JM

Mr. Ross was the principal of my high school decades ago. Glad to see he is still writing crosswords and I hope life is good to him.

This one had some bite to it for a Monday. Liked it.

REIKI crossing TAKI? Kind of a microcosm of this arcana-laden puzzle, at least for me.

Loved this breezy Friday puzzle and learned a couple of new fun facts in the process. Not surprising, given the talented constructor.

Cluing seemed less straightforward than a typical Tuesday.

Found it a bit harder than most Tuesdays. Once again, the puzzle shows how different a world younger generations have experienced than coming of age in the 1970’s. Back then, finding the courage to directly ask someone on a date and being prepared to have them say no to your face was an important lesson in life.

While this was a very easy puzzle, I really enjoyed solving it, because most of the wacky bisections of the last word made me smile or even occasionally chuckle. A good puzzle is sometimes more about providing a pleasant diversion than wracking one’s brain.

This puzzle generally made me feel old and out of touch, so it was a bit of a slog, but at least there was the “I Love Lucy” airer concession to those of us more up on days of yore.

Found this to be difficult overall. The NW corner was brutal for me. Kept thinking of sherbets but no sorbets, for some odd reason. The pop culture references pretty much everywhere were things I didn’t know. But in the spirit of a good loser, I’ll say it was a well-constructed and appropriate Saturday.

This was one of the most thankless Sunday puzzles ever. Let’s start with the fill, which is mostly short and choppy. There is some longer fill, which is not much better, including Iloilo, which I remember from 30 years ago in these puzzles. The gimmick itself becomes tedious even though there aren’t that many of them, exacerbated by the poor fill. I know it’s sacrilegious to say anything at all negative in the comments section, it seems like you are only supposed to gush about the puzzle. I do appreciate the effort put in by the constructors, but it simply wasn’t worth the effort I put into solving it.

Seems a little inelegant that sometimes the missing letter is the end of an answer and other times the start of one, but I get that it’s necessary due to the tree shape the “forest” forms. I guess it’s one of those puzzles that begins to make more sense once you find the revealer, and before that, you might flail around a bit.

I’ve been finding the Spelling Bee harder than normal the past few days, so balancing that frustration with a few days of fun breezy crosswords has me in better spirits.

Just over twice my normal Thursday solving time! I was able to keep filling in theme answers by putting normal English words in, and the theme became apparent quickly enough. But the non-theme clues were seemingly from an entirely different universe than where I live, sort of like the old Twilight Zone episode called “The Parallel”.

Well-constructed with lots of interesting answers, but fell into place for me much faster than a typical Friday.

I really enjoyed all the clever misdirects in the clues. The answer to “In need of an evening out?” especially tickled my funny bone. Or maybe it was just the dopamine rush of flying through the grid after struggling mightily to get a toehold.

Because this one was easy enough to speed solve without ever giving a thought to the significance of the special boxes, I really wanted to be awed about what was going on when I analyzed it afterwards. Unfortunately, it left me disappointed, because I expect Thursdays to challenge me to think outside the box, whereas this one seemed like only the constructor needed to think outside the box to build it.

Crossing Haka with Kourtney? Not being much into the Kardashians or anything of that ilk, but having at least heard the name on TV, I had her name starting with a “C”. OK, now I see all their names start with “K”, but requiring that knowledge of an unusual spelling to solve this puzzle seems like a stretch, given the cross. Maybe I’m too old or just unhip.

The tactical mistake I made on this one was spending too much time floundering before searching for the revealer clue, a piece of good advice I sometimes get too headstrong to remember. While in this case the revealer only partially unlocked the mystery, it was enough to look to the edges for the missing letters. I’m assuming many others also figured out the missing letters from the clues themselves without “solving” the hidden synonyms on the edges.

Played a little harder than a typical Monday for me. Found myself jumping around the grid too much to have a good solve time.

This puzzle had so many obscure names (for me at least), especially in the top half, but I suppose that was the point, to acknowledge all these women, regardless of how well known they are. So it was a good tribute puzzle, but kind of an unpleasant slog for me.

I’ve never come across a clock that had an odor, or at least I’ve never sniffed to check, but I’m sure someone out there has a good story to that effect.

It would appear the Mesopotamia is considered the Cradle of Humankind Civilization, not Kenya (nor Nubia as I guessed). The clue for Kenya is Cradle of Mankind, not sure if that is the same thing as the Cradle of Humankind, but if there is a distinction, it is a messy enough one that another clue should have been used (IMO of course).