Jackson

I was so sure WABISABI would be kintsugi until it didn't work with any of my crosses. This one was tough for me in a few spots, as I have only seen ASSAM tea once before and didn't recall it, have always seen FAY spelled as fae, and didn't know MRT was in the WWE hall of fame. But that didn't stop it from being a fun puzzle, and I honestly found it quite refreshing. Recently I've found many of the puzzles to frustrate more than delight me, but today gave me just what I was seeking in a Saturday. A few clues on the first go-around, more slowly trickling in on each pass, and then a bit of learning at the end. A very nice puzzle!

As someone who isn't a movie guy, I didn't find the theme to be fun enough to justify some of the mediocre fill required to enable it. I thought the idea was a very cool concept, and I'm impressed that the constructor managed to actually achieve it, but I didn't have that much fun actually solving it. But that's okay, since I assume this was a real treat for movie fans. Today I just wasn't the main audience, and I at least got to come away having learned a few new things. Nicely done.

I spent a (perhaps embarrassingly) long time with the spelling "kebab" rather than KABOB. I was pretty sure it had to be TAYLOR at 42D, so you'd think that seeing "kebob" and "hem" that were clearly wrong would've gotten me to fix the single letter error faster than I did, but I spent probably 2 minutes of my 10 minute solve time staring at the one word and trying to figure out what was going on. Despite that, I enjoyed today's puzzle. The theme was a fun little bonus.

The theme made me smile, and I have no complaints about the fill. Lovely Wednesday puzzle, on the easier side of a Wednesday but still felt reasonable for the day. Awesome stuff, thank you Greg Snitkin!

Well, I solved the grid with no lookups and still didn't realize that was the gimmick. I finished with THENORTHWEST, and assumed the idea was that the United States is in the Northern and Western Hemispheres, and the gotcha was that you would be thinking relative to the country rather than the world. For me, this was a miss of a theme because it went right over my head. But now that I read about what was going on, that's quite interesting.

I found the theme to be really cool but the bad fill ruined the puzzle for me. PDQBACH was perhaps the hardest clue in the puzzle and every crossing was a lookup for me but DOGES (okay, I probably should've come up with ARCH, but still), so that was just a nearly impossible block for me. MRSDASH crossing with MRMAGOO is a monster of a Natick, Mrs. Dash must be regional because I've never encountered their spices and Mr. Magoo is a character I've barely heard of. JAGUARXKES I suppose is fine if you're a massive car nerd, and at least that was gettable through crosses (unless you don't know NESS and put LEAPTto instead of ON like I initially did before lookups), but it was a big example of the pangram damaging the fun of the puzzle. BOLL and BANDSAW, TORME and TARTNESS, RACHELWEISZ and EZRA, STAGENAME and YOUNGTURK? I think the fact that there are this many crossings to complain about makes my point for me. I appreciate the effort and the idea, but I really think the product suffered for it.

This was awesome. Clever and lots of fun. Puzzles like this are why I come back to the crossword every day. Great stuff, very impressive to have come up with so many of these phrases for the puzzle.

I actually strongly disagree with what seems to be the consensus here; I thought this was almost too hard for a Friday. Maybe I'm just showing my (lack of) age, but I had never heard of BRER, only a handful of times at most heard TEXASTEA, and needed lookups for LICE, EMMA, ERATO, and TVCOPS (I assumed it was TVCatS based on the names). The spanners make it hard to know sometimes if you've messed up a small crossing or just aren't thinking of the right phrase. Gave me a chance to learn that TEAK is from South Asia, which is neat. Not a bad puzzle but I definitely found it difficult.

I'll be honest, when I see KAC is the constructor for a puzzle, I groan. His grids are always full of misdirects which I find more irritating than playful. I appreciate learning a new thing or two in a grid, especially on the later days of the week, and I can enjoy a few wordplay tricks, but I find that KAC usually oversaturates for my taste. However, I did remember that the last KAC grid was enjoyable, so I had high hopes for this one. But I think this is the worst of both worlds. Fans of the difficulty which I find obnoxious won't be pleased, as this was (mostly) straightforward, but there were still traces of this via some gnarly words. STEEVE is a word that could be a fun archaic word to learn, except that it's crossed with SERVIETTES and SERIESE, so it's just a meat grinder. RIATA is crossing some of the same downs as well, in case it wasn't tough enough. So there's not enough misdirection to please the hardcore challenge KAC fans, but there are enough difficult words to annoy people like me. I'm not at all looking forward to KAC returning to his trademark difficulty, but at least it should mean that his fans can get enjoyment out of it. This grid, to me, seems like a whiff on all fronts.

I set a new personal Friday best on this, I was right in sync with the constructor. Thank you, Henry, for a fun puzzle. It's always impressive when there are so many entries of such length without them becoming a slog. Loved it!

Very clever. I loved it! Found it a bit on the easy side as the revealer came immediately and I quickly interpreted it correctly, but that didn't stop me from having fun. I didn't actually figure out where the NE went with WAGERS until I came here but worked out the word through crossings. Lots of fun words and a fun theme, great puzzle!

My last square was the intersection of 38D and 43A... I had itty as in "itty bitty" and tear as in "on a tear" as a synonym for "scorching hot"/"on fire" (doing extremely well). SEAR makes more sense but I was so sure my mistake was on the non-word BELESPRIT that I got extremely confused. That was about my last choice for where my typo would be, so it turned into a tough Wednesday for me.

I don't particularly agree with the assertion that this was "accessible," as I found the bottom three spanners to be a fairly difficult block. However, what I do agree with is that this was a fun puzzle, especially for a debut. Must agree that LIONSSHARE was a great one, and another favorite of mine was RACCOONS. I'm surprised by the other comments focusing on CHEATSIN, as that was one of my few footholds in the bottom (after I changed it from "shifts up" anyway). I'm not the biggest baseball fan but I've certainly heard the term. I had much more trouble with DANO, HITME, and BLEND.

Honestly shocked by the general tone of the comments, I'm on a multi-year streak and this was the hardest puzzle for me in at least a few weeks, maybe months. I will say that as far as hard puzzles go, I did find this one to be less frustrating than many of the hard ones are. The wordplay was clever but just not on my wavelength for the most part. Ended up solving about 20% longer than my average time. I needed the column to give me ALLTHOSEAGAINST and POM plus a lookup of NOLTE to even get that time, got stuck in both the NW and SW corners.

Loved the theme, enjoyed the fill. Perhaps a bit easy for a Thursday, but very very fun. Thanks for the fun puzzle, Jeffrey!

Very difficult one for me today. Even after reading the column I didn't understand BEEFEATER, I've never seen it before. 5D was absolutely brutal since I've never seen the word copacetic or heard JAKE used that way (I did get JAPE, though). Plus I didn't realize the theme was about changing the pronunciation of the clues because I thought ensign already was pronounced "n-sign." Lot of learning done today.

I'm too desensitized to rebuses from my Thursday solves to have much thought on them anymore, though I would prefer they stick to Thursdays so I don't have to see as many of them. PDQ was a new one for me, that D was my last square and I felt like something was wrong with it until the congratulation popped up. The revealer meant this one was easy enough for Wednesday in my eyes, though I'm sure the me of two years ago would have been very unhappy to see it. I really just came to wordplay to find out what PDQ was but now that I'm here I wanted to weigh in on the rebus situation for the nostalgia of it.