Roberto

Well, I finally finished the Saturday in 4 hours 01 minute and 23 seconds. Or about 30 hours in real time. Man, that was a tough puzzle for me. I went back to it at halftime. I went back to it at the end of the football match. Many matches in fact! I slept on it. Finally got it. YEA me! Katie Hoody, my new idol.

7D is IDO? What does that have to do with Me! 8D is SINGIT? Do I have that right? She might be a Broadway great but I never heard of Idina Menzel so I had a hard time with the top middle section of the puzzle. Aside from that I can't imagine going beyond 16. I just ran thirty-two through Google translate and the prospects for a puzzle entry are pretty bleak. Well, TIL kanakolukumamālua is thirty-two in Hawaiian.

Steven Wright was the voice of K-Billy in Reservoir Dogs, the host of the radio program K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70's. That was The Partridge Family's "Doesn't Somebody Want to be Wanted?", followed by Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows where my Rosemary Goes" as K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70's weekend just keeps on... truckin'. Just a bit of trivia for all you SW fans. I see from the comments there are quite a few of you, not just the constructor. As a side note, things are easier in Spanish! A photo is a foto and a pharmacy is a farmacia, and yes, phonetic is fonético.

I thought that was an excellent puzzle! Thanks RL! Was it hard or easy for me? Well, at first I thought it was hard, but I did not abandon hope. I had about half of it filled in and could not go any further. I took a nap. When I got back to the puzzle, the answers seemed to just fill in by themselves. So it was hard until it wasn't. I have posted more or less this same comment a thousand times. For those of you who get totally stumped by a puzzle, take Sam's advice, don't abandon hope. Just put the puzzle down, go do something else, come back later and for some reason your brain will have it all figured it out. One other thing. I live in Valencia, where we had the devastating floods a few weeks back and thousands of people lost their lives, their homes, their entire neighborhoods, so I may have some idea about how terrible the devastation has been in southern California. What can I or anyone say?

This puzzle didn't just KAYO me, it NUUKed me out. It really WATTLED my ZARF. Congratulations to anyone who solved it without cheating, and see there are quite a few of you. You enjoyed a tough puzzle, glad for you. I actually did alright in the bottom half, but the top half was just too hard to do without help. I have no regrets for giving up because I feel I couldn't have solved it if I worked on it for a week!

A flotilla of frivolity! A lighthouse of levity! Are we on the HMS Pinafore here? All seriousness aside, AS TO 41D: Sawyer for me is Tom's last name (to pick one instance) and I have never heard anyone referred to as a sawyer. Nor have I ever known anyone to set up a saw practice. An upscale term for cabinet maker? So, agent nouns. Worker, driver, teacher, dealer, seller, buyer, baker, puzzle solver, there are a lot of them. As an expat I find when I go to a restaurant the waiter always has to practice his English with me. Since it is a restaurant naturally the conversation will often have something to do with the kitchen. Many times I have had to explain that the person who does the cooking is the cook, not the cooker. I tell them it's a common mistake, and a perfectly logical one, but alas, it's wrong. In Spanish nothing special happens with the cook. He's a cocinero. Or she's a cocinera. Does"ero" in Spanish agent nouns have anything to do with "er" in English ones? I don't know!

There once was a teacher named Bonkers Who helped PAVE THE WAY up to Yonkers He planned it like Moses A path strewn with roses But got just a parkway with honkers. I will, to use the parlance of the comments section, see myself out.

I wonder if anyone else screwed up the northeast corner by putting in tEnD for 18D. I had the E and the D, so it seemed pretty logical. So then I have tOoTRUE which kind of makes sense, but then 12D is AoO_EN and all I could think of was the Australian Open. So 25A is SnEp??? I don't think so! Being up is one thing, the caffeine kicking in is another. I went through all the comments in search of enlightenment but nobody seems to have had the same problem. Finally AWOKEN, I realized I had 18D all wrong. HOWTRUE! SEEK and ye shall find. Otherwise, I am glad to see Trenton Charlson again. Who else is going to construct a puzzle with entries like MADAME TUSSAUDS and TRIASSIC PERIOD? Loved the photo of the executed murderers at Madam Tussaudis, by the way.

