Andrzej

What a superbly unenjoyable puzzle 😐 The natick of RENAT_/_R_JEL/E_ZYE was just ab5urd. A rapper's name can be anything, as well as an American brand. RENATa (a quite popular Polish name) seems just as viable as RENATO (actually, even more so to me). I also don't speak Spanish. I know some of it from hearing, mostly. I happily entered OTRA VEs. That final "s" crossed with the name of some guy which I ended up googling. ZINN... OTRA VE*Z*... Crossing a non-English entry with a name you can't possibly infer if you don't simply know it. How is this good construction? MARL_/D_ERR... How the fiddly fiddle was I supposed to deal with that without Google? Wouldn't you expect an actress to rather be called MARLa than MARLO? DaERR looks no worse than DOERR to me. To add insuIt to injury, there was a mathematical clue 🤬 The puzzle was generally saturated with crossing trivia, which I just can't personally abide. I want witty clues and misdirection, not a flippin' pub trivia quiz.

For some inexplicable reason I woke up at 4 AM (CET) and yet under these weird circumstances I solved the puzzle in Wednesday time (16-ish minutes). This probably means somebody will post about doing it in 4 minutes 🤪. I enjoyed the solve. Perhaps there were a few too many straight forward clues, but I liked what misdirection there was. I just don't get why "Go pfft" solves to DIE. To me, "pfft" is the sound of a mildly annoyed sigh, but maybe that's a Polish thing? It was the only area of the puzzle where I struggled today. Spelling LICENcES with a C and not understanding the pfft clue wreaked havoc with spotting DOSAS (I had _OcAS there for a long time). I resolved it in the end but still don't see how the pfft clue works. SWEAR JAR reminded me of my mother - but not for the reason you might think. She was a published author, university professor, high ranking public servant and recipient of Poland's highest honors for contributing to the discovery and publishing of key details from our history. Always elegantly dressed, she was partial to a game of tennis and a bottle of good wine. She also cussed like a sailor 🤣. Obviously it rubbed off one me from an early age 😆. When I was 12 or 13 she heard somewhere about the concept of a swear jar, and tried to implement it at home to tame my tongue. Soon enough the jar was gone - as it became clear mom would have to feed it more often than me 🤪. The passion with which she said her kurwas was next level. I miss her so 😢.

ATOB - that could be the title of my post today. It perfectly illustrates how confused I was by the bottom third of the puzzle. RIGA was a gimme but most of the other entries there I hopelessly struggled with, finally resorting to lookups of SST, ELO, WELTY, TED TALK, and TGEL. AD ASTRA and ADOLPH emerged from crosses. I know the latter is just a name, in a way, but in this part of the world it only ever comes up in one context, accompanied by a look of disgsut. I needed loads of crosses for THE FLOOR IS LAVA. I know the game from the internet only, where it came up in some memes. Of course we engaged in something similar as Polish kids in the 1980s, but the game never had a name. And finally, that ATOB... I really tried to parse it once it emerged from crosses. I looked and looked at it and its clue... Nope. I needed the column to understand what I was seeing. I don't really get the connection between the clue and answer. To me, A to B is a description of the simplicity of a solution to a problem, which may be something completely different than it being short. I don't get why CARD solves to WIT - could somebody please explain? Despite it being mentioned in the column, I still don't understand why 'Long way to go?' solves to HALL. I'd appreciate an explanation of that, too, please. Finally - not mowing one's lawn is one of the easiest ways to help the environment - especially insects - and water retention in the age of climate change. EYE SORE... That's 1950s thinking.

As a non-Ameican who only speaks English as a second language, I found this one of the toughest Tuesdays I have ever seen at the NYT. The abundance of trivia (which crossed, in places) and unknown expressions (BONES UP ON???) in the fill hindered my solve, as did being unfamiliar with a JUG BAND. I resorted to several lookups, in the end. I haven't read the other comments yet but I imagine it's one of these puzzles that gets labeled as "super cute and super fun" by its most intended, American audience, but gets a shrug, at best, from some of us outside the US. November 11 is when Poland celebrates regaining independence in 1918. Poland was one of the strongest regional powers in Eastern Europe in the 16th century, but rapid decline as a result of wars, famine and egoism of its nobles in the 17th and 18th centuries led to its disappearance from the map in the 1790s, when Poland was partitioned by its more powerful and aggressive neighbors: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The defeat of Germany (successor to Prussia) and Austria-Hungary (successor to Austria) in WW1, and Russia's descent into revolution allowed Poland's resurrection, with American support offered by Woodrow Wilson. November 11 is our biggest national holiday. We don't have a holiday for veterans, specifically. Our armed forces celebrate their holiday on August 15, the anniversary of the 1920 battle in which Poland repelled a Soviet Russian invasion: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Warsaw_(1920" target="_blank">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Warsaw_(1920</a>)

