Krad

I’m a little surprised at the number of comments wishing for anything other than hyphens to be accepted. Maybe I just got “lucky” today by reading the title right away and then having the “aha” moment come so quickly in the NW corner. Not trying to toot my own horn (ok maybe I am but it’s such a rare moment), but wouldn’t letters of any variety make the down answers nonsense?

Makes up for Saturday puzzle’s difficulty, even with the clue about the dark green egg of the . . . . You-know-what

This was one of those “Pretty sure I’m right so I’ll Google it just to be sure”. days. Then annoyed with myself that I spoiled the purity of the game.

To those who say the puzzles are getting too easy, I understand. But not because I’m one of you. I started doing NYT crosswords during Covid and since then I’ve gotten much better, mostly by learning the likely tricks rather than because I got smarter. I can easily see how those of you who have larger funds of knowledge and have more experience are crying for harder puzzles. Maybe it is just that the crossword puzzle format itself limits what can be consistently achieved by constructors, and not the NYT or the constructors themselves. Constraints may create an upper limit of difficulty for human puzzle constructors, and if more AI created puzzles appear, I can only imagine the complaints! Fortunately for me, @NYT, you are right where I like you to be. But then again I usually crash and burn watching Jeopardy, and usually after the “Monday level cluing” of the $400 answers.

You know how sometimes putting it down then returning is the answer? This one fell on the fifth try! Sweet!

Added challenge with deficient color vision but thankfully the color answers were obvious without seeing them!

That was fun! I first had “Chahchahchanges,” and in my head that tower in Italia was leaning to the right.

I was never a Trekkie so I hit the Autocheck way too early. And like some times that I throw in the towel early, almost all my fill was uncorrected. Only thing I knew coming in was Spock, Kirk, and one episode name (The Trouble with Tribbles, the only one I ever watched). Coulda sussed out the downs without knowing anything else about the series or the character names. Oh well. My loss on a lot of levels, but l still can appreciate an excellent puzzle even in hindsight. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Still doing puzzle but had to laugh that having first gotten the theme answer right away, my first “ear” attempt was in the SW corner. Which is where I spent far too much time trying to fit in the “ear” of iridescence.”

First pass, first of many crashes, with “metal” for 1D. This was not a puzzle for ink, imo.

My “complaint” is that I was allowed to put an “s” into the first circle, my last fill for gold. “What is a resea,” said I. If you have to think “rebus” then you should have to place a rebus! But I’ll take it.

Nice puzzle. Only speed bump for me was needing to keep at it. Er, I meant keep it up. Oh I mean keep in it . . .

Could not even triple-15-D today. Anyone else in a 58-A about it?

Ha, since I had all of the shaded filled and none of 62A, and racing for a Monday PB, I decided HIPHIPHURRU must be a thing.

Not sure I will ever execute a bump set spike, but at least some day when I see the clue “Linked to an Astley video,” I will know what the 10 letter response is.

Movin’ Out came on exactly as I was tackling 56A!

Halftime puzzle.

Took me too long to abandon uber and ampulla. Otherwise fun!

A bit off topic, but has anyone figured out the magic number of keystrokes that would “call off” the EMU? Or even better, is it possible that the EMU has passed on to the EMU afterworld?

I agree with the majority that this was both brilliant and frustratingly easy to get the gold star without being required to understand the brilliance. I stand by my yesterday’s comment: If you have to think “rebus” then you should have to place a rebus! In this case, require an h and a!

1) The puzzle was brilliant 2) On the topic of the note, when I initially open the puzzle the “i” in the upper right corner was blinking, yet no note appeared. I thought the blinking means “read the title page precisely because there an attached note,” but I guess not. Now I’m wondering if it always blinks and I usually ignore it. Since I can’t wait and check over the next few Sundays, will someone explain? (Sorry in advance if it was explained elsewhere).

For me this was a rarity: Fill by reading only about half the clues then reading the comments and thinking “I didn’t see that one in this puzzle!” Which makes me wonder how the experts deal with that one on a daily basis. Do you routinely make sure to review all, even tho you’ve finished, to see what you’ve missed?

Silly question: Curious if anyone left the holes unfilled, ie as holes? Did it work?

“ja-A-e, ja-B-e, ja-C-e . . . “ . . . Emu-A Emu-B Emu-C