So, the athlete going over the bar is a visual pun on having people over? I don't know! As for WAWA, we don't have to bring Gilda Radner into this. But I'd like to mention that the child of an ex-pat friend of mine, faced with the insoluble choice of water or agua, settled on Wagua as a viable compromise. Hey, slake your thirst now and you can worry about the right word later.

This puzzle did not sit well with me at all! Sorry! Going through the comments: I agree with Teresa, too many random phrases, and Chris had a good reply to that: "sneerat and yellat do not belong in the same puzzle. Once is pushing it, twice is lazy." TMD didn't like the cluing and thought the puzzle a slog with few fun answers. My opinion as well. Rajeevfromca found too many vague clues, and I agree STETS is not "leave" strictly speaking. I might add that I never see it as a verb, nor do I ever see the plural EROSIONS. Many people didn't like 13D [card letters] for STL and I didn't either, it's not a vague clue, it's just obscure for no reason. While I'm at it, 15D [color for un campeon] is the best clue you can come up with for the Spanish word for gold? Besides, do gold silver and bronze really refer to the colors of the medals or the metals they are composed of? 30D SUPER. Really? 50A PEG [Part of a violin quartet?] Please. Hopefully better puzzles will come. Development through experimentation! What else. Yeah, Pepsi's ok.

I'm happy! Friday, Saturday, Sunday, three tough puzzles! I finally solved today's puzzle but it took a long time. At first I had CLOSETHEdeal for 113A and it was a while before I cleared out the southeast corner and started anew. I never associated anything chic with Ohio before! Rachel! I miss your Wordplay columns but thanks for a great Sunday puzzle. Aside from that, I can understand why a lot of people might have been frustrated with these last three puzzles. Experienced solvers do have an advantage, not only because they know certain words that appear in crosswords (but not too often in real life) but also because they have the ability to look at clues from a different perspective.They also have a spidey sense for rebuses and tricks such as we have today. Per aspera ad astra!

Congratulations Carly Schuna on a great Saturday puzzle. It was challenging but with patience I finally solved it. The puzzle was notable for the lack of bad fill, such as strained words (like MERER from the other day) and no off the wall clues. Clever, tough clues, yes, but with a letter here and there the answers all fell into place. I really enjoyed the puzzle!

In the Goofs section for O Brother Where Art Thou? on the IMDB site we find: "Nelson asks if any of "you fellers" knows his way around a Walther PPK. He then pulls out a sub-machine gun. The Walther PPK is a pistol." It's one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies, and it has a great soundtrack. I have watched it 4,356 times and that's why I remember the line.

IMPOSSIBLE COLORS Well, hemoglobin is not stygian blue, we can agree on that. As for the origin of brownie points, I always thought... well, never mind, it won't pass the breakfast test. Go to Wikipedia if you wish. Aside from that, I enjoyed the puzzle, not too difficult, not gruesome puns to groan over. And TIL that a KITE is a Chinese symbol of hope and prosperity. I'm ok with that, it's easier than trying to fly an anchor.

That was an enjoyable Wednesday. Wasn't there an RANDB group called Gladys Knight and the Humdingers? They had a song about a train but exactly which train and where it was going I can't recall.

I enjoyed the puzzle! But I didn't like like the clue for TILT at 2D, [pinball infraction]. An infraction is not a big deal. The adjective minor often precedes it, and MW in a usage note points out that in Federal law an infraction is even smaller than a misdemeanor and penalized by a mere fine. A TILT is a heck of a lot more than an infraction! It's game over baby! No more balls. Flippers don't flip. Bumpers don't bump. Lights are out. Weird sounds are mute. It's the arcade equivalent of capital punishment. Always gets a prize, Never seen it fall, That deaf dumb and blind kid Sure plays a mean CLAWMACHINE.