Not only am I back from beautiful, subtropical Madeira in freezing cold, snowy Warsaw but to add in5ult to injury, I was presented with this puzzle... What was that?! Not a Tuesday, in my opinion. I was utterly confused by the theme, and I found the fill full of unknowns (ADOLFO, ROMO, GESSO, SARA to name a few). I needed lookups, and I actually checked the puzzle in the end when I got the "So close" pop-up and just couldn't be bothered anymore with this unpleasant grid. I'm not saying the constructor is unskilled, mind you. It's just that I personally disliked the result of his efforts, and the decision of the editors to run it on Tuesday. Of course this probably means the veterans loved this, and I'll probably find a slew of "Delightful! I love, love, love the theme and fill!!!" comments below 🤣 PS. How hard is it to properly link the column in the app? I know the NYT IT team is not the best out there, to put it mildly, but c'mon...

I really liked this puzzle and how my solve progressed. At first I was dispirited - I had little on my initial pass, and many clues looked like I would never be able to deal with them (for example, what on Earth is a sodding hypocorism, I thought angrily🤣). But then I used a technique that works for me in climbing when I'm dealing with a complex route at the gym: I relaxed and opened my mind. And it helped! Slowly (or so it felt) but surely I made progress, actually finishing the solve quickly for a Friday (just a few minutes longer than on a usual Wednesday). The unknowns resolved themselves with crosses exclusively (SISEPUEDE, PAESE), educated or lucky guesses (SEN, CORDS) and wild feats of memory supported by crosses (NEYO, SYNE). At one point for the long entry in the middle I only had ___EWEWERE. That looked so strange 🤣. Of course I know I'm solving in English but when I encounter something I don't yet understand, I instinctively look at it as if it were in Polish. That's just an impossible sequence of letters in my native tongue (but chrząszcz is a legit word for us 😆). For me this was this week's most enjoyable puzzle, by far 👍🏾 I'm also happy because old Jorge the Lab's latest health crisis turned out to be a minor indisposition, and my aging Mustang - which I thought might require major electrical work - just needed a new battery 🤣.

Personally I found this an unenjoyable slog with no redeeming qualities. The accumulation of trivia in the NE corner made it impossible for me to solve without lookups. I needed to Google some stuff elsewhere, too. All I know about Bruno Mars is his name so asking me to fill in a title of his using actual numbers felt cruel, especially as the crosses weren't obvious, to me - I've never liked the Beatles so I don't know related lingo, and a short tennis match can be 2 or 3 sets. AGER is pure crosswordese, IMO. Why the super long clue for the simple answer I DID? I have a long list of least favorite constructors. I'll be adding another name to it.

Ye gods, I got the trick! This would never have happened a year ago. I'm so happy about this 😀. There must be something to the theory that doing puzzles improves cognitive ability. I needed some lookups for the proper names, it took me forever to understand SLO and its clue, and I did not know the word TAMP before. But other than that the solve was pretty smooth, if longer than my usual Sunday, at almost an hour.

I always sigh when I see John Kugelman's byline. I've never liked a single puzzle of his, and today is no exception. The theme, as usual, is groaner-adjacent, and the clues are not on my wavelength. I did several passes of the grid but it remains largely empty, and I don't feel like continuing the solve. I'll just leave the puzzle as it is. A game should be fun a this is not my idea of it.

Having no way to draw the pattern in the app as I solved was a huge flaw of this puzzle. Basically I was solving blind. Also, having that single rebus in an area of the grid where almost all entries were trivia-based was what ultimately made me lose my gold star. I had to look up almost everything there: I have no idea what JVS are, I've never heard of Conservadox or JDATE (I suppose it's a dating app for J... ews?), I know SAKS (sort of) but not as clued, ditto DORITOS. As I was on a googling spree, anyway, I checked the late night host too... And spoiled the rebus for myself. I personally disliked it quite passionately, but I have a premonition this grid will win the Puzzle of the Year constest because it was "oh so cute" and "innovative". Btw, if being so bad and rudimentary that it can be interpreted many ways makes an image an optical illusion, all my drawings deserve the label 🤣

