Hope Levav

i've been an on-and-off nytimes puzzler since my college days in the 80s, and for many years i stayed away from friday and saturday puzzles. they were just too intimidating. during covid, my then-teenaged son, aaron, and i started doing the puzzle together. i think the saying "two heads are better than one" especially applies to puzzling! and our various interests and knowledge combined very effectively. still, our longest streak was 100 and something days. aaron went away for college for a few years, and our joint puzzling days were limited to school breaks and summer vacations. but then life happened and he decided that he wanted to come back home. and so, we got back to our puzzling. we've had a number of pretty significant streaks over the years, but today (well, really tomorrow, but we completed sunday's puzzle tonight) we unlocked a new achievement: 366 days/one full year! friday and saturday puzzles no longer intimidate us, and our average times for those days have even gone down quite a bit. reading wordplay after we solve a puzzle and scrolling through the comments here have definitely added to our fun. we've even worked on constructing some puzzles of our own, so who knows? maybe one day we'll get up the courage to submit a few. so anyway, thanks for being such an informative, generally supportive, and occasionally hilarious puzzling community!

for those of us who look forward to a clever sunday theme, a themeless puzzle on a sunday is disappointing. there's nothing wrong with today's puzzle, but it feels more like a long wednesday than a sunday. though as a child of the 70s, i did appreciate the appearance of lite brites. 🙃 i am also astounded by the continuing hate being poured on for last sunday's art heist puzzle. i thought it was great fun!

thank you, harry zheng, for a perfectly fun sunday solve. i hope we don't have to wait a whole nother year for your next creation!

100A (DASHED HOPES) sure did make me smile!! This was a very enjoyable solve with some especially clever clues. Though I still do not understand how 21A (TVTAPE) is the answer for VCR MEDIUM. I grew up with a VCR, and I never heard anyone ever use the term TV TAPE.

Sorry, but the answer to 45 down, "Fathers, in Hebrew," is just not correct. Fathers, in Hebrew, is AVOT--or even AVOTH. But there is no Hebrew word that forms a plural by adding an S at the end.

I am pretty surprised--but mostly saddened--that so many puzzlers are unfamiliar with Toni Morrison, one of the most brilliant authors of her generation. Morrison's books are not light and easy reading, but they are rich and layered and gorgeous to read, hard work in the absolute best sense, and so important as well. Maybe, as a result of this puzzle, a few folks will consider picking up one of these books? I sure do hope so! Thanks, Benjamin Panico, for making me smile today. And as the queer mom of a trans teen, I especially welcome your presence as a constructor. Representation matters!

i find it rather amusing when people comment on how easy or hard a puzzle is, when it's not really about the puzzle but about what you bring to it. i felt a playful kindness emanating from today's puzzle, so i didn't spend much time thinking about whether it should be a saturday or a wednesday; i am just grateful that i got to solve it--so thanks to you, kate and rafael! my son and i were especially cheered to see the answer for 45A, LOUPES. my father, who died over 20 years ago when my son was just six-months-old, was a master jeweler and watchmaker, and we have a few of his old loupes around our apartment. seeing that word in the puzzle felt like a little hello from him. (he was not much of a puzzler, but he was an excellent scrabble player!)

Super fun and very clever--after a very tiresome Saturday grid. I was especially happy to see Casey KASEM show up today, as he had been my first thought yesterday, for the answer that turned out to be Ryan SEACREST.

as i've noted before, my son and i do do the puzzle together almost every day. we first started when we were home together during covid and he was in high school. our current streak is 499 as of today, so it was especially nice to read about ruth and hannah as a mother/daughter team who started out solving together. my son has tried his hand at puzzle construction, and i imagine we will collaborate one day. well, i hope so, anyway! favorite answers today: GRIFTREGISTRY, CASHBARD, and MOTHERINLAWN; i laughed out loud at the last two! thanks, ruth and hannah, for a great sunday solve. i hope you are keeping cool on this steamy ny/nj day. and i hope you collaborate on more puzzles! p.s. i was pleasantly surprised that the answer to 106A was HASIDIM, as i didn't realize that term was used outside the hebrew/yiddish speaking community!

