Seb

What a rude comment about poor old Jabba. He might be a perfectly healthy weight for his species.

Smooth sailing today. Nice puzzle with a cheeky pun. Nearly got tripped up by having Goop instead of GLUE and IMdone instead of IMFULL, but once those clicked, the rest fell into place. Pleased I got NUNAVUT on my first pass and lucky that LALANNE was handled by the crosses.

Nice and smooth start to the week. About nine minutes to solve over lunch, and then an extra three to spot that I'd typed ACORb rather than ACORN. I really should start checking for typos methodically rather than darting my eyes around the grid at random.

Would write my own comment, but basically everyone has said it for me. Inbox contents are EMAILS, Camilla is a STEPMUM, BONESUPON is obscure and the trivia crosses were unfortunate (NOLA ENOS and AROD EDNA). The theme I didn't find too bad. I'd never heard the phrase JUGBAND before, but one I got WASHBOARDABS it started to make sense.

Thought the IBSEN SEDARIS cross would be my undoing, but the name SEDARIS floated into my head from who-knows-where. Couldn't even say for sure what their first name is. David, maybe? It's fun when you have those bolt from the blue moments. The real issue turned out to be POKEY! Had to reveal that one.

Foiled by the top right corner. Only after googling did I realise ARROZ was a Spanish word for rice, not the name of a variety. General knowledge becomes not so general when you live half a world away.

Slow to start but gradually began to work my way out from the NW corner and gratefully everything started to click. The theme was pitched just right IMO. A helpful clue, but not so helpful that all the theme clues are a gimme once you've figured it out. So close to beating it without assistance, but I genuinely had zero idea the note was SOL rather than SOH. Apparently it's sew in the song so I'll blame The Sound of Music. That one I didn't mind but the ANACIN ERIE Natick was more frustrating. Is Anacin a household name in the US? We get exposed to lots of US brands over here but that one has never come up.

Everyone struggling with LEMMA, where as my sticking point was SIES. Spanish is one of the biggest gaps in my knowledge when it comes to NYT games. It just isn't taught here. Give me Japanese or Indonesian and I'll cruise through.

A total non-starter for me. As very much a crossword beginner, I simply did not get enough across answers to ever solve any downs. I got the gist fairly fast that the down answers were missing some letters, but just didn't get enough of the fill to figure out what.

Wowed by the theme when I got the revealer, but my enthusiasm waned as I kept clanging into cultural references that were out of my wheelhouse. MOC, ONO, HILITER, VICECOP, HORA AND OLETA all crossing with the two 15 long phrases made for a very rough time.

Loved the theme, but perhaps the most trivia heavy crossword I have ever attempted. Even knowing a decent chunk of them, and getting several with crosses, it was much too tough for me. Also, some nicknames/shorthand that weren't flagged as such? STENO and TUT

Nice puzzle with a few little tricky bits. ROILS vs sOILS and ZIPPO vs ZIlch had me scratching my head. STOLI and AVIS are both (figuratively and literally) foreign to me, but AVIS rang a bell somewhere in my head. Not even sure what they do as a company, but I'm sure they do fine.

This one stung. Having got the circled letters first, I spent about five minutes believing I was meant to be able to see some kind of recognisable symbol, maybe a logo, maybe a religious icon. Oof. Regular Wednesdays can be tricky enough at times, this was a hat on a hat on a hat.