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@Darren This is so rude. You can say you didn't care for a puzzle without insulting the constructor. You not liking something is not the same thing as it being trash. Hope your day gets better.

@Shrike You know, you could just say "I didn't care for it" instead of insulting the constructor and the puzzle. There's a difference between you not liking something and that thing being bad. The puzzle isn't lame just because you didn't enjoy it.

@Lauren "should be clued as an Avenger" what is this sense of entitlement that constructors should clue things the way you want them to be clued? Bizarre perspective.

@Perscribo Themes like this are part of solving crosswords. If you don't like them, and you only want "traditional" ones (which I assume means themeless?) crosswords might not be for you. I don't meant to sound harsh, but I truly don't understand when people complain about not wanting there to be any playful themes in crosswords. Tricky themes are just part of it.

@John That is so rude. Crosswords are very hard to construct and you couldn't do any better. There's no need to insult a constructor like that.

@Francis Is there no part of you that can understand how some of us who have been solving for years or decades, for whom the challenge of difficult puzzle is the point, might feel about the puzzle getting markedly easier in recent years to accommodate the newer solvers and those who feel entitled to a star every single day? Do we not have the same right as you to say that here?

@Anita I agree, Anita! I don't understand the animosity toward this puzzle! I thought it was fun and clever and had some interesting cluing. I feel like people are overthinking the perfectly simple trick: two western states=western union.

@B Mu (the greek letter) and mew (the sound a cat makes) are pronounced the same.

@Andrzej You certainly don't have to like every puzzle. What I said was that complaining about puzzles being tricky or gimmicky is basically saying you don't like hard crosswords. And if you don't like hard crosswords, why do them? Your response is a straw man argument. Have a great day!

@Dan As the "groaners" have pointed out many times, the decline in difficulty is not attributable solely to an increase in skills. If I go back to the 90s puzzles in the archive, with my current skill set, the difficult puzzles (Th-Sun) take orders of magnitude longer to solve than modern puzzles on the same days. And, no, it's not just that the cultural references are older. They're just much, much harder. The cluing is more lateral, the vocabulary much more obscure.

@JBW Agree! Incredible to get the occasional Saturday that's still actually tough. Love the payoff of a hard solve.

@Dave K. I'm currently making my way through the archive prior to when I started solving about 25 years ago, so I can tell you that this is an old school Saturday. This used to be the norm.

@Laura Stratton Saturday puzzles might not be for you then. The difficulty is the point on Saturdays. That's what Saturday puzzles are for. The difficulty is the fun.

@Dave S That's the beauty of having the difficulty level change over the days of the week. Everyone's skill level can be accommodated. I'm one of the hardcores, and what bothers me is when commenters demand that Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays be made easier or less "gimmicky" to accommodate their preferences and skills. Some days of the week *should* be difficult. Everyone wins.

@Connor "I'm giving this horror movie zero stars because I don't like being scared."

@Tom S. Have you shared your list of rules with all the constructors so they can follow them?

@Heidi My reply to someone else above also works here, so repeating: It's a crossword myth that those of us who solve difficult puzzles without lookups just happened to know the answers because they were in our "sweet spot" or something like that. I didn't know PISTOLPETE, LEN, ORA, LOESSER, LEWIS, SNERD, or OREN, but I solved it without lookups because crosswords are a test of your ability to think laterally. I used crosses to get most of them. Where there were challenging squares due to crossings I didn't know, I used my knowledge of how words and letters work (and don't work) to narrow the options down to the correct entries. Nothing lucky about it, and no "trivia" knowledge needed.

@Sam I've never seen a single minute of any Star Trek movie or show in my life, but I loved it. I don't feel the slightest bit alienated. It enhanced my enjoyment, even, because it made it more challenging! Of course, unlike many here, I don't feel entitled to have the crossword mirror my specific interests or areas of knowledge.

@Storm Petrel Thursdays and Sundays probably just aren't your thing. Nothing wrong with that. What you call gimmicks are a key feature of Thursday and Sunday puzzles. And there's no such thing as a "regular" puzzle. These kinds of things have always been part of crosswords, especially on Thursday/Sunday. Those of you who don't care for "gimmicks" still have lots of days of the week to get your preferred puzzle types.

@Sonja A definition of acing is getting something in one try, as in tennis or golf. Ace is the root. Ace=one, as in playing cards. The clue was correct.

@SBK In google search, you can add "-ai" to the end of your search terms and it will omit that BS summary! That's what I always do now.

@Jamie No trivia knowledge needed. You use the crossings for words you don't know. If you don't know a square from either crossing, you can almost always get it by ruling out the letters that absolutely won't work.