Ye gods, I did it! I was able to complete the puzzle on my own, with just two post-hoc lookups to confirm my educated guesses of PAULINA and FONTANE. The last square I filled in, with much confusion, was the crossing of MA_LSTONE and GO_EY. I've never heard of either of the entries. Having run the alphabet I arrived at an R there. I checked what MARL STONE is called in Polish: it's "margiel", and I'm unfamiliar with that, too, even though geography (which includes geology) was one of my fave subjects at school 🤷🏽. The accumulation of proper names and trivia in the middle of the grid was almost too much for me to handle, so I'm really proud of not giving in to the temptation to Google my way out of there. The NW and SE corners I found tough, too, and I filled them in in pencil. The only area I thought was relatively easy was the NE. I enjoyed the solve. It felt like a proper Saturday to me - very hard, almost impossibly so, but ultimately doable with an open mind. The clueing was appropriately misleading without being obnoxiously opaque. Nice.

A punny theme introduced by a phonetic clue, which solves to a phrase unknown to me - a puzzle can hardly get any worse for me, so personally I didn't like it at all 🤷🏽 The poodle puppy Lucyfer (Lucifer) is beginning his third day with us. It's amazing how smart he is! He observes everything intently, learns new things and acts upon it. Case in point: Yesterday he went down the stairs for the first time in his life. In the morning he took it slow and easy, and needed encouragement. In the afternoon he didn't even stop once on his way down, and in the evening he was running down enthusiastically. Also, he is very different from Jorge the lab, which will prevent unhealthy comparisons with him. Us getting to know one another is going to be quite the adventure!

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to figure this out, but this puzzle is beyond impossible for me. Not only is the trick so complicated (dare I say: convoluted?) I don't even understand the hint on the title page: on top of that, the puzzle is saturated with trivia. I've had 30 lookups, if not more, I've checked what I've entered so far, and I've used several reveals - but I'm still nowhere near figuring the puzzle out. I know I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I've never struggled as much with a NYT crossword as I am with this one. Could it possibly be a tad overcooked? I think I'll just reveal it, shrug at it and move on. So much for a bit of Sunday fun...

What a bizarre combination of boringly direct, Monday clues and obscure pseudo-theme... If ever a puzzle deserved a 1/10 review, this was it.

I'm not touching this.

I'm rarely impressed by a puzzle's construction but this one wowed even me. Knowing every other letter in the grid would be a vowel actually helped me to fill it, too - which was welcome, as I found the fill quite hard for a Tuesday (as usual in my case, due to the inclusion of quite a few names and brands unknown to me. I desperately wanted OLETA to be OLEnA). I still completed the puzzle in my average time for this time in the week - hats off to the constructor for managing to show off their skill with no detriment to the solving experience: the two often do not go hand in hand.

That was kinda awesome - properly challenging but also enjoyable and very satisfying to solve. There was just so much misdirection! Finally! That happens so rarely at the NYT these days I almost literally feel giddy when it does. Great job constructors, and cheers to the editors for apparently not messing it up. It took me the longest time to figure out ELF HAT and TED TALK - both things are very American and not really present in my psyche. Our Polish Christmas lore involves no elfs (or elves), so their attire is largely alien to me. I tried listening to a few TED TALKS but every time I thought there was something irritatingly infantile about them: as an academic I just cringed at all the oversimplifications, and the obviously much rehearsed, hammed-up enthusiasm of the speakers rubbed me the wrong way, too. Too much drama, too little substance (incidentally, for similar reasons I generally avoid American documentaries). I was familiar with RONDA and KYIV, but for NAST, NHL, KROFT (I wanted KRaFT so badly there once only a few letters were missing! And knowing Lara Croft didn't help) I had to rely on crosses - but I appreciate how the constructors avoided nativity crossings. I don't rate puzzles but if I did, this one would be 10/10.

The puzzle reminded me of stuff I have to do. I will probably be vacuuming today, as our old lab Jorge is SHEDding like you wouldn't believe. The temperatures are dropping and roads are beginning to get ICY at night, and I still haven't had tires on our cars changed to winter ones. I was late to book a date at the tire garage, so I have to take extra care on the road for another week. We also finally have to make concrete arrangements to have our apartment comprehensively renovated, but after a recent visit to a home decor center and seeing all the wonderful styles and materials on offer I'm actually RARING TO GO. Our new kitchen will be so nice you could film a cooking show in it 🤣 Also, the puzzle was full of words, expressions and abbreviations I have learned from NYT crosswords over the past 18 months. In June of 2023 I would probably have struggled to fill a grid like today's. I appreciate how much my English and familiarity with American culture have improved in such a relatively short time, and I thank you all for contributing to that with your answers to my many questions 🙂

The top section of the puzzle with its obscene amount of trivia is simply not doable for me.

