Steven M.

What made this great was that it had a mix of right, partially right, and entirely wrong fill ins

Glad I'm in the majority here. Awful mechanics here since it was impossible to reference backwards. Even including the corresponding clue number would have been enough

Crossword's favorite cookie finally gets its own puzzle

That is a lot of obscure proper nouns crossing for a Monday. On a personal note, I used to attend (and was later a counselor at) a summer day camp on Iona campus

TIL MOOT has two definitions that are completely opposite of each other: adjective 1. subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty. "whether they had been successful or not was a moot point" 2. having little or no practical relevance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision. "the whole matter is becoming increasingly moot" The example sentence from 1 would be completely incomprehensible without additional context

This was next to impossible and not fun at all. Many many crossings with far too esoteric clues in both directions. Entire quadrants unsolvable. Only got about halfway through before I caved

Frustration increasing this week. These puzzles have been very sloppy. "B" and "N" are not words. I realized that Ice was meant to be Nice, and finished the puzzle from there, but I shouldn't have needed this column to explain what was meant by 6 words

Felt more like a Thurs than a Wednesday. Cute theme

And that, my friends, is how you construct a Friday puzzle

My father was in Ayn Rand's inner circle until the great schism. One of the central tenets of Rand's philosophy is an extreme form of sapiosexuality, so to speak. She (married at the time) had an affair with one of her students, Nathaniel Branden (also married at the time) because in her opinion they were the only two people intellectually worthy of each other. Both spouses ostensibly signed off on it, but Nathaniel eventually got divorced and started dating someone whom Ayn didn't consider worthy of him. And expelled Nathaniel from her group, stating only that his personal actions no longer conformed to the ideals of Objectivism My dad and three of his closest friends were the only ones who were interested in hearing his side of the story. When he explained it, they voluntarily left her group and remained friends Nathaniel for a long time after. He only told me this story after I read ATLASSHRUGGED my senior year of high school.

That crossing of NEIL/ALIA/ALII/ENO is brutal. I could have sworn I tried every permutation of vowels, including the correct one, but no gold star. Double checked everything twice and didn't see any mistakes, so had to check the reveal. Very frustrating

Oof, the MEHTA/INS/TINCT/HANDHOLD section was rough. Wasn't familiar with the non culinary use of entree, or what I assume is a shortening of tincture. HANDHOLD, meanwhile was the weakest of the theme answers. Good theme though

This might be a perfect Saturday puzzle. Unique grid shape, good mix of clues. Light on proper nouns, heavy on clever word play. Relies on a wide variety of genre. Every clue felt fair and every answer felt earned. 22 minutes, no mistakes

Very easy Saturday, 16 minutes. Didn't love the HUNTERHAYES/HEDER crossing though

Almost got skunked on a Tuesday. Had to take a break and come back to it finish the SW. Took me a while to figure out MTSINAI, and was completely lost on MAIN and APPA. Didn't help that I had ICYglARES in there

Nice theme. Got a little messed up with MEKONG/MAC/ACCEDE. I had pAl in there for a while, and pEKONG seemed okay to me. AlCEDE looked wrong, but couldn't think of ACCEDE. After double checking, pEKONG and AlCEDE were my lowest degrees of certainty, so I tried to think of a word that would work instead of pAl. Remembered MAC from a previous crossword, and that got me the gold star

Hardest Friday in a while. 25 minutes. Usually I can just keep cycling through the across and down clues until I'm done, but had to resort to zone defense on this one. A lot of good misdirects

Got a little tripped up with WINEVAT/ARA/PLOTZED/ZILLIONTH, wasn't convinced in any of them, but they all fit, and I got my gold star.

NEEDLEDROP/ERDA/AMO and AYO/YOU were both Naticks for me. I had NEEDLEtRiP, and both ERtA/AMi seemed reasonable and tried to brute force AYO/YOU. I figured that YOU made the most sense given second person and rexamined NEEDLEtRiP until I found something that works. I've found that having a, now 104 day, streak is a huge confidence booster. Because when I get to a situation like that, I know that 104 times I've figured it out. It means that, for an entire season now, every time I've come to a dead end, I've been able to successfully figure out the wrong squares without checking or looking up the answer. So why not tonight?

Good theme, but the crossings around I CHING COINS were not fun, to say the least

1 Across is terrible cluing. A lines judge never says "in" or "its in." The only words they ever say are "out" "fault" or "foot fault"

Embarrassing how late into the puzzle I got BISMARCKND given that I'm literally wearing a shirt right now that says Bismarck North Dakota. BSA/AMALA tripped me up, as did CASTPARTIES. I had eRE and was too focused on trying to figure out the crossing with ELLERBEE to realize it was actually PRE.

