Jamie B
Oregon
69
Comments
0.041
Avg Sentiment
25
Positive
19
Neutral
25
Negative
Oregon
What a slog. Just didn't jive with this one. Recognized the theme right away, but still was a pain. Also, I felt like there were a ton of naticks as well. Made what could been a fun theme and made it brutal.
I'm just here to support my Naticked brothers and sisters. That SW corner was a real pain.
Count me with those who felt there were a few too many proper names. NW corner probably took longer to parse out than the rest of the puzzle together.
It's funny how different people find different puzzles easy or hard. I came here expecting to see "difficult for a Tuesday comments, but instead I see "easy even for a Tuesday" and the like. I take solace in knowing I've come here and had the exact opposite experience. This one just wasn't my jam.
My biggest gripe with today's puzzle was not the puzzle itself, but the clues given in the write-up. If I get stuck, I'll head to the column and use any of the tricky clues I haven't gotten yet to help me finish it off. I purposefully skip the Theme section so I can figure those out myself. Today half of the "Tricky Clues" were the Theme answers (luckily I already had them all). PLEASE DO NOT PUT THEME CLUES IN THE TRICKY CLUES! Thank you, rant over.
@Steven M. Steven J. Must be a slow solver. He's obviously had it longer.
As someone from the West Coast, we don't have EDY'S, we have Dreyer's. No matter how many times this clue comes up, I can never remember it. It's just some weird mental block.
I loved the theme hated the filler. SW corner was an absolute slog.
@Renegator I've been there many times myself. I come to the comments section expecting to find a bit of comfort from others who struggled, just to find a majority of comments saying how easy it was. Other days I breeze through it and come here to find tons of comments on how hard it was. It really can be if the composer chose the bits of trivia you know or if you just get their wordplay. Also, I have a wife who's been a kindergarten teacher for years, so TEMPERA Paint was a gimme.
Started out really annoyed with this puzzle and kinda getting there was likely a rebus in the special squares, but none of what came after the rebus made any sense. Even after getting the revealer, I was confused. Then it clicked. Brilliant puzzle. That I ultimately did enjoy. :)
Once again the fact that I always spell DEFINaTE wrong cost me time. The cross was a proper name I didn't know so that didn't help. Overall I'm a decent speller, but there are a handful of words that always trip me up. Nice puzzle with just the right amount of difficulty. I DEFINITEly enjoyed it.
Overall an easy Wed for me. Had a little trouble in the SW corner, but made it through. With SASHIMI crossing LHASA and LIMA, it took the rest of the crosses for me to figure it out. Fun puzzle none the less.
Jack PArR added confusion and minutes to my solve. However, TAUS make much more sense than TrUS. Thought it might be TriS, but could not make TNi- work for a cross. Frustrating end to a really fun puzzle.
Had the whole left side filled in quickly. Spent twice as long on the right side. I just couldn't see it. For example, WARNS didn't click until I had figured out WINKSAT. It was like 2 separate puzzles, one I vibed with and one I didn't. Overall, one of my quicker Fridays.
@john ezra the way I untangle who or whom is could the answer be he or him. WhoM would you call? I would call hiM. Who helped you move? He did. Took me to the age of 40 to get that one down.
It's been a while since I've done a Wednesday puzzle, so 4 mins overy average seemed like I must be rusty. Then I came here and saw I wasn't the only one who struggled a bit more with this Wednesday. Loved the theme, had a couple of Naticks, ultimately finished it. Thank you Nick and Christina for a great puzzle.
I'll say I felt this was a very fair puzzle. If you consistently do Mondays, you can do this one. Was it on the harder side for a Monday? Sure, but was it anything a Monday solver couldn't work through? Nope. Really enjoyed the theme.
@Andrzej my favorite memory of playing Q*Bert in the arcade was they put a speaker in the bottom of the cabinet so when your Q*Bert jumped off to his death you would hear him plop onto the bottom of the cabinet. I always found it funny. Sorry you missed it. It was a great game.
It was fine. The two clues that went along with the main theme were clunky and didn't really make any sense as to why one was what it was and the other was what it was... Oh well, on to tomorrow.
@Andrzej I've used algebra and even calculus often in my daily life, but I'm the opposite from you. I absolutely love math, so any excuse to dust it off is fun for me. I also love languages, but not enough to become fluent in anything other than English. It's great we are all wired differently, or else it would get pretty boring (and likely annoying).
Just wanted to add my appreciation and congratulations! This was a great puzzle and a great debut!
Finished the puzzle and then spent the next 5 mins figuring out where my spelling mistakes were. Oh well, fun Tuesday puzzle.
@George haven't cracked the theme yet and I'm finding the fill ridiculously difficult. YMMV I guess.
Spelling caused me at least 5 minutes. Oh well, someday I'll spell gooder.
Yeah the NE corner was not a Tuesday NE corner. AGHA crossed by 2 foreign words and a very uncommon word which were also crossed by a theme clue (which didn't follow the theme all that well). Nantick East corner. Yuck. Hoping the Wed solve is more fun.
Definitely a challenging Tuesday, but I was able to beat my average time by a couple of mins. Of course my recent averages have been about 10 mins under my average as I have gotten better. Overall e enjoyed it, theme and challenge.
Tonight I was a full on MUSCLEHEAD. Could not figure out the bottom of this puzzle for anything. 3 mins over my average. Probably my slowest Tues in months. I just wasn't on the right wavelength with this puzzle. I couldn't even get AS I AM an album I've listened to beginning to end more times than I can recall. It was a struggle, but I'm done.