This was impossibly hard not only for me but also for my wickedly smart wife. This has never happened before. When I struggle, I will sometimes hand my phone to the Wife, and she does in minutes what has been stumping me for half an hour. Not today though. Just wow. All the names, brands, abbreviations... It's like the grid was designed to frustrate me. The area directly North was especially nasty, with a name and brands crossing. I haven't enjoyed a puzzle as little as this in a long time. Also, PTUI... I feel like taking a break from NYT grids after this.

Oh wow, I glanced at the comments after posting myself, and I'm surprised at the hate for the AI clue. People, first, AI is here and we can't be in denial about it. Second, as I see it, the corny "poetry" of the clue decries AI for what it is: in most cases, a sorry, inadequate substitute for human imagination and skill. We *should* be outraged by big business pirating content of independent creators by using AI to republish it for big business's profit. We *should* protest against AI used on a massive scale to replaces writers and artists. However, hating on AI featuring in a single clue of a Tuesday NYT crossword is just laughable.

How many proper names were there? Twenty? More? It sure felt like it was a lot. I sort of got the theme (NATO alphabet was a gimme, and the themed entries were witty, I guess), but with how many lookups I needed to deal with the trivia-heavy fill I did not enjoy this puzzle at all. Also, ATOZ? I see now that it should be parsed A TO Z, but that was just not gettable for me as I was solving, especially with the (for me) unusual cross of TAUTEN (I know it's a valid word but not one I've encountered often enough to come up with it today, having trouble with _TOZ and never knowing whether DoH or DUH will be the answer to 'Obviously!') I needed to check the puzzle for the first time in weeks...

"You know what would be cool on Monday? If we crossed a name of a city, actor, podcast producer, poet *and* some weird word for a little duck!" FUNNY HA HA When I did not get my gold star, I did not even feel like looking for my typo or error - I just checked the puzzle to be done with it. For me, one of the least enjoyable Mondays followed one of the least enjoyable Sundays. It's like the editor is telling me to take a break from NYT puzzles, perhaps for the remainder of his era. I know people prefer positivity here, and believe me, I do too, but c'mon! A quintuple Natick on Monday?

I found this puzzle very easy for a Wednesday - I was not rushing at all, yet I completed it in Monday time - but I enjoyed it. In fact, I rarely like a puzzle as much as I did this one 👍🏾. I love the look and sound of BESTIR. Usually seeing unusual words (or at least ones I perceive as that) irks me, but this one made me happy, for some weird reason. I also liked seeing RANT. As you probably suspect, I go off on rants quite often IRL - probably because my Bee esS METER is very sensitive. I do so very passionately and often humorously, putting all my linguistic creativity into twisting Polish into ever new insults. In fact, my wife says my rants were one of the things she fell for when we met almost 20 years ago 🤣. Don't worry though, I keep my rants private, and in relations with other people, also strangers, I'm *much* more likely to be kind rather than brusque 🙂. I appreciate how two years doing these puzzles meant OBS, RENFAIRE, ENO and ENG were gimmes. Jim - I may often be confused by American culture and language, and I don't care about literally all of it, but I *do* enjoy learning about it most of the time. In fact, the depth of my understanding of the US has improved greatly with these puzzles and this board, and I am grateful for it. Us all over the world learning about one another can only make the world a better place 🫂.

I rarely enjoy a challenge but today forced myself to complete the puzzle without any lookups, and I did it! I'm actually quite proud of myself - there was a lot of trivia in the grid today, and also American expressions (like GO LONG), most of either unknown to me, or unfamiliar as clued, at least (for example, I got ARSENIO with enough crosses, even though the clue was arcanely mysterious to me, with the Dog Pound thing). I also got the theme, which restored some of my faith in my own intellect - I usually have problems parsing words differently and seeing connections between words.when trickery us involved. I enjoyed how all the themed entries where actuak words rather than gibberish. Cool stuff. I may have a pedantic nit to pick with DRACULA - the original Romanian was DRACULeA, I think? Wikipedia confirms my suspicion. The clue implying the answer will be in Romanian is a mistake. Still, that is not as bad as something my wife encountered in a non-NYT American crossword recently, where Serb was clued as... Kosovo resident. Now, I know some Serbs reside in Kosovo, but given the Kosovans' struggle for independence, the fact Serbia does not recognize it, and generally how important and dangerous ethnic tension has always been in the Balkans, that was an incredibly ill-coceived clue: not as bad as, say, 1944 Warsaw resident: German, but getting there.