Ebay: ECHOCHAMBER That's the only one I could come up with

Solved the theme easily enough, but I felt like I was missing something since the down clues, while valid words/phrases, seemed completely nonsensical. Meh. Not a fan of the theme

Felt very tough for a Tuesday. Took me 9 minutes, about 2-3 minutes above normal

Finally got my seven day streak. The theme was pretty obvious, though the second half of each answer took me a few go arounds to get. After about 35 minutes, I was down to two clues left. ORR_S/S_S_/_OLANI. I figured it had to be vowel in the first spot and consonant in the second. Unwilling up give up my streak, I tried all 126 vowel/consonant combinations. None of them worked. I stared it for a another minute then tried two Is for ORRIS/SISI/IOLANI. It worked. 7 day streak

Timely entry for CARLOS Alcaraz with him now the odds on favorite to win Roland-Garros. Not sure I've seen his name in a puzzle before. NAAN-violence might be an early contender for clue of the week

That was brutal. 36 minute slog, but I got my gold star. Had to brute force for the REC/HYACINTHS crossing. Still don't understand why that's right. Obviously HYACINTHS is what it is, but REV or REF made more sense to me for the crossing. NE corner slowed me down a lot, and I needed all six crossings for TENREC. Had smuCKERS in there for a while, but SPEEDu not being a thing made my realize my mistake. Also, about 23D, obviously it's a valid clue and answer, but I found it very jarring. SAUNAs aren't exactly associated with Iceland. Using Finnish for the clue would have been much better clueing. If a misdirect was intended, it's a very bizarre one. Misdirects are good when they are clever or words with multiple meanings/senses. The hot spot part was good, the Iceland part was not

Arthur Ashe mentioned two days a row. Big week for him

In re the cheating versus solving debate, I think cheating is the end wrong word. It's a loaded word, and it's not even the relevant factor. When I was in elementary school, every evening my dad would bring me the newspaper, and I'd do two things. First I'd look through all the box scores to see if anyone got a triple-double in the NBA or hit for the cycle in the MLB. Then I'd turn to the crossword answer key and fill in the crossword from the previous day if my parents hadn't finished it yet. I wasn't solving the puzzle, but I was learning from it. I don't think anyone would consider it cheating. In high school, I often used a thesaurus when I solved the puzzle. Was it cheating? No, of course not. I was learning new words. Was it solving? Sure it was. I stopped doing the puzzle after High School and picked it back up a year or so ago. After a few months I was able to do seven days a week. I don't look anything up. If I come to my wits end, I click Check Puzzle and correct my mistakes. I consider that failing the puzzle, though. But cheating, no? It's just another tool for solving.

32 days, that marks my longest streak ever

Great theme with clever rebuses, but some brutal crossings. INADITHER could have been INAtITHER and crossed with NADIYA was no help. SUNIN/ELBRUS. Hadn't heard of SONORITY, but I suppose that's just a common noun, but crossed was LANAI and NADIYA didn't help.

Surely CUS/SUNTSU is an acceptable spelling for both crossings?

Am I just really drunk or was this really hard for a Tuesday? 8:31, that's really slow for me on a Tuesday. Also, the clueing for 9A seems wrong to me. Isn't the vegetation that prey animals eat considered part of the food chain?

I had [guess]timates for 12D, but of course, a SguessT isn't a thing

HIED for hurried is one hell of a clue for a Tuesday

What an excellent puzzle. The kind puzzle you can really grind through and every step feels earned. My favorite clue not mentioned in the article was "dessert that rarely lives up to its name." I smiled when I screamed TART. 25 minutes, no mistakes

Annoyed with the BELA/LENAPE crossing. Fortunately it was my only incorrect square and solvable through brute force. I wasn't any more confident of it being an L than any given consonant Agree with Steve L about the theme being useless

Not a hard puzzle, but I found the NE harder than the rest of the grid. Seems like my experience was similar to most in that

Felt pretty tough for a Monday. Usually I can get well over half of the across clues on my first round. Today was well under half. Got a little confused about what a MOfABLEFEAST was, but I guess OLAf can also be spelled OLAV? 5:40, just over a second for every minute of today's CLAY court final

I was going to call the MANSAMU_A/NA_A crossing a Natick, especially since I'm usually quite knowledgeable on Greek mythology. I started to brute force it, but I got to S, it was just egg on my face.

I guess Nathan Hale was wrong when he said he only had one life to give for his country. Here is writing crosswords for his country 250 years later...

Well, this is the first non-Thursday/Sunday in over 3 months where I failed to get my gold star. Went over it twice, and everything looked like it made sense. The mistake? DEISt/StOKEYS instead of DEISM/SMOKEYS. Hadn't the term before, and Stokeys sounded perfectly plausible with deist being a correct answer to the clue

When I went to IRAN, I picked up two things at the airport duty free to take home. A big bag of pistachios for my dad. And a tin of caviar for myself. Shortly after I bought it, I realized that there was no way it would keep for 24 hours until I get back home. So I got a plastic spoon from an airport vendor and went to the smoking lounge. Ate it straight out of the tin while I smoked a Cuban. Honestly a top ten travel moment of my life

Not sure about that LILLE/LIMPINGIN/ELO crossing on a Monday (or any other day of the week for that matter)

My second ever 14 day streak, and my best month ever with (assuming I get the Monday) 27 Gold Stars

Some of the cleverest clueing I've seen in a while. I was particularly fond of the clueing for EPEE, UMP, OWLETS, and NYET. On the other hand, crossing ANAIS and SAHIB, not so much...