Kate
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My kids would say that posting a comment on a crossword article after completing said crossword is SO EXTRA. I love Christina Iverson's puzzles. I was excited to see her name pop up and this one didn't disappoint! I always feel like I'm on the wavelength and the PHANATIC was the first in a series of great answers. I was slighty hesitant to enter SANTAHATS after seeing Santa in a clue but that's what helped the NE come together for me. SOEXTRA, despite being something I've heard a ton, was the last to fall because I had STAr instead of STAX for way too long. Well done! Fun and quick Saturday.
@dalums I read the comments and articles daily and have always seen full spoilers here, never the first two letters only? It’s one of the reasons I like this comment section - no cross-referencing.
A Tuesday PB for me - and faster than my Monday PB as well! It solved like butter. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
I love a hard Saturday that can keep me busy for over 30 minutes (last Saturday was BRUTAL and I loved it) but there were parts of this one that I found just annoying. Just comparing 1D from last week, GOLFBAG was clever, BADTHING was not. I thought of it and was like “no way it could be that”. The rest of the clueing I found mostly tough but fair and can respect the construction. HOSER and SHORTA nearly did me in and pushed my time to over an hour, but most of that time was just frustration.
@N.E. Body I believe "uplit" refers to the light being at the base of the statue shining upward, rather than just "lit up" which could mean the light is coming from anywhere.
Terrific, fun and breezy Tuesday. I absolutely loved the clue for NOAHSARK. And the themer was so clever! Bravo.
@Lewis I never remember past puzzles but I DO remember the wallflowers and I LOVED it. What a lovely puzzle - and a lovely post by you. I will note Ms. Golden's puzzles going forward!
Fun and fresh Friday that flowed freely for me! Added a Friday PB to my Monday and Wednesday this week, but wouldn't say it was "too easy" - just felt like it all clicked beautifully in my brain. Loved the cluing for WEREWOLF and I love when I can use GenZ slang like CAP for things other than eliciting derisive stares from my teenager. Congrats on a great debut!
Spent too much time wondering if it was going to be kebab or kabob, which then didn't work with PREGO, which had me second-guessing if there was some other Italian word the constructors used. Tough corner! I didn't figure out the themers until the puzzle was over and wasn't quite on the wavelength today, but I still found it enjoyable and crunchy for a Tuesday.
I liked this puzzle. The J in the SOJU/JETE crossing was the last to fall and I ran a few before finally getting it (I had myself convinced there was some theater actor named Pete Bound that I had never heard of!). HUNDO was my first guess but then I thought it was possibly too modern of a slang term (my teen says it more than I do!) and almost filled in the more ubiquitous crossword fill of CNOTE (neither of us says that). But the delightful inclusion of absolute UNIT pushed me back to it. Had Aleve and Barb instead of ADVIL and BURN which delayed the NW a bit until the long clue fell into place. Overall a speedy and fresh Friday that I very much enjoyed.
ANDY and NBA - such great clueing. Loved this puzzle.
Would have been a possible best for me had I not confidently entered PEPELEPEu and then lost a good 3 minutes searching for that one little letter. Regardless, I loved this puzzle and it flowed without stopping for me. The palindromes were a bonus once I solved it and such a fun little treat. Bravo constructors.
@Sami the “heart”, or middle, of the word black is an A of the SHORT variety. I didn’t get it either.
Not me trying to figure out how "as tar is born" or a mispelled version of "asterisk" figured into the theme! I got the addition of the extra letter to the starred clues but it took a while for the "B or N" to click. So cool. Loved it!
I thought this was very clever and fell in an enjoyable way for me! POACHED OUR EMPLOYEES was a favorite. Two new words for me today - TSURIS and INTAGLIO.
I enjoyed this one for the most part! Nothing I found unfair or too obscure and was an average Friday solve time for me. The cross of PECOS and CALABRIA is where I started and the whole east side fell pretty quickly from there. I had confidently entered BOPS immediately (I have a teenage son who says it), but then erased a few times trying to make sidelineREPORTS happen. Once HALFTIME fell into place, it was a pretty smooth solve for me.
