Anthony

TNIA crossing ENNEAD left me with some deep uncertainty about spellings when I didn't get the music, which I spent some time on before giving up to see if indeed TNII was someone's name. Poor YURTS being entered and erased so many times.

Harder than usual, and AURAE was a big snag, but the rebus execution was very well done! Love it when clues force you into the rebus.

The theme was brilliantly executed: fun and funny. GDS, KIL, EOE and spellings like EMEER... they kind of tempered the good times.

Really enjoyed the puzzle! In case the constructors are reading and the puzzle pack for children's charities they mention was Grids for Kids, I'd also like to thank them for that! I've been quite disappointed in crosswords designed for kids, as they tend to be badly made crosswords with clues that are intended to be easy. The amount of crossing is often very limited, and not respective of the relative difficulty of the clue/answer pairs involved in each part of the grid. Grids for Kids, however, was *terrific*. My son has never clicked with kids crosswords, as they tend to have these dead regions that he can't solve, but he raced through the whole Grids for Kids pack. That it involved donating to children's charities made the whole thing a real feel good affair, so thank you, constructors!

So, so good! Loved the variety with the theme. The support surrounding all the potentially tricky bits was so well considered, that even things like the backward FIVE came out really smoothly. The polishing time put in on this grid shows!

Whatever the opposite of “on the same wavelength” is, that’s what I was. Uh-oh, gah, and kissy were eye rollers, and then the cluing with things like “lastin’” which must mean something that I didn’t get. The victory lap in the notes including so many answers made turning to Word Play for help quite the bonanza. I am glad that some found the challenge satisfying! I love the feeling of slowly working through a puzzle, and wish I had found that here. More important than puzzle quibbles, best wishes to Will in his recovery!

Rough going, here. Far from the same wavelength as the constructor. BRB, going to go soot something and then ensile it. Okay, to be fair, there are some fun ones here like the clues for PEDIATRIC, ALASKANS, and CROMAGNON.

Fast and fun Thursday! Was initially perplexed by the shaded squares that weren't making any sense, but about half-way through the across clues it clicked and then it was off to the races. That is probably the most fun way to solve a crossword, so thank you to Garrett for that. And an extra thank you for sharing that story in the Notes. It can be hard to appreciate impacts to the emotional states of others or to ourselves; the most important thing is that people share these experiences. I think not only is this puzzle a good time, but I'm also sure that your story will lodge itself in the minds of many readers and help them, if only as a reminder of the importance of good memories.

So good! I love it when the long answers are some of the more gettable ones and can serve as anchors for tricky fill. These were totally dialed in!

Really impressive how smooth the fill was for how much structure the gimmick demanded. Terrific!

Longest Wednesday solve for me in ages, and the most I've struggled on any day for many months. ELIHU and ANTEGG were real problems for me, as I was happy with MOB for 30A, never got comfortable with the answer for 24A though I had it correct, and kept going between SWORD and SCALE for 4A which is fairly amusing. I like the idea of the theme, but the prefix words kind of threw me for a loop, particularly 24A and 36A, leaving me without confidence that I knew what was going on. All that said, it is fun to imagine Nick working on this, and the tool theme is a great nod to him!

Great job, Amanda! Really smooth, but not something where every clue was a no-crosses-needed certainty, either.

Really enjoyed this, and I think the shaded squares were a great choice! They surely made it much easier to spot the trick, but, thinking about it, I don't know how long it would have taken me to get there without the shading.

This was just great! It was fun, funny, smooth... everything one might want in a crossword. Wonderful job!

Really tough one for me that I ended up needing an assist with. Was totally thrown in the NE because Soundgarden and Linkin Park aren't the same genre, so I was stymied from the start there, and then wrote in ICON for 16A which didn't help. Also didn't know the Degas painting title, so, yeah. EBOY eluded me in the SW, as I couldn't squint hard enough to make the clue read like a pointer to EBAY (or our other favorite, ETSY). So the NW and SE went smoothly enough with some effort, but then I struggled. Nice to have a challenge like this on a Saturday!

