mlpse

Wow first Sunday I managed without looking anything up, except for saving myself from trying the alphabet at two squares at the very end with SACH(A)R/H(A)TERA(D)E/ENNEA(D)S which is just a cruel combo I think. But I loved that nerd knowledge such as PARSEC and RESPAWN gave me a way in.

one of the hardest ever. OPIE, DELLA, BASEMAN and plenty of other names I've never heard. maybe very culturally selective

Omg. PRIMPED drove me insane, I had never heard the word and had everything in there from BRICKED to CRIMPED. I suspected it should refer to looking at yourself in the mirror somehow, but had no idea what to use... And combined with the many possibilities after BEYOND... Didn't feel guilty looking up some very US knowledge such as the Toyota car or the baseball stat, or that mvp or whatever alphabits is. Loved the clue for IPOS "

Very hard theme words, the only rhyme I had heard was rub a dub, so I played around with stock a flock, block a stock etc... Icebox cake was also new to me but kind of made sense. Fortunately there were more international ways in, such as FABLABS, SOBA, OTRA and NOVAK.

wow my fastest Thursday by a long shot, and in contrast to most non-mondays I had to do zero lookups or checks, since there was no guess-the-letter combination of two US celeb names or candy brands etc (I only ever lived in the US for two years and find some of those supposedly ready clues impossible). once the pattern was clear it was really doable. i don't get why some people seem to dislike it...!

Wow. With looking up some of the SW stuff (finding out what smokey bear was was the key) I got it almost solved, stuck on PEEP/ESPYS which I solved by brute forcing. Still not sure about NANA for gram, I presume gram can be short for granny or grandma in some dialects.

tootsie and PATOOT, never heard of either. the rest was fun though!

Pretty difficult. Thank god for the math clues that gave me a way in. Had to google for PECK/KESHA and that comedian as well as the trumpeter and the author. I am not convinced that ARENA can be a good synonym for sphere in any context.

Hard even with lookups: PENN/STP/TRIO - had no idea what a speedway is. Rest was fun, although I was too in love with my wrong solutions LEGOSONHISFEET and FRESHOFFTHEBAT.

was stuck for a long time on KARAOKECELL because "booth" didn't fit and i thought of the japanese style karaoke establishments where you basically rent a booth/room, plus CELL fit the theme nicely...

Felt like a Tuesday wow. Never heard of Dark academia and ice dams. I appreciate the good mix of topics in this puzzle.

ROC/SHO/CHIA extremely obscure for international solvers I think 🙂... CHIA I had to look up after the solve because I didn't understand

For a while I had SPAR because those are from central Europe (but NL) and they're everywhere abroad. TIL there's ALDI in the US. Fun puzzle, although BTU I Will always have to guess or infer, I don't think I will ever remember it even though it's in many puzzles.

wow one of the first nonmondays I solved without a single Google or check, and extremely fast for a Friday...

Top left was brutal, never heard of ASWAN, MOOSHU or "phooey". For TVAD/ODES I had TRAP/OPES (thinking the latter was a false-latin-declension plural for opus like the recent octopus/octopi) because the drops could be anything. Still can't quite believer EMOTER. Overall very enjoyable and loved the weather theme and clues!

Could someone explain the clue to DOGGROOMER for me? Google says it's someone who cleans dogs. I believe dogs are pets, not toys.

Loved the theme! But some impossible combos for me, notably LUSH/SOT, completely unfamiliar with those meanings. AVIA/AVEENO I somehow got there with guessing, never heard of them.