Kate P

Woolly court proceedings? SHEEPSHEARING I thought this was lots of fun, and took me almost exactly my Wednesday average time. I had filled in several of the themed clues before clicking - trying to puzzle out PIGSKIN is what really brought it home for me.

Dare I say it? I had to look up a lot of the US-specific proper nouns to solve this one, which took the enjoyment out of it a bit. Respect the double pangram, but overall just a bit too trivia-based and not enough cleverness for my taste.

What a great debut! The themed clues were especially fun, and felt like a good purple category for Connections.

Contrary to other commenters, I had no objection to DERMA, as it seemed a natural alternative form of DERMIS to fit in 5 letters (perhaps it’s wrong, but I think of DERMA as a pluralisation referring to the various layers of DERMIS collectively). My bugbear (which I shouldn’t poke, I suppose) is GENE SET. My research intersects heavily with genetics and I have never heard that phrase, so was convinced it had to be GENOMES.

A truly impressive puzzle! It took me slightly longer than my Sunday average (around an hour) and had to look up a couple of things (Monopoly, as many others have mentioned, is pretty well-regionalised) but what fun when it all came together! Also had to laugh that the last rebus I figured out was to complete my own surname

A nice tricky one for a Sunday makes a good change after the last few easy days! I loved the themed clues as they made me think of my late dad who had a degree in English literature and exactly this sort of sense of humour, so he would have absolutely loved this ❤️

What a fun way to start the week - a real short and sweet one that epitomises the best of a Monday puzzle! It also gave me a personal best of under 9 minutes - which was a great relief after disastrous attempts at Wordle and Connections today. My first morning back at work after the Christmas break definitely needed this win!

Contrary to popular opinion, apparently, I think this was just about the right difficulty for a Thursday overall. In fact, I ended up finishing 8 seconds over my Thursday average! I enjoyed the theme, especially the play on the word BIAS, but did find a few of the short clues a bit tricky (I had never heard of BVD, or ROD as a unit of measurement)

J’aQQ! I found this in one quite tough as I didn’t have the cultural context to infer the trick from 29A as other commenters seem to have. I ultimately clicked through a combination of 44A and 57A, but even then, took a while to get the whole thing out.

As others have said, this was definitely an easy Saturday which gave me a PB of 18min - a little less than half my Saturday average (though still nowhere near some of the speed puzzlers in the comments). Still, it was fun, and I particularly enjoyed 11D and 12A. Side note - my first thought when I read 1A (given the grid art) was GEN Z HEART (as distinct from the millennial 🫶), but I suppose that actually takes four fingers!

Overall a fun one, albeit still on the easy side for a Saturday - though not as ridiculously easy as yesterday, at least! One little clue that stumped me on the initial read-through, though, was 49, as I had never heard of the second monster.

I was surprised when I finished and saw that my completion time was so much lower than my Saturday average, because it felt like a tricky one! After all, I had battled to get going initially, and had had to google a couple of things. Still, in the end, it proved to be a very enjoyable puzzle and just right for a Saturday. I was unsure about NEEDN’T when I first filled it in, because it doesn’t seem all that quaint to me (I use it all the time), but then remembered that my old English teacher had referred to my writing style as quaint (complimentarily, I think) when I’d just written the way I speak!

No complaints, but I found this relatively tough and did have to google some trivia to make headway, so beating my average didn’t really feel like a win. Also, I must still be recovering from a week of travels, because I spent too long staring blankly at lake SUPETIOR trying to figure out where the error was 😅

Really enjoyed this one. All three of the down clues on the right hand side of the puzzle eluded me until near the end, but I smiled when I got them. My only slight gripe is with 9 down which feels grammatically… off?

Found the overall puzzle very easy and finished in well under my Monday average with no googling, but had no idea what the theme was as I hadn’t heard of any of them - so had to google after the gold star to understand what I’d done!

I’ve never heard of the idiom that underlies the theme, which, coupled with lots of sports terms and pop culture references made this a slow solve for me. But I did enjoy some of the little wordplays like DOJO and FOR.

The writer of the column is obviously having a very bad day, though. The obvious disdain for this fun and interesting puzzle — and the whole spiel about it being a rebus, when this is not generally what most puzzlers would call a rebus anyway — is very off-putting.

Surprised to see such negative comments on this one… I really enjoyed it and it took me the normal ~30min for a Friday. Particularly liked some of the “controversial” ones like MACS and ARE

Lots of fun, and a Tuesday PB of 11 minutes for me. I particularly enjoyed all three of the rocking clues!

Really enjoyed the theme, but it was a slow one for me. I had never heard of 52D, and the shapes in 65A weren’t italicised (at least on my phone?) so I didn’t realise that was a themed clue until the very end

A little disappointed to have finished this with ease in 12min, where Friday puzzles usually keep me entertained for around half an hour. Enjoyed the last across clue though!