Jim

It's so weird when you hear an obscure word and it ends up in the NYT crossword the next day. Yesterday, I was randomly watching a YouTube video of Andy Samburg being interviewed by Sesame Street's Bert, and Bert asked him, "If you could wear a sock from any time period, what sock would that be?" After Andy answered the modern sock, Bert said his choice would be the "fifth century PUTTEES." Then he spelled it! Thanks, Bert!

After Saturday's struggle, I was looking forward to a nice themed Sunday puzzle. Instead we got this. Honestly, I was surprised I could finish it unaided. But it was a slog. And at the end, I didn't feel particularly proud of myself. I mean, immix... seriously? I appreciate a clever clue, but this puzzle relies more on obscurity than wit. Do better, NYT.

Ok. Seminary graduate here. Let's talk about 9D. The Hebrew name for God is not Yahweh. In fact, the Hebrew name for God is unpronounceable and, frankly, un-writeable. It's why many Jews write G-d instead of God; as a former teacher at a Jewish Day School, I encountered that pretty regularly. It is signified in Scripture as the tetragrammaton, YHWH, which is generally spoken as Adonai, which in English bible translations usually appears as "Lord." Yahweh is a Christian construction that forces vowel sounds into the tetragrammaton. The Latinized Jehovah does the same, importing the vowels of Adonai into the tetragrammaton. The Hebrew bible has many reasons for not rendering the name of God as utterable. So perhaps the NYT could respect that and simply clue YAHWEH as "Weird Christian effort to make the name of God pronounceable." And yes, Deb, I too needed a refresher on how spoonerisms work. Who do I blame? In honor of the NYT's YAHWEH screw-up, I'm going to say the Roman Catholic Church.

Great puzzle. Had a lot of fun figuring out the theme entries. And, for me at least, an appropriate level of difficulty for a Thursday.

I like a nice Friday puzzle that causes mild panic in the beginning as you struggle to get a foothold, but starts coming together quickly enough that you're solve time average isn't completely wrecked. That's what this one was for me.

Thanks, Lynn Lempel, for this jaunty little Monday puzzle. Finishing it completes my 1-year streak!

Yeah, thumbs down for PROBLEM ONE. Otherwise, a nice puzzle.

Mmm...this one seems to have divided the commentariat. Count me among the disappointed (and after such a stellar Saturday!). I think the Puzzle Notes clues should have been in the actual puzzle, clued for the left side entry, with the right side having only an em dash. To me, that would have integrated the theme into the puzzle and been much more challenging. As it was, this was a pretty simplistic solve and I only noticed the trick with the center column after I finished and the app revealed the missing letters. Frankly, if I were doing this on paper, I'd probably still be wondering where the theme was. Instead of working to puzzle out the theme, it felt like it was just handed to me after solving a too-easy Sunday.

Agree with the comments that call out SPIDERSENSE. Spidey-sense is what it's called. Don't think I've ever heard it called spider sense in the MCU or any other medium. But good luck clueing OYLESS. "What your Jewish mother says when you're being a bit much?" Otherwise, a perfectly good puzzle. A bit underwhelming for a Friday, but probably not bad for a new constructor.

Honestly, I found this puzzle too clever by half. It seems like the constructors were so focused on getting the gimmick to work that they neglected picking really interesting fills and challenging clues. Sometimes the gimmicks are great (like a fairly recent once that forced you to solve outside the grid!), but for my money, this wasn't worth the payoff. In fact, I would have preferred the central code word to be less obvious, forcing the solver to interpret the meta-clues correctly.

A jaunty little puzzle! I'm surprised 50D didn't get a shout out under Tricky Clues, as I was very confident it was CANCAN until it made the crossings impossible.

The confluence of ADIN, ADUE, and GUNLAP almost did me in, as I wasn't really familiar with any of these terms. But I got lucky with a few guesses and still beat my Thursday average by 6 minutes.

Loved it! Great Saturday, and I even bested my average. But really fantastic clueing that had me thinking in unexpected ways. For the sci-fi writer, I had the O and went with ORSON SCOTT CARD. It fit, and I was sure I nailed it. When the crossings didn't match, I tried OCTAVIA BUTLER, the only other sci-fi writer I know whose name begins with an O, but alas, I was a letter short. So now I know she used the initial E. And I know that ORSON SCOTT CARD and OCTAVIA E. BUTLER have the same number of letters!