A well constructed puzzle, I enjoyed solving it. It was definitely Friday level, but the grid being open allowed for many crossings, there were a lot of ways into it. Puzzles with words tucked away in corners are hard to solve because you don't get much help from the rest of the puzzle. Today I felt confident that with patience it would all fall into place nicely. And it did. I liked the long spans, which were great for misinterpretations as you filled in various letters. 10D, alas, is not summer sale event. But it was a nice try.

4D Fine leathers, ok, I SEE. But she's not wearing suede. I would have liked to see Jerry Seinfeld in his suede jacket from the episode The Jacket. The one where Lawrence Tierney plays Elaine's father. Nevertheless, that is a great photo!

I liked 31D and 34D, but normally a girl is a chica. MUCHACHA isn't wrong but I don't hear it often. For 8D] ["___ bien!" (All right!," in Spanish)] I had todo at first but soon realized ESTA was going to be the right answer. All right would be literally translated as todo bien, as when you you meet someone and ask everything good? ESTA bien for me is more like it's ok, don't worry about it. With no exclamation point. Just nitpicking! But what do I know, I'm not a native speaker. Aside from that, very impressive puzzle from a 14 year old! I'm afraid to ask how many languages he's fluent in.

May I? The clue, once you have filled in the blanks, refers to the second part of the answer. It does not refer to the whole answer. The second part of the answer follows LESS. 27A. The clue is WINTER, after you have filled in the blanks. The answer is SEASON. The clue WINTER is NOT referring to WINLESS SEASON, only SEASON. The letters WIN that come before LESS are what are missing in the clues, you insert WIN in the blanks. Yes, the answers taken as a whole are common expressions, but the meaning of the expression is irrelevant to understanding the relationship of the clue, once you fill in the blanks, to the answer, which, again, is only the second part of the answer, after LESS. I hope this helps!

I enjoyed this puzzle, but I could only do the bottom half at first. Hours later I came back to it and all fell into place. Tough but doable! 16A DOGBREATH reminded me of the Brazilian expression bafo de onça which translates as "jaguar breath," Definitely will knock you out, but if you're so close to a jaguar you can smell his breath I think you have more serious concerns than his breath!

I hope this doesn't hurt Pascal Siakam's feelings, but 36A made me immediately think of Caitlin Clark. WNBA is popular these days! 119D, SUE Bird, no problem! I quite enjoyed the puzzle. My Irish side is smiling. I got it done early. I'm certain the Spanish will be smiling when Carlos Alcaraz wins Wimbledon and going totally NUTs when the national team beats England in the EURO 2024 championship. A busy day ahead!

I had no problem with Lewis's favorite original clues from last week, specifically 1. Wheel on a school bus-themed cake, perhaps (4) OREO But I have to say, nobody but Christina Iverson could possibly pull off 54A, [black and white cookie], OREO. There you have it, the quintessential Monday puzzle clue and answer.

That was quite a photo for today's column! I can't find a definitive answer as to when they sold their first million burgers, seems to be around 1952. Maybe someone who knows automobiles can date the photo from the cars. And maybe someone who knows photography can say something about the photo itself? Mr. Simon? Kodachrome They give us those nice bright colors They give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world’s A sunny day, oh yeah One nit about 43A. I found there is such a word as rocketEER but I'm thinking there may be a typo in the clue as racket would be a lot better. Nothing more. I see we're all clear on pit.