@Jay Like Saturdays used to be!

@SP I'm a woman and I agree completely.

@Kate I think Gen Y is just an alternate name for Millennials.

@CaptainQuahog Thanks, Captain! Great idea that hadn't even occurred to me. I don't think I realized the online archives went back that far, honestly. Something that really puzzles me (!) about these comment boards is why people get offended that some people like harder puzzles. We can all have different skills and preferences. Why is that controversial?

@marty "I'm giving this horror movie zero stars because I don't like being scared."

@Zézito If only there were some sort of system where some days of the week were easier and free of "gimmicks" and other days were tricky and hard, so that everyone's preferences could be met. Oh, wait...

@Jamie Or, alternately, the "I don't like hard puzzles crowd" could be satisfied with having 5 days a week of breezy puzzles and let the rest of us just have a day or two for the kinds of puzzles that we prefer? We can all have nice things. That used to be the purpose of the daily increasing difficulty setup.

@Liz B Yes! A throwback to the days when Saturdays were difficult by design! I thought they were gone for good!

@David dell What's wrong with the clue for NOSIR? It's cute and clever.

@Tom S. AMIRITE is a well-established slang term. Look it up, it's in the dictionary. Why would it be out of bounds.

@Ms. Billie M. Spaight Why would a term that's in the dictionary and well established in modern usage be unacceptable?

@abelsey Great sum up, totally agree.

@Andrzej EAZY-E is not an obscure figure. He basically invented a genre of music. There have been books written and movies made about him. Just because you and others don't know who he is doesn't make that entry unfair, it just means you have a pop culture blind spot, of which we all have plenty.

@Crabby Sounds like Thursday puzzles aren't for you. This kind of trickiness is a feature of Thursday puzzles, not a bug. Totally fine to have preferences, but no need to insult the constructor because you prefer a different type of puzzle.

@Amy I'm actually not totally sure about nu, but I think "noo" might be right for that one. The reason I know about the pronunciation of mu is because of my statistics training. Mu is the greek letter denoting a mean, so it's written and spoken often in statistics.

@TheBiggestHater I can't believe how far down I had to scroll through the comments to find someone else who loved this puzzle. I guess those of us who get enjoyment out of real challenges like this are a small minority? It took me double my average solve time to crack it and I loved every second of it.

@Barry Ancona You are a longtime solver and seem to be someone who enjoys a hard puzzle, so I'm curious if you know where more difficult puzzles can be found. I think have to go looking elsewhere. I've been solving the NYT crossword every day for 25 years. It used to be that I could at least rely on a few challenging puzzles each week, but not anymore. I have to guess that, since games subscriptions are now the biggest revenue generator for the NYT, they have chosen to lower the difficulty level to maintain subscribers, but it's a bummer for those of us who are puzzle masochists. They just rarely scratch the itch anymore. These days, when there is the rare puzzle that's challenging, the message board is on fire with complaints about "gimmicks" and such. To each their own, but I can't help being disappointed that Saturdays are often what I think of as Wednesday level difficulty. (Just to be clear, I thought this was a perfectly fun puzzle and I genuinely liked it, no insult at all to the constructor! It just wasn't hard.) Any recommendations for a puzzle sicko like me?

@Barry Ancona Thank you so much! I've done the archive going back to 2012, and before that I solved on paper since about 2000, but I somehow hadn't thought of going back further. Exciting! I'll also check out The New Yorker, thanks.

@Barry Ancona A proper Sunday puzzle

@Jamie Sounds like Thursday and Sunday puzzles just aren't your thing. Those are the days most likely to not be what you think of as "traditional" even though rebuses and the like are perfectly traditional for NYT crosswords.

@Ιασων Both things are true. I've gotten better, and the puzzles have gotten much easier. I know this because when I go back and do puzzles from the archive from 30 years ago, with my current skillset, my solve times are often double or triple what they are now.

@Nancy J. Sign me up too. Have you tried going back in the archives and working puzzles from the 90s? If you want a challenge, that's one way to get it! They're HARD!

@Xword Junkie I certainly did! One of the most fun puzzles I've solved in a long time. And I was only one minute off my personal best, so the problem may not lie with the puzzle's difficulty.

@Katie Amen, it needed to be said. It's a never-ending source of bafflement to me that the majority of complaints about any given crossword amount to some version of "This puzzle didn't cater to me personally" and I just can't understand that mentality at all.

@Anita And THATLLDO at 36A. Very cute.

@Amy "Pedant" = understands variant spellings? Okay.