Beth C

I figured out the general idea quickly thanks to the revealer and clue 13A… but then way overthought everything after that. Went down the wrong path of thinking that all theme words were also related to the revealer (à la TAILS) and kept doubting everything that didn’t fit my preconceived notion. Definitely grateful for the Wordplay column help, this was beyond my ability to solve alone! That said, count me among the fans of Dan’s creation! I have only become a daily crossword solver in the past year or so and find these out-of-the-box puzzles fun and stimulating. I’ve seen a huge difference in how far I can get in the later days of the week and aspire to reach the levels of the experts on here who can solve Thursdays and Saturdays easily! I’m content (for now) with the fact that I 1) figured out the basic idea and 2) got pretty far… I loved the challenge!

Yassss!! My first Thursday with a rebus that I did totally solo… and managed to finish in 26 mins which is half my usual time for Thursdays (I bet that seems like ages to all the expert crossword competitors in commentlandia haha). I’ll take my win with gratitude (and an embarrassing smidge of giddiness)! 😊🎉 For anyone still relatively new at daily solving, doing it everyday *does* help! I remember Thursday puzzles sometimes looking as barren and ominous as Fridays/Saturdays can still appear for me at the start… the later-in-the-week/harder crosswords are slowly getting more accessible and less difficult. Hang in there, we’ve got this! 🤗

What a beautiful ode to Arjun! Thank you for a great puzzle and an incredible story to go with it. 🤗

Loved this one! Got the theme (VERifY was very helpful), but definitely admit Wordplay got me to the end (REED, d’oh). OASTS was a way trickier answer for me: TIL a word I’m sure I’ll forget again next time it appears. I lost a bit of time trying to figure out why it wasn’t accepting the completed puzzle, finally deleted the rebus entries and voila!