Ended up solving it as a themeless as the pig Latin was stretched so thin. Some gems here like [New Jersey?], some pitfalls like that U in the 68 square. Had EMOJIONXRAY for 53D which I found amusing (I had given up on the pig Latin by that point) and was sad to see go. I think a pig Latin theme could work well, but the clues and dual phrases don’t seem connected well enough here. For example, 15D, I don’t get All Time Low from the clue; while 60A ties together really well.

Wonderful puzzle! The ambiguity of parsing multi-word answers in a crossword puzzle can be such a source of mystery, it is a real treat to have that leveraged as a fun gimmick.

Great puzzle! So many clues that required thinking resets.

Great puzzle, and a fun way to learn some sign language! Thank you, Alex!

This puzzle won me over! I was a little annoyed by the request to jump around the clues so much at first, but as I figured out how to use those coupled clues, I came to enjoy the hunt. [Not to] had me stumped for a good long time, but was a great feeling when it dropped.

Fast and fun solve that prompts a useful bit of self-reflection for daily solvers: that bit of, "Wait, is it Thursday already?" panic indicates just how accustomed we get to our routines!

I was completely flummoxed by LAY to the point where this puzzle was a staring contest between me and 4A due to that hole. The rest was fairly smooth, but I don't think I found the theme as amusing as intended. Still, always appreciate a slightly tougher Tuesday than usual to ramp up for the rest of the week!

The impact of the CCC really is amazing. So many wonderful, huge forests we have today include somewhere in them a sign or plaque crediting the program.

What an intimidating start to this puzzle! So much empty space, but then at least a reference to the International Swimming Hall of Fame to get us started (/s). Really wanted SLOP instead of GLOP, but was saved by 13A being straightforward and making a strong argument against the S. This was a really well put together puzzle, it came together with little bits here and there adding up to steady progress.

Such a fast Friday until that SE corner! I rejected LAM for the same reasons as listed in the column, and have to admit to not knowing ASTATINE. I then had RIPE for RIFE, didn't like MOLARS for grabbing, and had enough doubt in BAG that I become a bit grid locked. I let myself lookup an element starting with AST, and then was able to shuffle things into place.

This was haaaaaarrrrrdddd... and amazing! The SE's confluence of JEFF, HENRI, JENNY, and VINNIE was a tough pull, with JENNY fortunately providing a tenuous anchor for me. I think I only had two or three words placed after my first pass, but got there in the end. Really amazingly good clueing.

I was never able to gain traction on this one. Filled in a handful of isolated guesses, but then needed Wordplay to make progress. I think some of the clues folks complain about would get a pass in another puzzle, but there was so much that resisted solving here that the stretches are less welcome than usual.

Very fun! As opaque as this could have been, the clueing really helped with recognizing the trick.

Touching constructor notes that can be a useful reminder how valuable encouragement can be. I really enjoyed the misdirection in the clueing here, 27D and 45D being great examples. The smooth solve (which is impressive given those triple stacks!) was only mildly interrupted by some difficulty in coming up with CDSLOT as that feels as retro as 37A!

Love that the crossword is practicing spaced repetition to teach us all the word ARHAT. I think we need a few days off, then hit us with it again! 😀 I really enjoyed this puzzle. It was a challenge, but had a few entry points... and I only got half of them wrong with my first guess. I had never heard the term MELDS for card games, and that top-right square was the last to fill in for me as I also wasn't 100% about ASSAM. It was great, though, to whittle everything down to that one square. Great job, Jake!

Nicely executed grid! The theme seems like it would have the potential to frustrate with non-words in the grid, but I think it worked out really well. And thank you, Deb, for sharing about your father. It was a very frank, very touching account of a life shaping relationship.

The puzzle was very nice, but filling in that last square at the very end (you know which square it was) was *fantastic*. Having one trick square could be too subtle, but the rest of the theme really pointed the way. Great job!