Way too hard for me to finish, despite not being trivia-heavy. This is not a complaint, simply a fact. I'm leaving the grid 1/3 empty and moving on. Even with autocheck on I finally found myself unable to make any further progress - I refuse to pick random letters until something sticks, and I have no educated guesses left to try. The clues were not simply not on my wavelength - they seemed to have arrived from another time-space continuum altogether. I also did not understand many clues and/or answers. For example, I have no idea what a "full RIDE" may be. As is usually the case, none of my unknows are elaborated upon in the column, either, except for ANGELICA (one of my lookups today). Another lookup: KOOPATROOPA... Sigh. I've been a video gamer for almost 40 years now but I've never played a Nintendo game and I know next to nothing about them. That name looks so silly it borderline triggers me 🤣 (ditto the unfamiliar KABLOOEY). It does not help that KOOPA would be transcribed as kupa in Polish, and that means poop... Polish trivia time! In Warsaw folklore, the layer of golden eggs is a duck.

I used to almost never be able to get Thursday tricks. Over time I have greatly improved at this. Today the trick became obvious to me quite quickly. I thought it was clever, and it certainly can't have been easy to incorporate into the grid. I struggled with the Eastern stack though, as I have never heard of a Haunted HAY RIDE - how can hay be ridden, exactly, I wondered as I looked up the answer. Apparently a tractor is involved, so effectively it's a tractor ride? I also did not understand how bumpkin solved to HAY SEED - I looked it up now. Well, ok, but I did not know that. On the Western side the golf reference and the fact I last visited the US and ate at a diner 11 years ago hindered me - I know close to nothing about golf, so even though I had [ ]IRON there, and clearly some very common term related to pancakes was meant, I had no idea what to put there. It only became clear once I dealt with the other two tiers of the stack. I also had to look up some trivia. Still, I enjoyed the puzzle. I would never have believed one could actually like tricky Thursdays when I first started playing NYT games in 2023! I mean, I still fail on some Thursdays, but not on all of them, like I did initially 🤣. Anyway, I'm off for Jorge the lab's morning walk. It's cold and it's raining - his favorite weather 🤪.

A Monday puzzle that's mildly challenging without going too far for the day, and with an actually interesting theme that's been perfectly incorporated into the grid? Nice! I was really impressed by how the theme made a coherent whole, and one meaningful to the constructor, too. Only last week I commented how early-week themes usually do nothing for me, as they tend to be largely random assortments of phrases only tangentially linked by some arbitrary revealer, which has nothing to do with what the themed entries actually mean, beyond some cringingly punny pseudo-connection. Well, not so today! Great stuff.

I already posted this as a reply to my post below, but since many of you are interested in Lucek the puppy, I'm reposting the update here, too. Here is Lucyfer's new post-grooming look: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/CMw8BQo" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/CMw8BQo</a> He enjoyed his first time at the groomer, apparently. It's a really friendly yet professional place, just a short walk away. It's run by three ladies. Their own dogs walk around the salon, sporting glamorous dos. Isn't Lucek handsome? He looks so different than the furball he was 😃

Adrian Johnson constructed one the least enjoyable Friday puzzles I have ever attempted to solve (it ran in June 2025). I remembered his name then, and remained prepared to be annoyed by his further creations. Can you imagine my surprise at how much I liked today's grid? I found it very challenging and full of unknowns, yet I managed to deal with it, and in a Friday time of 25 minutes, too (Saturdays usually take me over 30 minutes). My only gripe has to do with the naticky crossing of PUT_ and OC_S. It was my last empty square. I thought it had to be a vowel, but when none of those worked, I gave up and looked up PUTH. I could have done a full alphabet run, but really, looking it up had the same result. I found the misdirection of the clues very clever and yet very gettable, with effort - there is something very cool about feeling your mind open and figure out the riddles that good Saturday clues ultimately are. Much if the fill felt fresh, too. A great puzzle, thanks. Poodle pics time! Here is Lucek growling at some big cats on our smart tv screensaver and enjoying a wintry walk in Warsaw: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/2ETOlGi" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/a/2ETOlGi</a>

I enjoyed this. I got the properly-Thursday-worthy theme quickly and even though I struggled a bit with the TRIVIA, I solved the puzzle without outside help, and in Wednesday time, too (whereas yesterday's "Wednesday" required Friday/Saturday time). I thought the trick was really cool - the theme entries not being gibberish with ICE taken out was a true testament to the constructor's skill. Cool stuff.