lots of smiles today: BANANA SEATS, ABE, DIAPER, and MOSH PITS stood out for me. especially BANANA SEATS, as i fondly recalled my yellow childhood bike with a banana-colored banana seat. 😉🙃 and as the mom of a kid with a RARE DISEASE, it's nice to see that mentioned--and just two weeks after rare disease day!

my son and i loved the subtle wit of the anagrams, and many of them made me chuckle out loud. (lucky for me, my son's younger brain is much better at anagrams than i am!) i agree with barry and others that the rest of the puzzle was a bit easier than a usual sunday, but i find that is often the case when the theme is particularly clever. i can accept that trade-off every now and then. i'm glad to hear sam has had two more puzzles accepted by the nytimes, and i look forward to solving many more of his creations in years to come!

super fun! it was challenging until we figured out what was going on. my son and i were tricked by the fact that rice-a-roni fit at 97A. but then we got to 115A and we were sure it had to be macbookair. and then it all started to come together. the layers involved in this puzzle are incredible. what an achievement!

any puzzle that include linda ellerbee, edie windsor, and cannoli is a winner in my book! i am floored that the contructor is a high school student and moved by his notes that this puzzle helped him through a dark time. i am making note of your name, owen bergstein from boston, and i cannot wait for more of your puzzles!

there is so much to love about this puzzle, and its easy, breezy feel perfectly matches today's beautiful and sunny day in nyc. two things stand out for me: 1) i'm old enough to remember they MIGHT be giants dial-a-song phone number. what a novelty that was, back in the 80s when i called every day from my college dorm room landline phone! and years later, when my oldest (and current crossword companion) was a toddler, "john and john" was one of his favorite bands. (their kids' albums are just as clever!) 🙃 <a href="https://youtu.be/qoGHk5_Kvvw?si=Vma5qIF4_QD14K4p" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/qoGHk5_Kvvw?si=Vma5qIF4_QD14K4p</a> 2) for some diaspora jews, today is the second day of the harvest holiday called shavuot--lit. weeks, so named because it comes at the end of a seven-week counting cycle. the story of ruth is read on this holiday, and one of the key characters is named boaz! thanks, boaz moser, for a great start to my morning.

what a delightful saturday puzzle! the clue for KONG really made me smile--and i figured it was the first time that word was clued in that way. (thanks to caitlin for confirming my suspicions.) thanks, sam berriman, for the fun! here's hoping for many more puzzles from down under.

what an absolutely delightful puzzle. i even laughed out loud a few times, because of some especially clever cluing. this felt extra fun and chewy for a tuesday. thanks, adam aaronson!

wow, i am shocked to find so much anger and nastiness in these comments. my son and i thought this puzzle was clever, challenging, and fun. and what a feat of construction! thank you, david kwong! we will definitely be looking up (and solving) your puzzles from the archive.

what a fun puzzle! once we realized each coin has its own trick, everything fell into place. lucky that this gen-x mom knew about the trevi fountain and my gen-z son got nickelback. loved the clever cluing and wide range of topics. only disappointment: both of us would have loved to see NOQUARTER clued as the led zeppelin song! welcome, kareem! we eagerly await your next puzzle!

Caitlin Lovinger's first line of the Wordplay column is SO ON POINT: "Spencer Leach has a gift for tweaking things that might look irritating at first into amusements — every corner of this puzzle had a clue or entry that could have made me bristle, until I parsed it completely, got the wink and had to smile." What fun for a Saturday!! 37A, 57A, and 35D were just brilliant clues--and really made me smile.

I'm always happy to see Christina Iverson's name on a puzzle, and this one did not disappoint. I'm 55, my son is almost 21, and we do the puzzle together; today's puzzle was especially fun for our various wheelhouses. This puzzle was the perfect combination of familiar and challenging, and the clever cluing made this a breezy and satisfying Saturday solve. Thank you!

what a nice wednesday-thursday-friday combination--all fresh and fun puzzles with just a hint of challenge. and some great cluing too. fingers crossed that saturday keeps the streak going! it's actually ice cream for breakfast day tomorrow, and that definitely deserves a really fun and delicious solve!