Really enjoyed the whole puzzle... except for that top center that resisted any entry. Needing HIRT and DDS is a big ask. I ended up looking up trumpeter Al and it all fell in to place, though I still didn't get DDS until reading Wordplay. That's a really sneaky one that I secretly kind of love.

Wow! That was some workout. Had to scramble all over the grid to get a letter here and a letter there, but everything came together so nicely. The MAGGIE rope-a-dope in the NW almost drained me, but 11A knocked it out for good, allowing me to find my way. Just fantastic!

This was great! Biggest concern I had was what the website would accept for the trick squares, but I was very thankful with how generous it was as I didn't have any problem there (I went with "I"). Shame that some gravitated to an unwelcome option, but thank you tech team for your efforts!

A tough Tuesday for me! I put a fair amount of time into trying to get rid of NUYORICAN as it seemed that something was clearly wrong. I could see the portmanteau in there, but it seemed like it couldn't fit in the available space as I wanted it to be (the perhaps more boring) NEWYORICAN.

The double gimmick definitely got me for a while! I had sussed out the hidden lies, and thought it was all down hill from there, but no! Well done on a clever and fun puzzle!

The NW was a tough nut to crack. I didn't know LAR, and then the very corner itself got me. The old bean needed a nudge.

What touching constructor notes! Congratulations, Thomas, on putting together a fun puzzle and getting it published!

This really was brilliant! Huge congrats and thanks to the constructor for this blast from the past. Will admit I don't think I've ever heard KALE for [Moolah], but, hey, it leaves me with something to think about.

I really enjoyed this, but it turned out I braided the answers the wrong way! The real pleasant surprise here was how quickly the braiding mechanic became apparent. I think the surrounding fill was easy enough that, with so many letters, the trick was apparent. It was very well done!

That was terrific! I had a few bad guesses in the NW corner that made it the last to fall, and I had trouble getting a toehold all over the puzzle but there was *just* enough to get going, which is exactly what you want from a crossword puzzle. Well done!

This one just flew by for me. Spencer of a year ago and I are on the same page today! Only stumble was holding onto BOG for 39D for way too long.

Really excellent puzzle! There were entries I had no clue on -- ELLA, e.g. -- but was able to work them all out with the crosses. Exactly what you want from a crossword!

This made me sweat when, mid-solve, I double checked the calendar to see what day it was! I actually didn't really get the theme, only noting that the differently-typeset parts of the clues appeared in the answers. It's very cleverly done!

Everything went fast except for that NW corner that had me dead in the water. It is fun to go through the clues in order with a growing sense of despair only to find a toe hold somewhere from which to build out. And indeed that is how it went, with the SE being the first completed section for me, but after filling in everything but the NW I was still stymied by 13A, 1D, and 3D. Rough corner!

Wow that was hard! Doing it on the website left me having to mentally keep track of the out of bounds letters as I found squishing them in as rebuses even more confusing to read. First time in a long time when I think I'd have preferred solving with paper and a pen! The challenge was that while I realized letters were hanging outside the grid, it took me until something like 80% of the way through the solve to realize the letters formed butts. That was a huge aid in keeping track of what letters where there since I couldn't write them down, and I wish I'd figured it out sooner. Very creative!

This was so much fun! It went by very quickly (tied my best Wednesday time to the second!) but that's in part because I was so entertained that I wanted to get to the next theme clue. Very fun; great job, constructors!

I found this one notably hard due to those chonky corners and a few words I couldn't produce: HINNY, LACERTA, and SHOFARS. What was fun was that PELICAN did indeed reveal the trick, and then the theme answers served as anchors for the rest of the solve, presumably as intended. A drag for me was having HINNI for a while as I misspelled LYON and that equine hybrid wasn't providing any helpful advice. Also checked in with the KING [Kong] gang.

This was super-fast for a Friday, but it was so much fun to work through! Those intersecting spanners really are gorgeous as puzzle elements and for the contrast highlighted in the constructor's notes.