Evan

So many people are complaining, but it feels more like 'complaining about rebuses just because they don't like rebuses' than about the puzzle itself. In my case, I found this delightful! Solving it was like eating a pizza - having to slice it up, starting from the inside, and working out towards the crust. The construction is really fantastic, and I'm impressed at how it managed to pack so much into such a small puzzle footprint. One of my favourite crosswords in a while, and unless Sat or Sun are amazing, a solid contender for puzzle of the week. I love the final look of it too, with all the colours!

I had to comment because this was one of my absolute favourite Thursdays - ever! It was a truly lovely challenge that relied more on clever clueing, wordplay and the theme puzzle than on obscure references and names, and I had a blast solving it. So many aha moments, from getting how the theme worked to actually using it to solve clues. 'Tough but fair' is exactly what I want Thursdays to be, and this was perfect. Some of my favourite clues: Get bronze > SUNTAN was my last holdout, because in my mind I kept trying to link it to being in third place, and it felt really satisfying to finally finish it. Dancer's haul > SLEIGH was just fun wordplay, and gave me a smile to solve. Roger's cousin > YES SIR was fun, I had 'AYE SIR' in for a long while and that just had me stuck for a good bit - totally on me and not on the puzzle, though.

As a WoW player, I have to say I got a little frustrated that 1D wasn't MMO, but RPG. It's definitely a bit of a confusing answer - WoW and FF XIV are both MMORPGS, with the MMO really being the thing they have in common and a fine way to define them, but 'RPG' alone is a totally different genre. Most of the FF franchise are RPGs, but none of the WoW games are RPGs, so technically the one thing that WoW and FF should have in common is the MMO part and not the RPG bit. That said, this is probably me being finicky or overly fussy about the answer; I didn't actually have too much of a problem figuring it out.

A happy new year to all! 🎉 And hopefully a better one than the last. 2025 was kind of a bust for me, but it's been nice getting slowly back into puzzling and crosswords (I just started trying out diagramless ones, and gosh, they're fun!) in the last few months. I absolutely do not have any confidence in myself to actually see it through 365 days in a row, so rather than resolve to complete the crossword daily, I think I'll resolve to attempt the crossword daily!

Well, this was fun for the most part, but had me really confused for a long while - it turns out I've been spelling GOT A BAD RAP wrongly as BAD REP this whole time! It didn't help that I assumed the New Testament miracle location was CAVE rather than CANA, so thanks to that one spot I almost WENT BANANAS. Still, had a great time and I loved some of the clues!

This felt REALLY good to solve! Played it with my partner, and we loved the (hidden?) dog-theme combo of POM (fluffy toy), STATE (chihuahua) and ADOPTDONTSHOP. The clues were really good, too - nothing too obscure fills wise besides OLOU for me, but the rest fell into place nicely, with great long and short ones. My favourite clue was probably 'Took the lead?' for ERASED, though - got a real aha moment for solving that!

Lovely solo debut and big congratulations! I found it a little challenging and had to solve this together with my partner, but a lot of fun. Some great puns in there - RAGTIME was the standout, but 'BOSSY' for giving orders was pretty good too. The EB White quote took forever to fill in, though it was solvable in the end even without knowing it, so that wasn't too bad.

A fun and delightfully straightforward puzzle! And to everyone else putting on a PERSONA for visiting family as they ask what you've been UP TO and PAN all the choices you've made last year, or getting ready to SATE yourself on all the festive snacks, a very happy LUNAR NEW YEAR from my corner of the world! 🔥🐴🧨

This one felt tough but fair! I thought it was a great Friday - took a long while to work through it, but it wasn't overly referential and besides TITO (which I had filled in as SKOL initially) I wouldn't say any single answer really stumped me. Lots of good 'oh, that's what it is!' aha moments too, which is always satisfying. I particularly loved SOAP BOX PREACHER as the answer for 'Figure of speech?' - that was a fantastic clue and a lovely chunky answer.

