IV

A little tough for a Monday! I got tripped up on KENO/KLEE, particularly because I had 38D spelled as MATZAH. Really liked the theme too, a neat concept and, by definition, easy enough to be Monday appropriate because of the repetition.

That was adorable. Great puzzle, fun fill, right level of difficulty for a Thursday with a bunch of rebuses that required a little more analysis. Nice to put a few gimmes in there (like CARELL, to start) to clue that there's something up with the word length; by the time I got to STUFFED CRUST I was already feeling pretty confident about the theme.

What a fun puzzle, the best cluing I can recall in the last few months! NE corner was the last for me but none of it took a frustratingly long time, consistent with my Friday times as I continue to get better at the crossword. One of these days I'll commit the answer to "Russian county house" and the like to mind; same with whatever the Swiss equivalent is that I know I've seen before and not known.

The column today had me cracking up picturing a double albatross. Great puzzle too! The central entries were great and each corner felt like its own level of difficulty. BINET/ADESTE was a little mean though. Has anyone else noticed how much IOTA has showed up the past week or so? It's crosswordese of course, but it's been especially heavy lately. Even once in the mini!

Smooth solve and lots of great clues today. [Debugging soft wear?] is going into my personal hall of fame for fantastic clues.

Between today and yesterday, two top notch puzzles! Hopefully the trend continues for Sat/Sun. This was the right Friday difficulty for me—I filled fewer than 10 on my first go, and then things came together slowly but surely for a 25 minute fill.

This was a great Thursday, the theme was clear enough that I got it within a few minutes without a hint, and the trivia was a lot of names that I had somewhere in the back of the head that worked its way out as I solved, like VIVIEN LEIGH and Katey SAGAL.

This was a great difficult Saturday! The northeast corner gave me a lot of grief—I was so confident in all my acrosses, including TONY NOm, and wondering how in the world STEAm could be the answer to [Place]. I did figure it out after thinking about how the shortening didn't match to the clue (and staring hard at that corner for a few minutes). WPA MURALS threw me for a loop too, another one where I felt great about every single cross but just wasn't confident in that answer. Besides that, I really enjoyed the colloquialisms and was familiar with more cultural references than usual. One I'm still not sure on—what's a DELE? Is that a shortening of "delete" in some profession I don't know about?

What a smooth Thursday! A very reasonable rebus (and I'm a fan of rebii), and the fill took a beat but nothing that got me stuck for too long—except SCAB vs SCAR! I swear, those two are so often interchangeable and I always put down the wrong one.

This was straight up hard. Most difficult Friday in a LONG time—6 months, maybe more! Great long clues and misdirects. I got the southeast corner, then took way longer for the northwest corner, and the rest came together pretty slowly.

I'll echo everyone else—fantastic Friday, quite tough. The southwest corner tripped me up for as long as the rest of the puzzle until LEGIT came to mind, and then I fixed THoSE, and the rest came in short order.

That was a fun one! Once I caught on I copied the Greek symbol Φ and put that in each square and was pleased to see it worked.

This was a great Saturday—it went pretty quick (faster than yesterday's), then I spent about half my total time on the bottom middle thanks to being so confident on BEAST for [Doozy] and SOY for [Are, in Spanish].

I'll echo everyone else that this wasn't the usually Friday challenge, but it sure was fun! I look forward to the day we get not only POG, but also POGGERS and POGCHAMP in the puzzle.

That was great, I wish all Wednesdays solved like this one! Still sub 10 minutes for me too. I came over to write a comment solely for ESPIAL. I don't think it's unfair, I'm sure it's a real word, and it's comprehensible enough if you're familiar with its root word. But nonetheless—that's a mean, mean answer.

This was a fantastic theme! It wasn't difficult to decipher either, which I always appreciate it. The right level of difficulty for a Thursday at 22 minutes for me, mostly from the center. RAMALAMADINGDONG was kind of rough, it was played for me as a child so I came up with the title without too much trouble but I don't know if it's quite well known enough for the crossword.

One of my longer Fridays, and maybe my shortest Saturday! Feels switched up to me, but both were great puzzles. Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my snowy morning.