Well done, Dena! This puzzle kicked my keister! That crossing of BESO and BOND was devilish. You wrecked my Friday average, but I loved it.

Personal best yesterday. Near PB today. What's with these easy late week puzzles?

Great puzzle. Kicked my kiester. At one point, looking over a mostly filled-in grid, I thought that maybe Blitzkrieg Bop was a RAMMSTEIN tune and I noticed EINSTEIN over in the southwest quadrant. Maybe I needed to connect them somehow? At the bottom The CO in CONSTABLE could possibly be the beginning of COPPER, and OPER was an answer at the top of the puzzle. Could those connect? Luckily, before trying to defy the laws of quantum physics to make this puzzle work, I made out ORCHESTRATE across three down clues with two missing letters and it came together. For a while there I wondered what choreography had to do with Lord of the Rings.

This feels like one of those crosswords that was more fun to construct than it actually is to solve.

Nice puzzle, but I shouldn't be able to finish a theme-less Friday in under 9 minutes. There have been quite a few breezy late week puzzles lately. I think it's an issue of clueing. The fill on these puzzles does satisfy, but I think I should have to work a little harder to get them.

This one DESTROYED me! It took me over an hour! But I can't fault it. Mind bending clueing and solid fill. It was so troublesome I didn't even notice the repeated MAD.

An elegant puzzle, but a breeze compared to yesterday's. If puzzles are supposed to increase in difficulty as the week progresses, they should have switched Friday and Saturday.

Excellent Thursday. Enjoyed it a lot!

Wow. Just...wow. Sundays aren't my favorite solving day. I generally feel the cluing is fairly simple and that they simply take longer just because of the grid size. I normally feel the themes are pretty meh. But this puzzle takes the cake. I knew a rebus had to be involved somehow, but the shared letters didn't seem to have any continuity. I had to finish the entire crossword before I was able to go back and decipher where the rebuses should be. And once I figured it out (and attended to one misspelling), I was genuinely satisfied with my solve. This is one of the rare Sundays where the theme feels organic and challenging, and not gimmicky. Absolutely wrecked my average Sunday solve time, but color me impressed.

I got the theme at TO EBAY OR NOT TO EBAY.

Great Saturday puzzle. The northeast corner was a nightmare for me. I had KIMONO for the slip-on clue and nothing was coming together. Once POSSE occured to me, TSQUARE popped right out and everything fell into place. Ashamed to say I couldn't intuit TSQUARE without the T and the S. My late crossword-loving grandfather was an architect. Hope we don't have to wait another 10 years for a new puzzle from this constructor.

At first, I had PACIFISTS RENOUNCEMENT misspelled as PACIFASTS RENOUNCEMENT, thinking that some pacifists renounce food during FASTS, or hunger strikes. When I didn't get the little jingle after filling in the grid, I started painstakingly going through each entry to see what could be wrong. When I got to CIRRI, which I had misspelled as CIRRA, I knew I wasn't sure of the word, but that I needed a plural that did not end in "s." Luckily trying "i" did the trick! Still quite a jaunty solve, though, even with my backtracking!

OK. OK. Look as a gay seminary graduate, I'm going to like any puzzle that includes QUEER THEOLOGY. But this puzzle, Friday's, and Thursday's I simply burned through. Either I have just been on the same mental wavelength as the last three puzzle constructors, or the NYT crosswords simply have not been challenging enough this week. Frankly, I'm not that good. I struggled more with the LA Times this week. C'mon, Will, up your game. (Famous last words when the Sunday puzzle leaves me in tears...)

This was definitely a challenge! But I enjoyed it. Personally, I got caught up in the BELIE, STOLID, HOPSTEP area. Tried "placid" for STOLID and "hotstep" for HOPSTEP (not a sports guy). I'm also not a jazz guy, so the Charles Mingus crossing clue wasn't much help!

