Ellen in Tucson
Tucson AZ
58
Comments
0.425
Avg Sentiment
29
Positive
20
Neutral
9
Negative
Tucson AZ
I got the theme RIGHT AWAY! (Note my hometown š)
I loved this puzzle - not a hard solve (finished 13 minutes faster than my average), but so many clever clues and misdirection. Lots of backspacing for me after getting stuck in the NW and elsewhere. Fun!
Celebrating my 100 puzzle streak! Was doing only thu-fri-Sat before I decided a few minutes every day was more fun. Tied my personal best for a Tuesday - a typo in one square or I would have had it. Yay! Fun puzzle, clever theme.
LOVED this puzzle - a rich 30 minute solve. Could get only partial starts for many, which made it challenging and at times frustrating. Last space was the R in ASHCARTER.
Enjoyed the puzzle, but falling asleep in the sun in the middle of it certainly hurt my average Friday time. Too much tryptophan yesterday.
@Barry Ancona But if you play from the site, not in the app, the puzzle name is displayed before you start.
Fun puzzle! I still have an AOL email. Very retro. Always gets a laugh when I have to give it to people. No flip phone, though. Happy Thanksgiving, all!
A personal best at 13:43. Love the long crosses - somehow they jump out at me with only a letter or two. Today was day 362 of my streak. I have promised myself that I will quit at 365, except to do Thursday through an occasional Sunday, and with no pressure to complete the on release day. Happy for a personal best on the last Friday of what will be my longest streak ever.
Somehow got the revealer clue right away, which made the theme clues pretty easy. Had 3 or 4 non theme squares wrong, though, which took some finding. Still, 14 minutes faster than my average Sunday and the 98th in my current streak. Headed warily for a milestone.
@Lynn Totally agree! Had never heard of Galois, but a little knowledge of French educated my guess; āboardiesā just made sense, etc. I loved this puzzle - had to think about it a lot instead of just filling in crosswordese
@Steve L Question about Global Stats: is the average difficulty, solve time, etc. truly average? I suspect only the most avid, and the best, puzzlers subscribe to this app/site. I wish the Times published the stats for all its subscribers, as it does for the News Quiz.
I did it! Broke my 365 day streak by intentionally skipping Tuesday and Wednesday. Now my streak is just ā54 Thursdays in a row.ā Yay! Was afraid I might not be able to keep my promise to myself. Fun Thursday. No need to get the theme to guess the theme entries, but clever.
@Ben Biggs I didnāt need to Google anything thanks to my NY native spouse (BIALY)
Almost a personal best, and #97 in my streak! Tempting fate to even mention it. Nice puzzle - clean.
Fun puzzle! A quicker solve than my average Wednesday and more smiles, until I got hung up on the same square that stalled Samās solve. I looked forward to reading others talk about the cleverness of the theme (books+library+erudite+diary) and the mini-themes (oohs crossing ahs, and seals and otters being tended by vets). I was instead surprised to see sensitivity about tulsi and the cdc, and the comments in response. I tell people that commenters here (and in the Tournament of Books) are the exception to everything you hear about social media, but I guess no platform is immune. Just observing, not disrespecting anyoneās feelings.
I was so stuck on POTTERSWHEEL instead of POTTERYWHEEL, I spent 10+ minutes going over every single clue, all of which were obviously correct. Couldnāt for the life of me figure out what TSPEO meant. Beautiful grid. Enjoyed all but my last 10 minutes.
A personal best! (Which should be somehow signaled along with the happy music.)
@alpal Solved this in the back room of Bevel Brewing, one of the few breweries still frequented by locals. š»
@Barry Ancona Thanks for the stats. Iām a unicorn who solved it in 30 minutes, which was 30% faster than my usual time. Maybe because I didnāt wait until happy hour?
@Mikey And there is no longer a date associated with the personal bests.mine weāre all during a 28 day streak in 2019. I must have been highly caffeinated in those days.
This was a fun, very fast solve - a tie for my personal best. Wish Iād looked that up before I started - Iām sure I could have beat it had I known. Good trivia for a Westerner: GLADSTONE, PATAGONIA, ALBERTA, EUREKA. Seemed way too easy for a Saturday.