Really liked this! It felt like a fair Friday - appeared obtuse at first, but after cracking a few, solvable through working at it. The top left quadrant had me stuck for a long time until I hazarded the guess of OLGA, which got the rest open for me. I genuinely enjoyed doing it and the two long fills (COMMIT TO THE BIT and CREEPY CRAWLIES) were both wonderful.

Had a lovely time with this puzzle! The top half flew by, but I got stuck on the bottom (no fault of the construction) and had to take my time with it. The theme actually helped - it was how I managed to solve OUIJA BOARD from a few crosses - and I thought the wordplay of the themed clues was delightful, as well. A real pleasure to play! (I also feel I might have had a bit of an advantage being Chinese and being familiar with the I CHING, but even so, that was the theme clue that was the hardest to crack.)

I really liked this! I thought it was a straightforward Friday but in a good way - some fun, chunky clues (and the grid spanner is of course fun as always). The bottom right pair of QED and EGOT was actually fun; I changed my answers a couple of times for that (EMMY? TONY? All I know is we want to PARTY), and it was nice seeing Ren Faire get a shoutout. The clueing felt at just the right spot, with some of the easier ones making it easier to get crosses for the more vague side. Just a really solid puzzle overall.

What an absolute delight to solve! I had a great time and laughed through all the clues - I did figure out what the theme was as soon as I hit NO TRUE SCOTSMAN, and from then on was trying desperately to remember all the other ones. VERY fair crosses on the super long grid spanner, I'm really impressed. And I can definitely see why this got published - just the right sort of APPEAL TO AUTHORITY made! Lovely work, and a real joy.

Challenging and rewarding, the best kind of Saturday xword! I had a great deal of fun doing this with my partner - we really had to work together on it, and it wasn't just one person getting all the clues as much as combining our shared knowledge. The bottom right corner had us stuck for ages, too. My favourite clue of the day was 'red plant?' which was just delightful - I did have 'SOVIET SPY' as the answer initially, which was close enough that the right answer came shortly after.

I honestly really really loved this Rebus! Smart use of the square, with the double meanings of ! and BANG - I genuinely didn't get it even after getting the revealer at first, not until JEB!, at which point I went 'oh WOW, that is clever'. Very fun Thursday, and a delight to solve!

Super entertaining, clever puzzle that I solved in record time (for me) - I wouldn't say it's because it was easy, but it really felt like I was on the same wavelength as the puzzle maker, which is always nice when it happens. I particularly loved all the phrases; they felt really good to solve and fill out. Some great clues too! As a gamer, I'm ashamed how long it took me to figure out HIGH SCORES, haha.

Dunno why, but just wasn't a fan of this. It felt like a lot of clues (especially in the southwest section of the grid) were just names or references to things, and I was kind of out of luck and natick-ed hard from simply not knowing them. Maybe other people would've better luck, but I'm just not really enthused about so many proper nouns crossing. That said, I did like the theme and rebus, so there is that.

Lovely fun theme! Seemed really hard at first and I was quite at a loss, but once I got a couple of the themed answers on the right, the rest of it fell into place pretty quick (and with a near-record Thursday time too, to my surprise). I thoroughly enjoyed the construction of this, although RAIDED was a bit of a holdout (I had EXHALES instead of EXHALED and couldn't figure out what was wrong).

Much more engaging than yesterday's! This felt like it was just the right level of challenge and cleverness for a Friday, and was really enjoyable to work through. Loved some of the long fills as well, I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY was tremendously fun to figure out.

Compared to yesterday (tough but fair, one of my favourites) this just felt a bit... underwhelming? I'm not saying it was bad - some lovely clues (BOOTY CALL, SLIME TRAIL, AVALANCHES were all fun solves) but it just wasn't quite the level that I'd like to see for a Friday. I will say [Scrap] as BIT got me stuck for quite a while, since I had it as BIN instead (assuming 'scrap' as in 'to throw away', rather than 'a small thing').

Lovely smooth Monday, and a fantastic debut puzzle! I'm a bit surprised at the lack of constructor notes; I was rather looking forward to reading them.