Matt

Only Kugelman could get away with nonsense like "Dessert" leading to "tressed" and thence to HAIRYBACK. Like "hairy"...BACKwards...cause the clue is BACKwards? And "Taps" = "spat" leads to COUNTERARGUMENT? Seriously? Will someone explain to me how "COUNTER" is synonymous with backwards or reversed or out of order or...? It's gotten to the point, for me, where confronting a Kugelman is much less like doing a crossword and more like completing a psychological profile of a crucigrammatic criminal. And he is endlessly enabled here. If only Stan Lee had imagined a super-villain whose power was dad puns/jokes/humor he might have come up with Kugelman-man. Just...no. Enough already.

"WERENAUTICALWORTHY" is a "comICAL/ICLE mutation" of "We're not worthy?" "LYRICALJET" is meant to funny up "Lear jet?" I won't bother with the others. I'm calling "no clothes" on this theme. Sorry. These aren't even "dad joke" funny. Have I missed something?

never saw the game. never played it. likely never will. tipped off by his eminence, solved the puzzle with no inkling of the theme. then wikipediaed minesweeper to learn about a thing i never knew and thought: cool game. and then i thought: very cool puzzle. especially retroactively sussing out its use of 1s and 2s. and then i thought: this is why the times crosswords are so cool.

I have read others' complaints about setters' obscurantism with a certain quiet forebearance over the months because, after all, I had solved the puzzle. If I get the natick on a cross and am then able to look askance at and tiptoe past the unknown fill, what's it to me? I "got" it, too, in the end, didn't I? But today I'm adding my voice to what I imagine will be the chorus. This is your clue for UCLA? Why not clue instead its acreage or the year of its founding or the number of buildings on its campus? I'd have loved to know the student enrollment in 1955, too! Is it because "Back to the Future II" ranks right up there with "Casablanca" and "Dr Strangelove" in the pantheon of film for you, setidors? Maybe I should give it another watch. And who hasn't been sung to sleep on steamy summer nights in the outback by the sultry warble of the "Double-wattled cassowary?" Ah, the memories...before the dingo ate my baby, that is and when I still had a farm in East Africa. And only yesterday I put in a bid on a lovely 17th century capote coat on Ebay. Gee, I hope it's not too mothballed. (to be continued...)

Another endorphin-releasing, moderately disorienting instance of seemingly randomly filling two or three small gimmes on the first pass, embracing the enervating fact that this one will be the one to break my streak, pickaxing my way anyway through a corner off one of the initial little fills, painstakingly following a vein or two as bigger flakes fall with a couple of well placed taps which reveals a spot or two to place an explosive charge and after 45 minutes the entire lode is glitteringly revealed. All of which makes me a bit richer and a little dizzy.

when in order to get fill you have to physically twiddle your thumbs with a stupid grin on your face after futilely trying to rotate them around each other like tiny sausage heavenly bodies managing only half orbits you know youre standing in the shadow of a fine puzzle.

OT's are not doctors.

i cant remember the last time a thursday made me smile this much. thanks, mr brody. to someone like me who has never dipped a toe into the pool of crossword construction, todays offering fills me with an inchoate and fraught sense of how deep the pool is.

This could be the lamest gimmick I have ever seen since I washed up here.

Sorry Sam, but I think you've got things wrong here. In my experience, the recent spate of excessively easy grids has only very rarely explicitly sparked ire toward or attacks on the setters. And when it has, the commenter has almost always been quickly corrected. Indeed, most of us bend over backwards while lamenting the state of affairs to express our appreciation for the cleverness of the construction of the grids. Our disquiet is with the editors and with what seems to many of us a very obvious and intentional trend on the Times' part to simplify the solutions with much easier clueing over the last many months. I found your comments essentially exhorting us to be kinder in general, and to the setters in particular, patronizing in their deflection from what is actually being expressed here. "Today's puzzle was too easy" and all variations thereof have absolutely nothng to do with the constructors or their efforts. The final product we see and solve is determined by you guys. I think you must know this. I am a big fan of your columns and would like to state that my objection to today's is proferred with respect and admiration for your work here.

Meatiest Sunday in ages.

im gonna call iffy on 56D. the force cannot be taught. it is the chi of the star wars universe. it simply is and abides in all things. now...teaching how to USE the force? great. MANIPULATE it? fine. CORRUPT it, even? groovy. but teach the force itself? doesnt work.

What it lacked in difficulty it made up for in smiles and head shakes. I squeaked with anticipation when I saw the constructor names and the synergy of their collaboration did not disappoint. An unusual Sunday to be driven so overwhelmingly by charm.