Esmé is one of my favorite short stories! I highly recommend Saki. Here's a link to Esmé. It's a quick read, well worth a few minutes of your time. I enjoyed the puzzle, by the way. The bottom part was tough but FAIR (or fine) for a Saturday. <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3688/3688-h/3688-h.htm#esme" target="_blank">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3688/3688-h/3688-h.htm#esme</a>

I'm just going to quote Caitlin because she says exactly what I think and says it better than I could: "Of course, there are soft spots among the prickles; once you touch enough of them you’ll get some momentum. It’s a worthy, enjoyable Saturday challenge, but not as tough as it first looks." I really enjoyed this puzzle! I don't think too many people are going to complaining it was too easy. On the other hand, it wasn't so hard that I had to put it down and return to it later. Ryan! I laughed when I finally got 40D, NEPALI. I started out with Buddha! But don't get too cocky! You're no Robyn Weintraub (yet!). 14A from Friday: Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana, e.g. I think we're all looking forward to more from you, hopefully old age will not slow you down. Happy Birthday!

That was a difficult puzzle and I needed some help to solve it. I find myself agreeing with a lot of people who complained about obscure clue and answers. And of course when I come to the comments section looking for answers, I find everybody flaunting their WRONG ANSWERS in all caps which completely adds to the confusion, plus not bothering to tell us what the correct answer is. The answer to 33D is GETSMART, which I don't see anywhere in the comments. GETSassy is all over the place and I too had that at first. Didn't see any point in mentioning it. For those of you stumped by the southeast corner, 31D is TAKEADIVE and 32D is ICANTEVEN. You need KIVA and KEG for 55A and 55D and I salute anyone who figured those out on their own.

Happy New Year to one and all! Hi Sam! Happy New Year. I don't see anyone asking about the photo so I guess I'm missing something obvious. I'm not going to ask because I'm afraid everyone is going to laugh at me and call me stupid. It's a visual delight, but what is it? Jellyfish? And what does it have to do with the puzzle!? Alas, I'll never know. I might be all aglow having solved the puzzle but the photo leaves me totally in the dark! Talk about something nefarious! But don't think I'm handing over my stash of chocolate coins in exchange for an explanation.

Here in Spain we had a slight problem with our POWER GRID two weeks ago. Seems a lot of people have a problem with this one as well! I didn't like AFTER ALL for 60A [At the end of the day]. The entry in MW has "in spite of considerations or expectations to the contrary" and suggest nevertheless as a synonym. To me, at the end of the day has the sense of everything being taken into account, not specifically contrary considerations. I might add that many people complain about that expression, at the end of the day. I'd say I'm OK with it although probably some people don't like that expression either. Aside from that, I prefer a Sunday with a wacky theme, and I could do without IMMIX. Which I have done for my entire life.

Great, a Friday puzzle that put up a good fight! It took a lot of patience. I got it solved the same way I always solve tough puzzles: put it down, do something else, and come back later. For example, I took a break and when I returned I immediately realized 35D was PDF something. Aside from that, I didn't and still don't like 49A, the light bulbs and daffodils one. It just doesn't sit right! And 1D, I guess BOBSLEDS do go downhill but they aren't out in the open air on a hill. No biggie. HENRI? Henri the terrible, that one?

Really enjoyable puzzle to solve. Not so challenging for a Saturday, but after Friday's puzzle I could use a break. Not much to add, except 62A is not the Dirty Dozen. I haven't read any of the comments but I'll bet many people made the same mistake. The fog may come in ONLITTLECATFEET, but the foggy make a little more noise.

If you're wondering where you can get your SEXTOY Rickie Lee Jones may be able to help. Sal was working at Nyro's Nook in downtown Selling articles of congress to these people downtown He was pretty sleazy when I met him... Weasel and the White Boys Cool off of her debut album. Before your time kids, but great songs.

Sam! Thanks for the clip. Once Upon a Time in the West has to be one of my all time favorite movies, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do. When Charles Bronson is standing in the doorway and says "Someday" I enter western genre movie nirvana. Aside from that, a favorite book is Les Chants de Maldoror, Chants being translated as Songs, Dirges, and Lay. It is the only time I have ever seen lay in the sense of 6D, so I can understand why some people thought the clue pretty obscure. I highly recommend the Sergio Leone movie, and strongly advise against reading Maldoror. The Alexis Lykiard translation is by far the best for those who do not know French, but that doesn't really matter as I'm certain you will heed my advice.