Dave

I enjoyed the puzzle today, count me in on the "learned abysm was a word" crew. I was so confident in ABYSS that I never even considered MAXIMUS could be wrong, I just assumed I'd forgotten it in all the years since calc class.

Solidly tough, but I eventually got there without any hints, and I got a good laugh at the persistence of getting ISPEPSIOK into a puzzle. My main comment was going to be about my confusion in solving the puzzle by guessing the second T in STETS for "Decides to leave", I was completely baffled by the answer. But I realized while typing this up that it's just a form of the old crossword standby STET for leaving something *in*, I just don't remember seeing it used in an active form before. Mystery solved!

Fun one today, very cute theme. I'm surprised ALOP wasn't brought up in the column, it's a new word for me as far as I can remember. I finished the puzzle with its A, fully expecting to get the "almost complete" popup, only to find out it was correct. Something related to "lopsided", I'm guessing.

Definitely a hefty puzzle for early in the week. I got through it, but my tired Tuesday morning brain needed a bit more time than normal to figure everything out.

Now that was a toughie. I got through it, but added some extra time to my average. I think the layout was interesting - it felt more walled-off than normal. Multiple times, I'd finally make a breakthrough and complete a section, only to realize that it barely gave me anything to work with elsewhere. Fun times.

Fun one, with a cute theme. But boy did I feel old for a second when I spent the entire time thinking about what could be be part of a "vintage" movie collection, only to round out the puzzle by realizing it was VHS tapes. C'mon, the '80s and '90s weren't *that* long ago...were they? :v

I thought this was a solid themeless entry, it started out tough but came together more smoothly than I expected. Except for the southeast corner! I don't remember the last time I had so much trouble trying and retrying a section. I got it in the end, but only after a lot of effort. And don't tell anyone, but I had to look up the poet's name to give myself an in...

I enjoyed the puzzle today, I thought it was a solid debut. I thought it was going to be more difficult than fun on my first scan through the clues, but it turned out to be one where I'd get just enough words on each pass to keep going to the end. Tough but fun.

Whoof, I don't remember the last time I failed so hard at getting a theme. I figured out the revealer early on, but the "super sub" pun was the only clue I understood. I thought the rest of the clueing was fair enough as I was able solve the others eventually by using crossing answers, and I chuckled when I read the other themed answers explained in the blog, but I was just not getting it in the moment. Oh well, solving a crossword is still fun regardless!

*Almost* accomplished my goal of completing the puzzle in one pass, doing all across answers in order without skipping a letter, but I got overconfident and put TORN instead of TORE. Oh well, maybe next time. And it was a good puzzle, too. I like to have a well-constructed easier puzzle to start the work week off with after the tough late-week ones.

A nice fun solve today, which is always welcome for the Friday/Saturday puzzles. I had an unexpected boost today, in that I had randomly read a news article about the orange juice industry earlier this morning, and with that in my mind I was able to instantly fill in MANDARINORANGES without any starter letters, which helped the solve a lot. Good times!

Really good puzzle today, very nice theme and execution. I don't know very much ASL, but I've picked up a few general signs like those in the puzzle from my sister, who does interpretation. That helped make for a pretty quick solve once I figured out what was going on, but in a good way. Great stuff.

Cute little theme today, I also laughed at the revealer. It took me a while to get on board with rebus answers, but now I love them, I'm always happy when they show up.

I got a little worried that we weren't getting a themed puzzle today when I finished my first round through the Across clues and hadn't seen anything relevant. But then I hit 2 Down and its mention of the shaded ends of those five clues. The only one I had was SENSAI, which sounds like SAY. Could it be...? It was! Add me to the dopamine hit club, that was a great moment and a fun puzzle all around.

Fun puzzle with a cute theme. I figured there was some kind of number shenanigans going on since I happened to know which Beatles song was written by a teenaged Paul, but I had to wait for some cross answers before I figured out the exact theme.

Fun puzzle from a creator I always enjoy. The theme took me a while to crack, but I laughed when I figured it out. Even then, I still took a while to solve the rest of the themed answers - added a solid 50% to my average time. Good times for a Wednesday puzzle!

I wasn't on board with this one initially, thinking that the first couple of themed answers got were supposed to be pronunciation puns, a la "skin o' 4 teeth". That felt too stretched for a good puzzle. Fortunately a later one made no sense this way, and I suddenly realized it was actually just using the numbers' spelling, which I can get on board with. So, a good theme in the end, and a solidly enjoyable trickiness level for Thursday.

Fun and challenging today, I definitely came in well on the high side of my Friday average. A big part was that the longer entries felt more obscure than normal, I had to wait for more cross entries than I usually do to get them. But that makes for some good "aha!" moments when they finally click.

Interesting difficulty balance today - I got the theme pretty quickly and was able to guess either first half or the whole answer in the themed clues. But it still took longer than normal, because a fair number of the unthemed clues felt trickier than usual for Sunday. I also had to resort to the check puzzle button at the end, where MHO completely got me. I couldn't come up with anything other than RHO to complete *HO as a conductance unit, so I couldn't figure out how to solve that last theme clue crossing it. I remember seeing it in another crossword before, but not in real life. Oh well, it was fun anyway, and I learned a semi-new word in the process!

Fun one today, although I was mystified by the theme until I randomly switched phones midway through, and the ring coloring suddenly appeared and the themed answers jumped into place. No idea why the color didn't show up on both, both apps and are up to date, and oddly enough it's the older phone that it works properly on!

Quick one, but a fun one. I always love a good palindrome, despite/because of them often being groaners. This was also a good test of my usual strategy of skipping the title and trying to suss out the theme as I go - it kept me in the dark a bit longer, as I gradually realized the themed answers weren't just reversed at the starts and the ends. Good times.

Great fun today. I don't remember the last time I used pen and ink to solve a crossword, but here I am manually writing out algebra problems to finish off the puzzle. All those math classes finally paid off!