Nathan

Impressive feat of construction, and I will add to the chorus of wows here. I realized the theme only on solving the revealer, and am impressed by the four 15 letter spanners. Nice puzzle, and I enjoyed solving it.

I really liked this puzzle. It is great when you see a few letters in a longish clue and the word pops up from some corner of the brain. Today ALLKIDDINGASIDE came with just one or two letters filled in but PLAYEDMINDGAMES took a lot of time. But I had never heard of COMTE nor the kids rhyme and so on, so it is OK. But ZOOLANDER AND DIRECTIVE and a few others just popped up, and whoosh, in they went! When I do a Friday puzzle in half an hour or less, without any look ups for names and such, it brings a little joy to my day, and that pretty much is when a puzzle is good in my book.

@Deb - Lovely tribute and heartfelt condolences. Sorry for your loss and may you have all strength to bear it. The puzzle was excellent. Enjoyed grokking the trick which I figured out quite early on in the solve. But not knowing about the nomenclature of a common syllabus stopped me from completing for a while - I had COMMONCOdE, and for some reason thought that was okay - till I saw that RIG was better fit than dIG. And then of course the revealer was super apt!

This one gave me a good workout! Filled in three fourths of the puzzle quite fast (for me), and then was stuck for a long time with the NE. Having never heard the word slider used to refer to a food item sort of stopped me cold. But eventually, I figured that out through just trying various combinations and then when 17A fell - I should have got this earlier, but somehow it took time - it all came together. This puzzle also had very few names and references that I have little chance of packing away in my subconscious given where I live, and so, I felt good I could solve this one with no lookups and sheer persistence! Yay.

Quite a nice puzzle that brought about a smile when I grokked the theme. Finished it faster than I usually do, but these days I find the Thursdays easier than I used to. Liked that there were fewer names I had to guess my way through because they are not part of the pop culture references I pick up. Got misdirected a few times, enjoyed the clues in the NE, and liked the creativity in the theme. RIDGY and MYOPE were unfamiliar and I only got SKAT because all the other combinations sounded weird, but that is better than par for my crossword course. Hope to see more puzzles from you, Raji!