This and yesterday's puzzle each seemed about a day off of where they should be in the week in terms of difficulty. But a satisfying solve, and I'm not complaining about a gentle Friday entry to ease us into a holiday weekend. The only entry I didn't love was OXES. Shouldn't the plural be OXEN? Then again, saying, "After Al coughed in my coffee, and Joe sneezed in my soup, I swore to never eat with such dumb oxen again," doesn't sound right either!

Great puzzle. Very intimidating at first with the quadruple stack in the center. ABET had my brain in knots, too. I mean, how could it not be SPOT!? Maybe IMPOSSIPLE COLOR is a thing? But ultimately, it proved to be a fairly jaunty and satisfying solve. I was surprised that I beat my average time by about 7 minutes! I could quibble about it feeling more like a Friday than a Saturday, but I won't (he said after quibbling about just that thing).

Vicious, but excellent. Loved the fill and the clueing. The SE corner was daunting, and I was sweating bullets inputting my last letter, hoping beyond hope I had it right because I did not relish the idea of hunting for mistakes! Luckily, it all worked out in a little over my Saturday average. I GOTTA JET was my favorite, simply because it's so dastardly. I struggled with I GOT To run for the longest time, until finally trying I GOTTA run. That A was just enough for things to click in my brain.

Took me just under 11 minutes. Fairly straightforward clueing, no tortured filler words. Elegant, but a bit too breezy for a Friday.

Well done. A nice challenge that took me over my average solving time for a Friday puzzle. With my fingers moving faster than my brain, I was felled by a typo! But I learned it's TEETOTALER, not TEATOTALER, because there's no MAA West!

Nicely done. I was sweating a little in that NW corner. I left that to the very end. I kind of like it when the NW corner is filled with stumpers since that's where I instinctively start (guessing I'm not alone there). But it all worked out in under my average Saturday time. I was tempted to Google some of those baseball clues, but I resisted, trusting in the crossings. I don't go in for any sports, but baseball least of all. All that standing around! How do people watch it?

Now this was an excellent Saturday crossword! Fantastic clues that really gave my brain a workout, and yet entirely solvable. Nothing seemed like a stretch once I cracked the clue. I struggled with the northwest quadrant. I was certain 1A had to be "I HAD A BLAST," but IHOP did not make much sense for "Smack," although I tried to convince myself that smack was slang for pancake. It wasn't until I tried TEES instead of DEES for "Youth baseball supporters" that 1A came together for me. By the way, that's a great clue for a 4-letter fill; could have been anything from PTAS to DADS to MOMS and ended up being the most literal but surprising option! It also took me a while to give up on SPEEDDATES and think of mate in another way; the C from CLAIRE really helped...which I had to intuit since I'm a sports teetotaler.

It's funny how crosswords some people find challenging others breeze right through. I had no trouble with today's puzzle; however, yesterday's knocked me for a loop, even though it seemed many commenters found it too easy for a Friday. I enjoyed myself both days, but perhaps a bit more yesterday; there's nothing like the sense of accomplishment you get from finishing a puzzle that really had you tied up in knots!

Solved in just under 13 minutes, nearly half my usual solving time for a Saturday. Very nice fill, as others have appreciated, but the clues need some work. Just a little too straightforward. That's ok. I'm sure this constructor will offer us some brain twisters in the future.

Quite a few stumpers, but I got lucky and made it through this Saturday fairly quickly. My last entry was the A in A ONE, which I input with crossed fingers because there were a handful of letters I wasn't entirely confident in. Luck was on my side tonight.

I love theme-less puzzles. Saturday's was great. Usually Sunday themes make the puzzle pretty easy to solve; for me, they tend to take longer than Saturdays due to the size, not the difficulty. However, I blew through this one, 13 minutes faster than my Sunday average. Having the fewest entries in a Sunday puzzle should have made it challenging, but it didn't. I think it's the clueing. They're fairly straightforward, like a typical Sunday, except the straightforward clues for themed Sundays are supposed to help you deduce the theme. Obviously, that's not necessary here. When I finished this puzzle, I didn't have the feeling of accomplishment I get from a Saturday, nor did I get to appreciate a clever Sunday theme. This one might go down in the record books but wasn't particularly challenging or fun.

Love it when a Saturday constructor wrecks my average solving time! Nicely done. Clever clues, absolutely solveable with some brain twisting.