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@Francis Bizarrely enough, googling that term results in real studies that use plausible metrics. I could certainly imagine undergrad game design students scraping Xwordinfo for overlapping clues that resulted in similar answers, or using an LLM's raw numerical output ("perplexity", perhaps?) as an actual puzzlement measure.

@Gareth Thank you for sharing a longer time. Others' incredibly short times have been convincing me to throw in the towel earlier - perhaps more healthily so than in my newbie ignorance, when I had allowed harder puzzles to take many hours of brute force struggle - but perhaps by a little too much now.

@Darius The time distribution is not completely symmetric, so a few very long solves over the average are being balanced with many shorter solves. Those long solves are also likely to be very old, as people also tend to get better over time.

@Vaer You didn't quite ask, but here's one way to do it at roughly the halfway point: With A, B, G, H, I, M, N, I noticed the circled letters were all near the beginning of the alphabet, with N near A. This suggests the 14 letters are A-N, and must be consecutive by pigeonhole principle. Add two minor assumptions, 1) no circle is unnecessary (i.e. collinear dots are not consecutive), since that would likely make the construction harder, and 2) there aren't any line crossings, as that would be odd for connect-the-dots. Those two principles lead to a natural way to fill in C-F and J and K.

@Dave K. I would consider "can't miss" a fair way to say "don't want to miss" expressively, similar to "must see TV" (which is, to be fair, nearly out of use too). But, I thought the clue's "?" was pointing towards something more literal: that a set of season tickets has no games missing. I'm tempted to tease people for missing the literal interpretation... but the story about season tickets being inherited reminded me of how they feel vaguely alien to me, like of a different culture. A reminder that common-seeming experiences aren't so universal as we think. I think I've never seriously entertained the idea of SEASON TICKETS, and likely know all I do of them from SITCOM plots. (They're far too LIKE for me. ...wait, no.) I suppose it's no surprise that people can have every different experiences and associations, so much so that people struggle to interpret the clue the same way as the cluer. So perhaps it's best to consider it a missed connection; hope it goes better next time. (...DERMA, on the other hand...)

@Heidi To me, Nesquik is the chocolate variety; I had forgotten about the strawberry one. Perhaps worth a try, if only to disrupt the bad memory!

@abelsey If you're expecting the same negative reaction as Sunday's puzzle, you'll be (I hope) pleasantly surprised. I think the comments so far should dispel those crude generalizations thrown at those who lodged complaints.

@John Perhaps you missed the suggestion at 17A? They are consecutive letters, and the drawing being referenced is fairly famous.

@jennie Though fine as a clue in and of itself, "formerly" thrown in would def help ease the frets of those who have to suffer it. It's always a sad story when something like an allergy becomes a phobia of healthcare such that their health is harmed again as a secondary effect.

@Jane Wheelaghan I sympathize with the dislike of proper names or trivia, but I had the converse experience with which were difficult.* I share the sense that they trip up the experience, though. I suspect some number of these answers must be permitted lest constructing the puzzles become impossible. Could an extension to the Tricky Clues section pick up more of the slack here, perhaps? Perhaps a Tricky Answers list, no extra explanation or commentary needed; just an additional list of the proper nouns, obscure jargon, or crossword-ese that appears in the puzzle, without even noting which clues they answer? *(I got MIKA, PADAWAN, and part of NEWELL. Newell and Mika regularly show up in certain verticals - technology and political media, respectively. Oddly, I apparently recognize Gabe by first name and not full last name. PADAWAN is a title (albeit fictional) and not a name, so it gets a fresh injection into culture with every new Star Wars media release. YENTE has come up before as crossword-ese.)

I feel obligated to present the opposite stance here. To me, there is enough challenge in nature and coincidence, in games or out, to find any joy in encountering artificial antagonism, victory or not. I might as well go back to dealing with some real nemeses, trying to cure cancer or solve politics or something.

@Barry Ancona I'm someone who has touched the Minesweeper Online fan MMO more often than attempt a full-sized crossword, so yes, I instantly recognized the numbers - it gave me the courage to try the puzzle, and taught me what a rebus was. Certainly, novices are a minority in crosswords these days, but I'd assert that new and casual players are very important minorities in any game. If you only cater to those daily players who solve in under half an hour, you'd rapidly find yourself wondering why your player counts were ailing.

@abelsey I understand "states" in the title, but I'm not sure what's "swing" about them.

@Brunsworks To commiserate, I also saw that fill and ended up backtracking along the crossings because it seemed so unfitting of the clue. I wonder why no pun-indicating question mark, unless that's actual tennis jargon, but I see no sources saying so.

@Nikola If I'm interpreting what you are saying at the end correctly, the EYE rebus is not to make the fill easier to construct, but a literal part of the fairly well-known ambiguous drawing you're recreating with the connect-the-dots. But I think your first point, not seeing the reference, snowballed into the orders and made the puzzle far more difficult. I suspect that someone wanted solvers to get the theme early, such that the theme clues help the crossing normal ones, not the other way around. (An ambiguous difficulty puzzle, one could say....)

@Barry Ancona At risk of reading too much into the choice of phrase, I have to object: as a game design principle, "puzzles" are very much NOT supposed to trip you up in the sense of inducing errors or failure. The audiences for those who want to overcome a challenge (agency) and those who want antagonism and competition (domination) are almost polar opposites.

