MarkN

Ayo as an answer again? That’s what, three days in a row? That’s way too much for an actress you have to be a fan of a particular show to know.

I really liked the puzzle. Unlike many recent puzzles, there was basically no crosswordese ( except maybe OLE, but the clue for that one was good at least). My congratulations to the constructor. Judging by recent puzzles, that is very hard to do.

The puzzle was fine and a fair level of difficulty. But I didn’t like the clue for “roan”. It was clued as a horse color, but it’s not a color, it’s a pattern and the pattern color varies from horse to horse. So it was sort of like having a clue for the National color of Scotland and having the answer be “plaid”.

The wordplay column seems proud of the clue “volleyball doubles”, but I hated it. The Times seems to have more such clues lately, but to me they are like cryptic clues and should have no place in a crossword puzzle.

I liked the puzzle and felt it was more like a Wednesday should be than many recent Wednesday puzzles. I think of Wednesdays as puzzles that have more unusual or complicated themes than Mondays or Tuesdays do, but themes that don’t make the puzzles very hard and may even make the puzzle a little easier. A sort of “Wednesdays are for whimsy” belief. I’m happy this one worked like that and hope the Times publishes more whimsical Wednesday’s.

This was a horrible puzzle. The overall idea isn’t bad, but one of the theme answers is a song with a nonsense name that peaked at number 21 in 1961. And since it basically crosses itself, the crosses aren’t so much help. How are solvers expected to get that? That’s totally unfair. And to make up for the mess in the middle with this clue, you had early week clueing for lots of the other non theme fill making the puzzle a mixture of boring and the above mentioned bad fill.

I did the puzzle and thought the theme was fine, but I have to complain about the clues. Overall they were way too easy. It seems more and more that since Thursday puzzles have “tricks”, the editors compensate with really straightforward cluing. With this puzzle they went way too far. I’m not calling for Saturday level cluing, but this level of clueing makes the puzzle not a challenge and boring to boot.

The grid was clever, but the clueing was way too easy. There were only four rebus squares, but either letter alone worked for the across clues. So most of the puzzle was like a Monday. I realize you don’t put the trickiest clues in a grid that has its own trick to figure out, but this was going way too far to the easy side.

It was a nice and clever grid but the cluing was so boring and straightforward I almost gave up despite appreciating the theme. The only interesting clue was “Plastic cap”. Kudos to that one. Otherwise yuck.

I thought the grid was full of interesting words but I thought the puzzle was too easy for a Saturday. It took me 11 minutes versus my average of 26. But reading the comments here, all I can say is that at least some people enjoyed the relative easiness. I am happy for them.

Unlike last Friday, this puzzle was appropriately hard. I really liked. My thanks to the editors and Ms Lynch.

I thought this was easier than yesterday and the grid wasn’t as interesting, but I really enjoyed the clever cluing.

I finished the Midi today (three strikes and yer out) but I don’t understand the theme at all. What are all the extra black bars for. Can anyone help?

This was a nice clean puzzle but too easy for a Friday. I’m glad some commenters liked it but I would prefer more of a challenge.

The clue for idempotent doesn’t seem to be correct. I didn’t know the word and looked it up. All the definitions say it refers to a function operating on the result of the same function. For example abs(abs(x)) means taking the absolute value of an absolute value. It is always the same as just taking the absolute value once so the absolute value function is idempotent. The puzzle definition refers to multiplication which is not at all the same. And multplying a number by itself usually doesn't give the number.

It’s really annoying that the editors think “bao” is the Chinese word for steamed bun. It is not. Bao means many things but not that (for example bag or full). A steamed bun is a baozi. You can look it up in a dictionary if you don’t think this is the case.

It’s a cute theme that I liked, but way, way too easy for Thursday. The non theme clues were basically Monday level. I solved it faster than an average Tuesday time and close to an average Monday time. This should have need a Wednesday or the clues for the non theme answers should have been toughened up.

This puzzle could have been nice but since the bold letters don’t show up well enough to be differentiated from normal letters on the iPhone app it was a total failure for me — an uninteresting theme less with lots of lousy short fill. NYT programmers ought to do better and there ought to have people who check this stuff but obviously there aren’t.

I’m in the relatively easy camp and I did enjoy the puzzles. But I was offended by the clue for hiragana (Main script of written Japanese). Hiragana is is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji. But since most Japanese words are covered by Kanji, hiragana is not the main script of written Japanese, Kanji is.

Very nice puzzle. Congratulations to the author.