Really really enjoyed this puzzle. It was a breezy solve for me and I wish it had lasted longer than 10 minutes! Congrats on the debut! Made me remember when my younger brother ordered shrimp cocktail at a very sketchy diner when we were younger and had a rough 24 hours after that.
@Paul bangers is also a slang term to refer to good songs. Kinda like a BOP. :)
I was definitely on tbe constructor’s wavelength today and found this puzzle fun, challenging but without any long stuck points. My goal is sub 20 on Fridays and was excited to achieve that! Especially enjoyed METADATA and BAKESALE.
Clever misdirect on the football clue - I had BR___and confidently entered BRady without much thought only to promptly erase.
Loved this puzzle. I find I'm usually on Christina Iverson's wavelength and thus look forward to her puzzles. These answers just flowed breezily for me, only a couple of minutes off my Friday best. Clever and well clued, a perfect Friday for me!
Loved it! Such a pleasant and fun Friday. TIL Junipero Serra is NOT a "chile" though I made the educated guess based on Serrano and the I from INSIDEJOB being correct. That threw things off for a minute but now I have learned about the saint and tucked it away so that's always a positive.
I thought this was very fun and definitely chuckled at some of the states. I especially liked HUH WHY E. Seems to be a lot of sour comments today which surprised me! VERGEINYEAH was the weakest by far but I can give a little leeway. It was breezy for me at sub-20 and a fun diversion for the morning. Sorry to hear many didn't enjoy but I'm among those that found it cute and fun.
I really enjoyed this puzzle! It fell very quickly and enjoyably for me until the SW corner, where entering fijI instead of BALI slowed me down considerably. It all came together when I hesitantly tossed in UFOS and knew something was AFOOT. Bravo, very well constructed.
I thought the theme was very clever! After ruminating for a few minutes about how I could possibly fit any of the NCAA rounds in there, I figured something must be afoot. I might have liked some allusion to the other numbers in the clues for a Wednesday puzzle but I'm not sure how you'd make that work. Anyway, it ended up a PB for Wednesday for me so thanks for that! It all fell beautifully into place once I caught on.
Ooof this was a slippery solve (even, perhaps, eely?). Had the grid filled in less than 10 and took another 15 to hunt for my errors, which like many here came down to SLY. I don't know why I thought SLx was a possible answer but I didn't even really know there WAS a Gen Y - and I'm someone who would be considered a Gen Y and the parent of a Zoomer and a couple Alphas. Is Gen Y equivalent to Xennial, I guess? Either way, I enjoyed the puzzle! HIDEYHOLE was fun and I'm impressed at the inclusion of LGBTQIA, lots of tough consonants there. Well done!
I had CLEF and FRET for far too long but other than that corner, very enjoyable solve today!
Excellent puzzle! Fun, interesting, great clueing (loved FOOTREST especially), nothing too esoteric. I was definitely on the wavelength today and it flowed beautifully in nearly half my Saturday average - yet somehow didn’t feel too easy.
Phenomenal. Loved it. Clever but fair. I loved BOOMROASTED, EROSION, ELFHAT. Perfect Saturday in my opinion.
Loved this! The clueing felt very fresh and although it went by quick, it felt like more of a workout than a normal Tuesday. Loved the literary inclusions of the wonderful Annie Proulx (I'll have to google and find out when she dropped the E.) and Frank O'Hara.
@Mark Williams the great site xwstats.com will do this for you if you link your NYT account! But yes, I agree - would love to see more detailed stats on this site.
@Norwood I wonder if the general population tends to be 50/50 on olives or whether the numbers skew more one way. I feel as though olives in general are a far more divisive food item than pineapple. I'd imagine people who don't like olives on their own also don't like them on pizza, whereas far more people probably enjoy pineapple alone but not on pizza. I wonder what the numbers are for people who like olives alone but do not like them on pizza. Of course it depends on the type of olive too... I digress!
@Alex i was thinking Public Relations 101
@Nancy as someone who used to play a lot of poker, this was an instant gimme to start the solve! It's said very frequently in Texas Hold 'Em and is usually used when a player has all the odds in their favor and still loses the hand. Usually it's when you lose to someone playing a junk hand - or like you said having four of a kind and getting beaten by someone with a higher suited four of a kind.