@NYC Traveler oh boy - thatās throwing down the gauntlet! Will it interrupt my streak (96!) if I try it and fail?
@NYC Traveler Thanks - Iām going to have a go at it.
Ok. I got to the last square and Iām stuck. Going to drink on it. ;-)
@Francis I get it. Iām sorry that even here people feel free to hate.
Friday afternoon about 2:00 here - time for the puzzle. A good one - love the long fill, which for some reason usually come pretty quickly to me. Curious - when did the 300 people who have already commented here do it? The night before?
Great Friday puzzle! Had to slow down and rethink several snarls. Very satisfying to correct mistakes and say āAha!ā Enjoyed this with a delicious west coast IPA.
Cheers for my fellow Bendite! Figured out the theme tricks pretty quickly, but there were quite a few clues that tripped me up nonetheless. Fun Sunday happy hour fun. (Bendās own Monkless Brewingās Peppercorn Wit š»)
@HeathieJ Like you, I solved the puzzle pretty easily, in less time than normal for a Wednesday, but never got the theme. I couldnāt see the two Iās even when I squinted, so I was never going to make a connection to sequels. Good at some things, bad at others.
@Crevecoeur Iām with you - solved in half my usual Wednesday time, but donāt get the theme, even after reading about it.
Never watched a single episode of Friends, so I was clueless until I looked here. Still, a comfortable 44 minutes, with lots of fun wordplay.
8 minutes faster than my Thursday average, but didnāt figure out the trick until Iād heard the happy music.
@--art I, too, solved without the trick, faster than usual. The crosses were too clean to be wrong, and the trick answers were all real words, so I just kept going. But understood it as soon as I looked at the completed puzzle. A different experience, for sure.
@Dave Munger Same here - never watched it, so just worked the crosses. Seems like actually knowing the show had another sister named Maggie might have slowed some people down, so ignorance was a blessing.
I just hit 100 and am feeling pretty good about it. Previous was 28 in 2019, and then I stopped doing the puzzle until the end of last year, when I started back with just Thursday-Friday-Sat. Still havenāt beat the personal best times of 2019, though. Age has taken a toll practice canāt seem to overcome.
@Akin I was stuck on what was for me a natick, with ANI crossing SEITAN. Had ANN and SENTAN, until I finally cheated to look up āsentan proteinā and got a ādid you mean seitan?ā hint from Google. Happy music not so happy when I need to look something up. :-(
@The X-Phile But isnāt octopus from Greek?
@Roger Yes - SYD and ETDS were my hangups. I had SID and ETAS.
@ANF An easy answer for those of us who live in the Beaver State!
@Barry Ancona I think sheās referring to the extra theme clues in the constructorās note.
@Fly Fisher Agree. In the app on an iPad, the bold letters were barely discernible. Had to solve just using the down clues and looking for a phrase thst made sense. I can see well, btw, so I donāt think itās our eyesight.
Ok! I made my 365 day streak today. I have promised to break it and stick to the end of the week puzzles from now on, and not necessarily on release day. What a slog it has become. But today was a lovely little finish, a bit faster than my average.
@Mean Old Lady And we Bend residents are Bendites, although it would be a lot more fun if we called ourselves Benders.
@HeathieJ I gave up. I think it was over-the-top-contrived. I did learn, though, from these comments, that the first letter of a rebus = a solve. Thanks for your encouragement!
@SP Consider it filed! I didnāt mean it to sound like a complaint.
@Troy Same here! Got two of the long fills (REVERSEENGINEER & TRADāLIRAS) with only a couple letters for a breezy 16 minute romp. Not my personal best, but half my Friday average. Satisfying.
@Tracy The āanswerā is KSU, but the Wildcats are university of Kentucky, so I think itās wrong?
@Bay Area Native Iām searching these comments to find someone who says University of Kentucky is not KSU. I think this is a mistake.
Can someone please explain how 46 across is right? Itās the University of Kentucky wildcats. KSU stands for Kentucky State University - not the same school.
@Adam Me too! A minute less than half, with no lookups or typos.