My son and I like to do the puzzle together. We started this one very late on Friday night, but I was so tired so we only made it once through the clues before I pooped out. Came back to it this afternoon with fresh eyes and we both REALLY enjoyed the VERY clever clues.

what a fun thursday! (i honestly don't know why so many folks hate rebuses. i love them!)

as i've mentioned before, my son and i do the puzzle together on most days. his name is aaron, and he dabbles in crossword construction. so imagine our surprise and delight to see that today's constructor's name was ADAM LEVAV! 😁 my wife and i took the name levav when we married, so there's no chance of being related. still, it's a rather uncommon name, (a poetic/liturgical form of the hebrew word for heart, LEV) so it was really fun to see! great debut, mr. levav! we look forward to solving many more of your creations.

Super fun to solve, and the animation is awesome! Thanks, Jeremy Newton.

what beautifully executed, multi-layered puzzle! and a very fitting tribute to one of the greatest films of my lifetime. thank you, jeremy newton and tracy gray, for a super fun sunday solve!

when yesterday's puzzle was so fun and breezy, my son and i worried that today's would be a real doozy. what a lovely surprise, then, to have so much fun on a saturday. what a great weds-thurs-fri-sat of puzzles we've had this week! and with thanks to my long-gone mother, who passed on her love of 1940s movie classics, including "mrs. miniver," starring greer garson. ❤️🎥

great cluing, perfectly fun for a saturday. especially loved the cleverness of HEYBATTERBATTER, HOMEMADEBREAD, and DELICATESSENS. and as to familiarity with 14D, nyc drivers know street cleaning is suspended on diwali, which just happened earlier this month. and this year, nyc schoolchildren even had the day off for the holiday!

what an absolutely delightful puzzle for the last night of hanukah! i squealed with delight when i figured out the theme--and how especially cool that the whole dreidel shape is filled with C-L-A-Y letters. (even though, despite the song, a dreidel made out of clay would likely not spin very well...) after the strands hanukah debacle earlier this week, (challah is NOT a hanukah food!) it is really nice to have such a well-designed hanukah puzzle. thanks, seth and jeff! and welcome back, will!

social studies teacher middle school dog mama loves the west wing it's almost like i constructed this puzzle--but someone else did all the work! i loved the flow of this grid, the playful vibe, and the generosity of the crosses. nothing came too easily, but everything made sense in a satisfying way. thanks to will for the great clue for 50A! and thanks to kelly morenus for kicking off this middle school teacher's weekend with a big smile! 😀

wow, that was fun! i thought i had the theme, but i only sort of did. i kept looking for the missing letters, but didn't see where they fit. i got the board 2/3 filled and boom, it finally came together with CIRCUITS--but only after i sat staring at the word and even saying it out loud a few times. what a satisfying experience! thank you, brad lively!

this felt like a pretty perfect saturday--hard to find a way in, but with a satisfying payday for continued persistence. and the board design was absolutely gorgeous. i know i added quite a few extra moments to my solving time just gazing at the beauty of the empty grid. 🙃 thanks, blake slonecker, for a doozy of a puzzle! congrats to you and your whole family on miriam's graduation! (and i do agree with her, boygenius is great!)

benefits of being 56yo and completing the puzzle with my 21yo son: he easily got 56A (URIE) and i easily got 57A (NENA)--and neither of us had any idea about the other's answer! (though i had heard of the 56A band and he knows the 57A song!) we had to circle around a few times to complete this puzzle, but it was a fun trip. thanks, tracy bennett!

