J T

LOVED the "old Rome"! Really creative and fun to think it through to solve. And "Body part where a sock might go," after I realized the crossword didn't fit SHIN and completed the puzzle I was staring at that for several seconds before, uh, it hit me!

I love this puzzle! SO creative to come words that fit the BOXBRAIDS theme to come out as completely different words or phrases. Pine cones are all anyone talks about but thanks for giving FIR CONES some love, and let's not forget spruce cones! Karl the Fog just made me laugh for about ten seconds, which is a long time to laugh in the Trump era. I realize you didn't come up with the name, but thanks for including it because I needed that. Fortunately we don't have to go back 112 years for an example of a peaceful transfer of power, but I laughed at the TAFT. Good on him. Though here's hoping the American voters ensure there doesn't have to be one in 2025. Favorite clue: Two in a row Runner-up: Tiniest change

I solved the puzzle without realizing it and came here to figure what the trick was. I had initially been putting Os in the holes because I was reading "Wow" as the phonetic hint and thinking, akin to 15 DOWN, "OOO" might be what he was going for, or like the way people elongate vowel sounds when they're registering surprise (remembering from childhood studio audiences reacting to the unguessed answers on "Family Feud," which I know is still a thing because STEVE HARVEY was a recent answer. I remember when it was the guy from that war show I never watched.) At some point I realized that couldn't be it so I went through and deleted all my superfluous Os. When I finally solved "Warm-up leader at a race" near the end of my puzzling, I realized what "Low-tech security measures on some doors" was, which, well this page quickly gives away the HOLES, but all of a sudden the music played and I still had no idea what had just happened. I was still grappling with how "Wow" was a phonetic hint to the puzzle, completely missing the phonetic hint was "HOLY." Totally get it now. I like puns, and I don't mind the goofy ones. 28:04, more than 4 minutes over my Thursday average, so tricky but not time-wastingly confounding.

I "get" TEA LEAVES as clean white Ts disappearing (leaving) to grey, but I don't get why the Ts are there in the first place. Do I not really "get it," then, is there something more to it, or are those words all as random as they seem and there's really no point to why all the words with Ts should also be there? If T squares had just been grey and there were some 3D cluing indicating a second layer of words that caused you to enter the Ts? Tarot card and divination; do the T words refer to the occult? We can't be expected to know that. Alanis—a name I always think is supposed to have doubles of at least the N if not the L (a sense reinforced by how many double-letters she hits us with in MORISSETTE and how I always think R is among them). She makes for a great Crossword hint in an artificially extended row as it welcomes me to erroneously double consonants at will. A statement about how a prior era's pop stars live in the imaginations of those who connected with them then, even as, like the fabled isle, they cease to appear on charts? ATLANTIS, followed by ILE, and the punnily named ISLA Fisher. ISLAMIC crosses LEVITES (some will say it's the other way around) and, lower, generational naming conventions in both Hebrew and Arabic; questioning what we perpetuate when tied so explicitly to the identities of our fathers? Perhaps, like the sort who consult tea-leaf readers, we keenly feel the absence of meaning here and seek a greater purpose or plan where there isn't one.

I always love puzzles with a visual element. C'mon, people, it's Thursday! Started the solve like several posters I noticed, with (TILTING) AT WINDMILLS, in my first pass. Absolutely love (CURLED) UP WITH A BOOK, been way too long since I was that. As soon as this election is over. I always thought ZEDONK was Whoopie Goldberg's keister. No, wait, that was BADONK-A-DONK. (I don't even watch daytime television, but I heard Sherri Shepherd refer to it as such live on The View once, and I find I can't shake that booty synonym.)

I loved seeing the borders of beautifully named flowers. Lovely spring theme, thanks!

I think I'm going to need some psychological counseling about math appearing in my Crossword! I figured it out quite easily, the hard part was actually doing the math! The center grid was my first solve, then the bottom right, and finally the top left. It was only because I was able to make the math work for that center grid that I didn't just abandon that understanding of the puzzle and search for another one. I realized it was my math skills that were failing me and not my puzzle-solving skills! Ah, but wouldn't you know it—or, wouldn't I know it, you don't know a thing about me, but I know at least this much—at the end of the puzzle it's typically not the tricky theme that prevents the solve, it's my overfamiliarity with Britishisms coinciding with my ingrained misspellings of ridiculous names like LHASA APSU (which is what it should be, which gives us YES MUM) rather than LHASA APSO (which sounds like some Brazilian government agency acronym) with YES MOM. Who's to say the eye-roller wasn't a lost love from across the pond? And who's to say the world didn't finally come to its senses and rename that dang dog.

I knew LORELEI was a siren who lured men to their deaths on the rocks, but I assumed it was Gibraltar/Mediterranean, didn't know it was German. Has a kind of a treble meaning when you consider that the lead character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Lorelei, who sings an ode to another kind of rocks, "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend," introduced by the legendary gravel-voiced belter Carol Channing. This was my fastest Saturday ever, 9:51, 1/3 my average!

Somehow I wasn't really feeling this game until I saw (can I say this? SPOILER ALERT) three Os in a row and it wasn't an error on my part like it usually is! So I was impressed at that, and yet even with the clues to the theme (which I won't give away), it wasn't until I finished that I had a chance to really register what he was doing. I ALWAYS like a visual element of some kind, and this one was really solid. So as it sank in, I really enjoyed it. A minute twenty seconds over my average for the day, which I think adds to the satisfaction.

Strangely, I finished the puzzle in a time of 11:40 and the timer stopped—but the answers including Rebus squares were still active and appeared as unsolved in the Clues section. I came here to read the column, then went back to the puzzle page, clicking to see how 11:40 compared to my Statistics (23:50 is my Thursday average; 7:48 is my completely anomalous Thursday best). When I clicked back to see the puzzle again to formulate a comment, the Crossword puzzle page had a "Ready to start solving?" message, though I could see my answers in the background. When I clicked through, the timer now read 25:51—?! Somehow as I had been reading this article, the timer was still running, even though I did notice that it had stopped when I had solved the puzzle. This time, though, the Rebus-containing words in the Clues section were greyed out as solved. When I went back to Statistics, it did still acknowledge the solve registered at 11:40. I say all this not by way of complaint, as my Statistics weren't affected, but by way of shining a light for the person/people who code these puzzles on what might be left to iron out for the next one. I do love the visual puzzles, the ones where Rebus squares transform and especially the ones that continue to do something, like the fading and reappearing of the T squares, keep up that great visual enhancement of such puzzles. Thanks!

Always love the puzzles that do something after you're done! First time I've seen this, it was fun!