“57:17 slower than your average” pretty much sums it up! Yikes. I partially blame post-vacation exhaustion and solving on a flight with my 6yo sleeping on me, but still. Yikes.
THIS is my kind of puzzle. Fun, breezy, clever clueing. Took me 70 minutes less than yesterday and I’m okay with that, haha! I loved the themers (SCREWSTHETITANS especially), modern additions like YEET, and clues right in my wheelhouse as an elder millennial mom (THEARCHER, THNEEDVILLE), combined with classic crossword knowledge. Bravo, Spencer!
Excellent tougher than normal Monday! I loved it. I didn't love that it took me a full 3 minutes to find my one mistake - SAMaRA and aTE instead of SAMIRA and ITE. Ah well, so much for a record today.
Excellent puzzle. A perfect Saturday to work through on the deck with a raspberry beer. Took me 24 thoroughly enjoyable minutes - would it have been fewer without the beer? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I loved it.
@Mean Old Lady I went ahead and smugly entered QUEEQUEG in the Melville clue right away just based on the number of letters... that one didn't last long!
@Andrzej To have one player in a game manage to chart double figures in all those categories means that they managed to excel at basically all positions instead of playing their "role". I believe all those who have done it are "big men", meaning centers that get their blocks and rebounds but also come out to steal the ball and make good passes for assists, which is a facet of the game that big men don't tend to excel in, just as guards are unlikely to get a lot of blocks and rebounds due to the size differential of the different positions.
Adding Sea ISLE City and AULII to my wheelhouse clues as someone who has been going to the Jersey Shore my whole life (nearby Stone Harbor for us), and who has listened to the fantastic Lin-Manuel Miranda soundtrack to Moana (featuring Ms. Cravalho) about 13,000 times. A lovely Easter egg hunt of a puzzle for me!
Very smart and clever puzzle. I very much wish the Ts had not been visible in the squares for me. Even just gray boxes would have been preferable, but for a tougher solve I would have preferred no indicator - though it would have been very tough with no clear indicator of where the Ts would be omitted vs. not!
@RisDrewAndRu I sang a good chunk of the song alone in my office out loud "buy you a drank... money in the bank... shawty what u think bout that, i'll be in the gray cadillac" and still couldn't get it for a good while! Def forgot the part where he shouts himself out.
Very fun and quick Friday for me and a PB at just over six minutes. I love the cha cha slide and speak Spanish which helps. Speaking of Spanish, the word for “without” is “sin” (similarly senza in Italian and sans in French) so I convinced myself that SYN for “lacking” was some sort of abbreviation for a word with a Latin root. Très clever now that I see what it’s truly meant to be!
Completely anecdotal but as someone who participated in online pregnancy and parenting forums, it was very common to see epidural shortened to “epi”. Often when people would type out their birth stories, they would say things like “at that point the contractions were so bad, I decided to ask for the epi”.
@Steven M. I didn't like this clue either. I'd almost prefer it as "call from a rec tennis player" because it's something you'd say when making your own calls, not something a line judge at a tournament would say. I suppose possibly the chair umpire at Roland Garros might say it when inspecting the clay mark but not the line judge. Ah well, pedantic.
@David Wilcoxen agree! I kept going back and wondering if I had it wrong. “What a traveller normally has in America” would have been good!
I thought this was, overall, a fabulous and clever puzzle. How challenging to have fill with double letters that can be removed in either direction! Brilliant. My only quibble is with SCUSE. I’m only a casual Italian speaker so correct me if I’m wrong. Scusi/mi scusi/scusa yes… I suppose it can be used as a plural noun to mean apologies, as in “voglio porgerti le mie scuse” but certainly haven’t seen it much.
I thought this was a good crunchy Tuesday. I spent a lot of time running the alphabet on the NERTS/TIMON cross thinking I must have it wrong (those were both new for me but the T seemed correct) and finally dug through the whole puzzle to realize I had MADMAn/SEn. Ah well!