This one was at the same time very fun and very frustrating. I loved figuring out the theme clues, but much of the fill was outside of my wheelhouse. It took me more time than my average for a Sunday, but ultimately I made it through with only having to confirm a few answers I wasn't 100% on and I think one actual look up. Overall satisfying, but not as relaxing as some Sundays.
Funny what trips up each of us. I had no clue what 1D or 14A were, but figured out JARULE pretty quickly (though I have no idea what any of his albums are). My last letter was when I got to O while guessing vowels on the cross. Just glad I didn't have a typo anywhere or I might have been on that clue forever.
Was very excited with how quickly I was going through the first half of this puzzle. I got the theme right away and was cooking. Then the bottom half of the puzzle let me know, there would not be a personal best in my future today. I muddled through and eked out an average time. Fun puzzle.
@Emma I wanted to enter that, but can't spell it, so I didn't enter it and it paid off. 😅
Fun and easy Monday felt great after banging my head against it for 2:00:00 on the Sunday.
@Steven M. Similar for me. I went through 2 times and was one minute slower than my best time 13 to 12 mins. 2 weeks in a row the Tuesday was easier for me than the Monday. Fun quick solve though.
Good theme I enjoyed and it helped me tremendously. 5 mins slower than my average. I just couldn't get in sync with this puzzle. Every clue was a struggle. Once I figured some out, I would do the obligatory forehead slap. Other times, I would get them from crosses and just think, ummm... Ok... Sure, if you say so. I won't bother everyone with my naticks, but I felt like they were everywhere (I realize it's perception and not reality).
@MN typically, on Thursday I start it, then if something seems off, I'll head to the blog to see if it's a rebus. If it is, then I try and figure it out, but ultimately, I'm not too proud to peek at the gimmick. So you can always head here first on Thursdays and see it's almost if not always before they give anything away.
@Francis well, I didn't like the clue either, but I finished in 1 hour almost exactly. I only compete with myself and don't really care what others finish in. I do these on my phone and I'm pretty sure I couldn't go back and type in all the answers in 8 mins now that I know them. Some people are wired to do crosswords. I'm wired to teach kids how to hit a baseball and field a ground ball correctly. I'm pretty confident I'm better than most people here at doing that. Just a skill I have that others don't. None of that makes any of us better or worse people just wonderfully different.
Today wasn't just my fastest Tuesday time, it was my fastest puzzle ever - 10:09! I believe I'll break the 10 min barrier at some point, but I don't really solve for time. I always look at the down clues when my across clue will solve if I haven't seen them yet for example. Quick and easy fun puzzle which I needed with this head cold.
@Charles I'm just luck I'm old enough to have had a Grandma who loved that show. If not I might still be working on it.
Beat this one in half of my normal Thursday time. The right side went really fast. The NW went much better after I realized Peaches is in Mario Bros, not Donkey Kong. Once I cleared out 1A and filled in my hunches on the words that couldn't fit before, it all came together. Including RUSSET POTATO which opened up the theme for me making sense of the others I already had and made solving the rest of the grid a walk in the park.
@Steve L Interpretation of stats can be subjective similar to the difficulty of a puzzle. I interpret the stats a little different than you do, but not wholly. I completely agree that it shows Monday's was easy for the "pro" solvers and hard for us "novice" solvers. I also feel Tuesday's stats are the norm. Newer solvers tend to beat their average every week. 79% I would expect to be around the norm for a Monday or Tuesday especially since they have a higher number of newer solvers. Monday's was essentially, a 50/50 split. If half of the solvers out there are slower than average then it is indeed a hard puzzle. There are so many questions I have about what's behind the stats. I might have to get a membership to see exactly what I can dig into.
@Aaron same. Completely clueless on it.
@Ors same. No idea what a MUKBANG is, or who IGA is. I had MUKBANnS for a while and couldn't find my mistake since, to me, InA made more sense. Ultimately, scanned the tricky clues section and saw I had it wrong.
New best time for a Tuesday. Feels good after that Sunday.
@Long walks n sunsets just going to say my wife (in her 40s) indeed does call it a "pony" at times. Being a dad in a house full of boys, hairdos are not my strong suit, but I was surprised to see the tailless pony backlash.
@Andrzej to clarify as well a Friar's Club Roast is where comedians come together and insult the guest of honor (often another comedian). Also, you all just not have rented movies or borrowed tapes of recorded shows. If you didn't adjust your tracking, you often wouldn't be able to see anything on the screen. When I saw the clue I had the V and thought, it would be funny if it was VCR. I got stuck just south of you since I put in SPEc I had some word ending in box and couldn't figure anything political out for it and didn't know the actor that crossed. Made for a tough SE corner.
I too felt it was pretty easy for a Wednesday, though the top half filled in faster for me than the bottom. Had PsS for a long time and couldn't get sORTEN_ to solve to anything and had forgotten what a tin lizzie was. As soon as I switched to PPS it all came together and I got the gold star.
@Victor maybe if the clue for ART was something better than "guile" it would have not have been so problematic. Having never known of those being "synonyms," iRT was just as possible in my mind. Once I got TH_R, I figured it must be an A missing, but was afraid to put it in. SE corner was brutal for me.
I agree with everyone that said way too many proper nouns for a Tuesday. Felt much more like a Wednesday puzzle and my time.reflected it. I'm fine with the proper nouns on the theme clues it was the myriad of non-theme ones that were annoying.
@Steven M. Agreed on that crossing. I was 90% sure on the director, but those were pretty harsh crossings. I have never heard of either.