely forgot there was even supposed to be a theme. I'm ignorant enough about Faith Hill that "THIS" sounds like a reasonable song title by itself. The only thing I couldn't figure out was what CASH IS was supposed to mean, but oh well. Less of an "aha!" theme and more of an "oh, alright" one.

This turned out to be far more lame than I expected.

I enjoyed seeing TIES clued as "baseball rarities" only two days after the MLB All-Star Game ended in a tie that had to be resolved via a mini home run derby. Now that's a fortuitous twist of puzzle timing!

I've never heard of IMPANELING before, so that tripped me up a little bit. Nevertheless, I ended up finishing at almost half of my average Thursday time, so overall it seemed fairly straightforward. It helped that FARGO was so obviously the right answer that the presence of two extra blanks in that answer made it obvious pretty early that shenanigans were taking place.

Somehow not overly hard but also not overly fun. Just a little too much fiddling with glue to figure out the crossing proper names I'd never heard of.

A puzzle that is fun and challenging to construct is not necessarily one that is fun or challenging to solve (I almost said "play" but I wouldn't want to offend anybody here). I sometimes wonder if the editorial team here thinks their audience is primarily other crossword constructors.

ADENINE crossing ALOHA OE was pretty darn tough. I had ADaNINE and ALOHA Oa as my last fix before success.

I'm late to the party, but I need to comment and say I'm shocked the editors allowed a clue that dead-names the writer V. Especially considering the reasons why she abandoned her former name. Really poor taste from the constructor and editors.

Got hung up at the very end because I put OBVI instead of OBVS, both of which are valid slang. And to my generally Shakespeare-ignorant mind, the cross DEIDEMONA seemed just as plausible as the actual answer. Otherwise I enjoyed this one.

I enjoyed this puzzle overall and found it pretty intuitive, so it's a shame that the last word I completed and thus the final impression I was left with was the truly awful PARENS.