Kelli

Where was the wordplay? I wait all week for a clever Sunday and the theme involved trivia, not actual wordplay. A huge disappointment, and a slog. I solved it, but I did not enjoy doing so.

Shouldn't 46D be "step mum"? I mean, they're British.

I enjoyed this puzzle immensely, despite the large number of proper nouns and other trivia that I just didn't know. But... was there a theme? It seemed like there was supposed to be a theme but I couldn't find one and I don't see any comments about it.

A puzzle worthy of the NYT from 20 years ago :) Definitely refreshing after yesterday's Wednesday-on-a-Friday puzzle. For a long time I wasn't sure I was going to finish without looking anything up, but I made it! Thoroughly enjoyable and just what a Saturday puzzle should be.

Another one of those puzzles that I probably would have enjoyed if I didn't feel the need to protect my streak. Which stares at me every time I go to the Crossword home page, so there's no avoiding it. I can't ignore it. I cannot just "let it go." If I could turn it off, I might be able to enjoy puzzles like this one. Please, NYT, give me a way to turn off the gamification!!!!! I cannot help but get competitive and it absolutely ruins things like this which would otherwise be fun.

The only thing I will say for "snees" is that, if you have done the archives at all, you know it. It's tried-and-true crosswordese. That said, I got "snees" right away, and still had to look up multiple things in the NW corner, so it didn't help anyway. (I'm Jewish and couldn't figure out "schmears"!)

This puzzle is everything I hate about crosswords rolled into one. Vocalizations I cannot figure out, too much trivia that I don't know, not enough wordplay. I don't do these puzzles so I can google a bunch of stuff, believe it or not. What a slog. Not rewarding at all.

I really liked the theme, and the solver overall. But I got stuck on not knowing "adenine", nor how to spell "aloha oe", and also had "switched gears". I couldn't find the answer. Kind of a natick IMO. One letter wrong you can just keep guessing until you find it, but I had no idea how many I had wrong and "switches gears" seemed to fit the cluing just fine. Small nit to pick, but indicating somehow that "switched" in the past tense was preferred would have facilitated this solve considerably for me.

So many vocalizations. I hate those as much as most commenters seem to hate rebuses. It's like we're relying on needing to be psychic to make the puzzles difficult instead of wordplay and misdirection. Leaves me wanting a challenge. Time to go back to the archives.

OMG this theme!! It made my morning. I had all of the themed answers solved except for one, thought it couldn't get any better, and then I hit "Tater Stater". I'm an eternal fan.

Am I the first one to point out that a homoNYM is a word that shares a spelling but differs in meaning, whereas a homoPHONE is what we're actually talking about with this puzzle? To be very clear: this puzzle contained homophones of cryptids, not homonyms. ("Phone" is the root for "sound" and "nym" is the root for "name.")

It's funny, but I think aloud, so I kept saying to myself "echo" over and over again... and my Echo kept responding. And I couldn't for the life of me figure out 34A.... Thanks for trying to help, Echo :)

I'm someone who usually ruins people's mornings by complaining that puzzles are too easy.... Today I'm here to join the people saying this was a slog. More than twice my normal Saturday time and I had to not only google a significant number of things, but also had to flat out cheat by just looking up answers. (Usually I don't have to google anything anymore.) I wish there were a way to turn off the "streak." I cannot ignore it when I see it, and it means on days like today I don't feel comfortable asking the puzzle for help which, frankly, ruins the fun. I don't enjoy googling things, but figuring out what wrong letters I have and using logic to deduce the rest is actually a lot of fun. But the latter ruins my streak, and the former does not. Please, NYT, make that streak thing optional so that I can actually have fun on puzzles like this one!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: related trivia is not a theme. Not for something that is supposed to be wordplay. (To be fair, the archives are chock full of this too.)

I solved the entire thing except the three "double clues" in the middle. I knew what they were getting at. I knew there was a rebus that would connect the first clue with the second clue. I couldn't get it. Which makes sense, because I have never heard of 2/3 of those answeres. Would have been a great puzzle and theme, IMO, without the random squares in the middle that seem to be doing an entirely different puzzle using a dictionary I've never seen before.

One small natick for me that ruined an otherwise smooth fill by making me go through every single answer in the grid and, eventually, ask for help. I have never heard of "prog" rock, nor "frog" rock which I had originally -- because both AM/PM and AM/FM apply to many clocks, including the one I have in my bedroom. I didn't think about it, and could not figure out where my error was. With the benefit of hindsight, AM/PM makes more sense, but there was nothing in either crossing that made me think what I had originally was incorrect.

The fact that I was able to use the numbers in the grid to deduce where some of the rebuses go is icing on the cake. What fun construction! Love the theme and especially the implementation. (And I love minesweeper, too!)

Another one of those days where I feel like I did a completely different puzzle from everyone else.

Figured out the trick but still failed to really solve the puzzle. There were a few answers I couldn't make sense of, and being able to pencil in the letters for HORSES would have helped me figure out what I was likely missing -- but we cannot do that online. I would have enjoyed this one more doing it on paper; it really did cause me not to be able to complete the puzzle due to quite literally missing letters I need for crosses.

I'd like to cordially request a way to enter out-of-grid letters when solving online. Between thinking they don't want a rebus and therefore not entering them, and getting caught on the Peloton-Totoro natick for 10 minutes, this was an unusually difficult Thursday, but not in a fun way. Took away from what would have been an enjoyable solve.

"Next on my list" is everything I hate about vocalizations perfectly epitomized! Even after solving, I don't get it. Those are not the same things. They just aren't. Might as well just leave a giant question mark, it would actually be less confusing.

There has been a bug when doing the crossword in the browser for about a week now. I don't typically use the app. And because I don't use the app, I apparently also cannot report the bug. Every time I click the pencil icon, it shifts focus to the pencil icon and requires me now to re-click on the puzzle in order to be able to type. I have a video, but until someone gives me a proper email address to send things too this is the best I can do to file a bug report. I cannot type this well in the app, either, so if I report through the phone you will get basically "I haz bug u fix plz?". I personally tend to go back and forth between pencil and pen on trickier puzzles, so this is really getting in my way. Can I get some proper technical support?

What was the picture that showed up over the puzzle at the end? And I wish it would show you the "missing" letters because I forgot all of them as soon as both related answers were in. Which, incidentally, makes it much harder to do these sorts of puzzles.

The pipes were cool... I want more of that. Related trivia does not a theme make, IMO. But the pipe gimmick? Extend that, now you have a theme.