This felt like a perfect Wednesday puzzle, clever and fun. Right off the bat, I appreciated the cross of EVE with EAVE. Figuring out how the Spanish fit in took a minute, but my son (we do the puzzle together; our streak hit 250 today!) yelled out LOCOMOTIVE for 60A, and all the others started falling into place. But the sweetest moment for me was the clue for 67A. 55yo me squealed with delight as childhood memories of Saturday night television rushed back to fill my head. I turned to explain the clue to my son, trying to describe "Fantasy Island" in a way that wouldn't make it sound ridiculous and creepy, (I failed) and found myself screaming out, "Da plane! Da plane!" I impressed myself by remembering the names Mr. Roarke and Tattoo--and even both actors' names. But after that, it was pretty much all a blur. Thanks, Hanh Huynh, for a wonderful Wednesday solve!

great debut, glenn, and i really appreciate your constructor notes. next time, i would LOVE to see a curling-themed puzzle! 🥌🙃

deb, what a gorgeous remembrance of your dad. i am so sorry for your loss. how incredible that you shared a love of puzzles. i love the story about him asking for your "help" when you were a child, since i used to do something similar with my son, who is now 21yo and my daily crossword solving companion. i'm surprised to see so many complaints about the puzzle. i thought it was very clever and great fun.

i'm generally not a fan of themeless sundays--they just kind of make me sad because my son and i love figuring out the sunday theme--but i thought this puzzle was very fair and did have some clever moments. right off the bat i had a feeling 1A would have something to do with ATARI. sometimes being gen-x is a real bonus! another trip back to the 80s was 43A. i hadn't thought about that beer in years, and the only reason i even knew the name was from a useless vault buried deep in my brain of every single commercial i ever watched in the 80s! and in the end, i think 21A was a brilliant misdirect--at least for a while. it convinced me that MOTHER was part of the theme, for obvious reasons. oh well. at least we got a nod in connections today. if you're interested in watching a kind of creepy ST PAULI girl beer commercial from 1985: <a href="https://youtu.be/DzzHzASjhSQ?si=7yAnBPzNEac3m3i" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/DzzHzASjhSQ?si=7yAnBPzNEac3m3i</a>-

caitlin's column was lovely as usual, and i especially appreciated the reference to the ransom of red chief, a favorite story to read with my younger students. the constructor notes also brought a smile. (i love when folks are nerdier than i am. 🙃) i thought this puzzle was clever and fun to complete. the first thing i thought of when i read the clue for 1D was AHNOLD, so i cannot believe how many people were so angered by that one. and my son and i got OMELET/STELMO pretty quickly ("something rotten" and "st. elmo's fire" are both very popular in our family!) so we were quickly off to the races. and as if the "tossing and turning" trick was not impressive enough, the top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top INSIDEs were icing on the cake. thank you, adam and rebecca, for the fun!

LOVED this solve. the title tipped us off that there would be some unusual burrowing, so the 1D/114D and 68D/18D clues made immediate sense and we were on our way! i enjoyed having jim morrison's voice in my head, singing "break on through to the other side" (link below) on a loop--and i appreciated the photo of morrison's paris gravestone at the top of the wordplay article. i've noticed some complaints about the bonus clues. my son and i found them super helpful--once we figured out how to use them, which was about halfway through. once we had three of "the doors" figured out, the rest of the bonus clues helped us fill in some of the more challenging remaining answers. we had PAGANS for 57A for a very long time--and i laughed out loud once we realized the answer was actually TWEENS. (i teach 10-14yos!!) thanks, brandon koppy, for a cleverly-constructed and challenging puzzle. <a href="https://youtu.be/gdnzBNMfZfo?si=r6HOgWZZ9NXuDJvh" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/gdnzBNMfZfo?si=r6HOgWZZ9NXuDJvh</a>

thanks, landon horton. i LOVED solving this puzzle! the buddy/bunny/buggy switcheroo is SO clever. i hope we get to see many more of your creations.

clever and challenging, and with two satisfying aha moments: first when i figured out the word shape with CONGREGANT, and second when i laughed at ANIMALATTRACTION and giggled once i saw the extra animals. also: GREAT constructor notes! thank you, mr. kugelman!

really loved the clues for 16A and 30D. and if this sasson jingle from the 70s has to be stuck in my head now, why not in your heads too? 🙃 <a href="https://youtu.be/4C_H7XOGu64?si=yCvs1STzsuZQOPvZ" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/4C_H7XOGu64?si=yCvs1STzsuZQOPvZ</a>