Ken

This one was fun. Called on my memories of watching BJ and The Bear when I was young. Who knew that would come in handy almost 50 years later!?! My daughter and I managed to finish this one relatively quickly (~90 mins, which is quick for us on a Sunday), so completing it filled me with some pride…well…almost! We cracked all but two clues: the FICO and ARCO intersection. We’re Canadian, and FICO does not operate up here so that entity was totally unknown to me. We could have overcome that barrier had we been familiar with the arcane Italian commands given to players of the violin or other orchestral stringed instruments. But, alas, such is the nature of these NYT crosswords! Looking forward to the next one.

As a relative noob (<3 months of trying) to NYT crosswords, I found this one very hard. Harder than your average Thursday. “Nisan” was particularly obscure.

Hard one! I got stuck on the intersection of MIL and LEANN (Rimes…who?) and MANGOSTEEN (what the heck is that?). BARCAR had me initially thinking BARTAB, as that is something one is going to incur after yelling out “drinks are on me!”