@Fabe F There's a message at the bottom of the column that says it's a formal correction and everything, so maybe policy requires it. ("An earlier version of this column and crossword puzzle incorrectly stated that Bud Ice had been discontinued in 2010. It is still available.") It says the puzzle was changed, but I don't see it (perhaps it'd change if I reset it).

@Mr Dave I suggest it's less about missing a usage of a ticket, and more about getting the tickets themselves. If you buy season tickets, you purchase every game, sans none.

@Barry Ancona Part of my point is that there's no such "equivalent media" now. The Times used to be "of record" and could claim to be the closest thing to a central public square (as they often did for their opinion section). There is no such platform today.

@Stephen I'm suddenly curious whether I and O were accepted too. Along with I think accepting E (and no split answers between the crossings), that probably addresses most of the complaints about fighting the rebus UI.

@Pax Ahimsa Gethen You're not the first to say that it wasn't apparent, but 17A would seem to give direction for doing so. (Unless you mean you were trying to see it without drawing?)

@abelsey Uh. There are literally 1/3 fewer comments, and that's even counting the positive ones, and the dozens of Polish emoji presumably for ratio. To borrow from Thursday, 🙄.

@lucky13 I would love an option ("zen mode"?) that removes timing elements from my UI; another wish for the digital team. As it is, there's a lot of peer pressure to race or rush, intended or not.

(Before someone mentions, I do also realize the clue probably would have needed something with abbreviation, maybe "hi", "lvl", or "INT", in that case.)

@Justin Huh, I never quite consciously realized that "hips" being plural-ish is not so much for the one hip bone, but the two hip joints. TIL!

I wonder if the clue would be better to be a countdown that was "aborted", not the launch....or possibly, a "missile launch" to evoke the Hollywood trope of the abort button? I could see the latter getting lost in editing.

@The X-Phile I thought it was a BOOK COVER with a SHEEN, superficially. Maybe a dance card and/or the yellow and black colors relate to being a BUSYBEE? (For the record, the capacity for Google's image search to find the image has nothing to do with AI.)

@Francis Oh, I'm already there; those really are things I'm taking a break from! Gamification and massively online collaboration are still how people expect things to be solved, right? ...right? (I would genuinely be interested in what effective projects are even available to join these days, but that becomes a depressing subject and is veering very off-topic.)

@Francis That's fair if you know, but if you don't, it's not clear how solvers are supposed to learn of rebuses' existence or the UI rules for inputting them. (Clicking through to the blog, then looking for a link in the middle of the article, is just not something one expects to need to do.) It also disrupts a lot of what solvers take for granted - that the boxes indicate word or phrase length, that solving a clue gives you information about the crossing ones (as without the crossings, one may not know which squares are rebused together), and so on. I can sympathize with those who feel it's unfair when unexpected.

@Trey I think this is mostly a weakness of the now-aging UI for the crosswords, especially on mobile. The other NYT games are far better at surfacing features and mechanics to new players via interface design hints. I hope they are working on improving them!

@Times Rita There are still Tesla Roadsters being sold. (They are all sporty convertibles, standard.)

@Lin Don't get me wrong, puzzles are supposed to offer a challenge, but it requires calibration. What makes anything a playful game, not tedious rote work, or an ominous test? The differences lie in things like the number of tries, the stakes, the pace of discovery, feeling of control, opportunity to improve, and so on. For example, it's great that the app allows one to look for mistakes in a fill without the streak loss for "checking". It's less great that the app has no tutorial puzzles or link to introductory how-to articles. They also have the Easy Mode versions, but no way to find them from the app, AFAIK.

@John Am I correct to surmise that you approached the theme as a thing to be revealed by solving the crossword, and not its own puzzle?

@Steve L I would strongly disagree about "no good way", and there are many ways that don't reveal information about individual puzzles. The desktop UI has an explicit button labeled "Rebus", compared the mobile version which puts it behind three dots (which people have been conditioned to expect to be about keyboard or language settings). Introductory tutorial puzzle(s) for newcomers are also an option.

@JohnWM Oh my, vowel language?! I plead the Vth.

@O. Sharp I believe it is this F.Y.I. (Q&A) item in the City section (Section 13) page 2, or page 121 digitally, under "Streets of Citrus". The permalink feature doesn't quite jump to the right place, but: <a href="https://nyti.ms/4oJ7neu" target="_blank">https://nyti.ms/4oJ7neu</a> Here's a gift article link to the digitized version, but it has some formatting oddities. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/05/nyregion/fyi-396593.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1E8.1pb2.rLwFandNgiDD&smid=url-share" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/05/nyregion/fyi-396593.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1E8.1pb2.rLwFandNgiDD&smid=url-share</a>

@Matt Yes, unfortunately I refer to experiences more like your Sunday workdays. I started out trying to get through all the daily NYT games before sleep, after midnight. The other NYT games do a good job of being bite-sized breezes, which makes it a struggle (for me) to just allow that one last thing to be left undone. But in adding the crossword to that habit, becoming stuck for multiple hours became an injury to well-being, with insult added if the struggle turned out to be one that could never resolve with only more time and puzzling effort. (We all suffer through enough of those in our everyday lives, yes?)

I don't know if it's (just?) a reference to that event - I interpreted it more as "hippie" as in "what's hip", happening as in "what's happening", and to "be in" as in "what's in".