I've learned in my brief tenure here that there are two ways to deal with a Kugelman grid: 1. Skip it. I'm too OCD/unevolved for this. 2. Imagine an AI programmed to mimic a very clever spectrum-dwelling dad who lives to amuse only himself with puns and jokes. Next, take a deep breath and grab a cup of strong coffee or glass of peated whisky. (Coffee for me, usually, as I'm a morning solver and am frequently off to work soon after...) Finally, commence to solve in the knowledge you will derive little pleasure apart from completing it.

@Deb my crossword addiction here began a year ago. youve been a superb enabler. thank you.

almost a year x-wording and i fear im getting in too deep. im beginning to recognize constructor names. do i need a support group? a 12-step program? i guess thats what you guys are for...

the top three non-sexual/food-related sensual experiences in precisely this order: 3. expertly manipulating a pen/curette/crab fork handle/other long, thin, not-too-sharp object to scratch and relieve the maddening itch deep inside your ear without puncturing your tympanic membrane 2. finally managing to find, corral and detonate the sneeze which has already brought you to the edge and then left you bereft and in frustration three times 1. going over the crossword five times, still having 10-or-so unfilled words all over the grid and connected to each other by the slimmest of tendrils, going to get some coffee, suddenly remembering that meat loaf played the biker who was called eddie in the rocky horror film, returning to the puzzle, filling in that one stupid little clue and then watching as the rest of the words fall like dominos to complete the solve

When I first began xwording it never occurred to me that the puzzles could teach me loads about myself. When I grok a rebus theme I am usually wont to think: How devilishly clever are we, the puzzle builder and I! And when I don't I incline to pout and declare: How dopey and maudlin this meager effort from the puzzler and how rightly affronted am I! I no longer can discern clearly where the puzzle characteristics end and mine begin.

TOTALLYDOABLE

Agree with Barry. A Saturday solve should not take me fewer than 20 minutes. And yet, the clueing was downright delectable...dare I say Weintraubian...and made both my hemispheres very happy.

I'm always happy to see a Tuesday dressed up, puffed up and strutting its stuff like a Thursday. An unexpectedly chewy start to my early-week morning. Thanks, Kathy and editors.

initial fear of a bout of snow blindness on a bleak tundra of too-uniform white soon gave way to a wonderful walk in a lush and cleverly landscaped garden. thank you, alex, for a delightful debut.

Holy cow! Constructor Notes never choked me up before today! Right out of left field, that was...

all this fuss about themeless vs themed sundays. sometimes i feel like a ripple drinker at a sommelier convention when i read the comments. but to paraphrase duke ellington: if it solves good, it is good.

im new here. and perhaps its already been done. but id like to lift my glass and propose a toast to sam ezersky and his mini co-elves. who are frequently responsible for the often delightful petits fours they provide in the minis while im still digesting the maxis. i suspect that he and the other mini constructors do not get enough credit for their efforts. just today, for example, mr ezersky crammed "elision" into the tiny morsel. no small feat on such a small beat. bravo.

I was entirely meh'd over by this grid. Which makes me sad of late when I contemplate the labor pains its passage must have caused. So I thank Mr. Raksin for his effort and the 14? 16? minutes we spent together.

Anyone else tempted to put BOAS for "Curry complements?" (viz. Rocky Horror)

if you didnt get tonearm youre just not old enough to be up this late.

And the Times puzzle editor said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day a Thursday puzzle worthy of Thursday. Big shout out to Mr. Snow for (at least temporarily) restoring my faith in the quality here. And a big shout out to Sam for referencing Bartleby, my vote for the finest short story ever written. Ah, Sam! Ah, humanity!

ive only been addicted to the times crosswords for nine months or so but heres what i loved about this puzzle: whether you love or hate rebi and word splitting/sandwiching/doohickying, anagrams and the fifty other types of word frippery that appear on thursdays, here is the first such puzzle ive encountered whose solution entirely hinges on the trick. no prospect of working around or ignoring the trick in order to solve by crosses. all in. totally rad. more of these, please.

yet another precocious setter to shoo off my lawn. just kidding. mostly. very good sunday. please do more.

When a gimmick is too cool for school, even in the easened era, a shout out is in order. Huzzah!

someone recently suggested here that i make early-week puzzles more challenging for myself by solving them using only across or down clues. which i did today. but an unanticipated problem with this is that i only understand half the comments.

"Puritanical set worker suspends garnish" PRIGGRIPRIGSSPRIG I'm sorry.

i havent been doing this very long, but i cannot recall another puzzle whose constructors cluing wavelength was so subtly and perfectly out of phase with my own logic circuits as to cause nothing but stupid grins, smiling head shakes and internal exclamations of "huh!" from my delighted self over the course of 35 minutes or so. absolutely perfect start to my friday. thank you, ms keller.