Rahul

Sorry for the shameless gloating but I completed a 1000 streak today and am feeling super thrilled about it - and I couldn't have asked for a better puzzle to hit this number. I genuinely look forward to the NYT crossword's release each day and am very grateful to this puzzle for keeping me sane especially during the early COVID years. I also owe a lot to the community here - even though I don't post that often, I always read the comments and often learn something new or insightful or at least get a chuckle out of it that makes my day and for that I'm very, very grateful.

Remember reading this years ago. Apparently the Road Runner creators had some ' Rules' (usually followed in all the cartoons but not always)- "The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going 'Beep-Beep!'" "No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products." "The Coyote could stop anytime — if he were not a fanatic. (Repeat: 'A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.' — George Santayana)." "No dialogue ever, except 'Beep-Beep!'" "The Road Runner must stay on the road — otherwise, logically, he would not be called a Road Runner." "All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters — the southwest American desert." "All materials tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation." "Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy." "The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures."

Looks like I'm in the minority here but this was an absolute slog. The themed clues didn't seem particularly witty and many of them seemed like very obscure (to me) American celebrities from a certain generation. If I may nitpick - the correct term is MALAY peninsula and not MALAYA peninsula. If the reference was to the former name of Malaysia or the British colony, it should have been clued as such.

This puzzle gets a 10/10 from me just for the ASWAN joke.

Totally lived up to the hype created by yesterday's constructor's notes. Easy but nice aha moment when I got the theme. Sign me up for a Schroedinger any day.

'Butter from a farm' was brilliant :) 'Came unglued' was also a nice misdirect- I had EMDASH and also assumed TAPE was the second part of the answer (somehow related to stickiness) - took ages figuring out the first 3 letters.

Fun Thursday. Was really really hoping for a picture/emoji of an ANT in each box upon completion.

I'm clearly in a minority here but I thought this was the toughest Monday I've ever encountered. The KENO - KLEE-MATZOH crossing seemed super Natick-y to and I hardly see Matzoh spelled this way anywhere online. Hate being nitpicky but overall it was way too obscure for me and left me more annoyed than impressed.

Nice, clean fill and some great cluing. Had a very Robyn Weintraub feel to it - and there can be no better compliment than that.

Excellent throwback to the pre-Covid puzzle era (I still get stumped by older Fri and Sat puzzles from the Archives). The SE corner completely destroyed my self confidence and just that section took me 30min to crack. Time for a tub of chocolate ice cream to soothe my ego.

Fun puzzle but I echo the comments from yesterday - late week puzzles have become far less challenging of late. I know NYT doesn't publish this data but GenAI estimates suggest the number of daily unique NYT crossword solvers has shot up from 150k to 2M in the last 15-20 years so I get the need to make the puzzles more 'mainstream'. While the focus on having fewer US-centric clues and making the Mon-Wed puzzles more accessible is great, will be nice to have early-mid 2010s difficulty levels at least for the end of week puzzles.

Loved it. Made me smile 😊

Not a Trekkie by any means (not watched a single episode or movie) but couldn't stop marveling at this feat of construction. Managed to figure out the fill via the sheer number of pop culture references I've heard over the years and loved how all the theme items just 'fit' together so perfectly. Kudos!

Easy for a Thursday but loved the puzzle and the drawings. Nicely done

Quite a feat of construction. Nicely done. And lovely constructor's notes - made me smile and was a much needed break from all the depressing headlines. Looking forward to the Wednesday puzzle now.

Fun, witty cluing. Had HELD NERVE before HELD SERVE and that tripped me up for a while.

Wow quite a feat of construction! Really liked the fact that there wasn't much crosswordese despite the constraints of the theme and that the difficulty level seemed just a tad higher than most Tuesdays. Nicely done.

'Screws the titans' made me laugh out loud which rarely happens to me with a crossword puzzle. Loved the theme and rest of the clues too.

So thrilled to see a constructor from Singapore! And a 14 year old at that! Great job Bryan - this was a really fun solve. Very impressive work.

Perfect Saturday, with just the right number of misdirects. For 'Things you can't do without', had NECESSARY EVILS instead of BARE ESSENTIALS (3-4 of the crossings also seem to fit both options) and that took me ages to fix. I'm Indian and used to eating Chapatis but had never heard of a Chakla for some reason so that was a nice TIL moment.

Excellent puzzle and nice,clean fill. Great job. Surprised (and happy) to see Lara Dutta show up in an NYT crossword!

Was hoping to get a challenging Saturday and this one definitely delivered. Took almost an hour out of my Saturday morning but enjoyed every minute of it. More of these please.

The ROYAL FLUSH clue was the clue of the week for me. Overall felt like a solid workout with lots of TIL moments, misdirects but ultimately satisfying when things clicked into place.

Fun, unique theme. Had never heard of 'Skip to my Lou' but the crossings helped. Loved the constructor notes too. RIP Velvet Thunder

Perfect Saturday. Seemed intimidating at first but once things started falling into place it ended up being a relatively quick solve.

Easy-ish solve but quite a feat of construction. Nicely done.

Would've been very cool if the remaining squares on each die were either black or SPELT out something theme-related.

Fun and challenging Sunday after a relatively easy Thursday - Saturday this week. Took me a while to figure out SNOD should've been SNOB and TIL Dreyers and Breyers are separate brands (and that Dreyers is the same brand as Edys, another crossword favourite)

Didn't enjoy this one unfortunately- even though I consider myself a birder. Common snipes are native to Singapore so that was a gimme but hadn't heard of COOPER'S HAWK and the crossing with ROSACEA was too Naticky for my taste. Same for MELISMA and SHIM.

Easy but fun puzzle with nice, clean fill. TIL dot com boom refers to the stock market's performance and not to the actual uptick in the use of the internet during that period.

Today I realised I absolutely loathe Pig Latin and never want to see it in a crossword puzzle or in my life ever again. The fill in general wasn't bad though and I really enjoyed some of the cluing today (like the one for UPTOWN).

I'm definitely going to be in a minority here but I found today's puzzle incredibly difficult and incredibly unenjoyable. I didn't know much of the trivia and the entire top half turned into a complete slog. Must just not have been on the constructor's wavelength. 🤷‍♂️

Easy-ish but fun Thursday. Had BAR for 'goal to shoot for' which slowed me down a bit.

Slightly tougher than the typical Robyn Weintraub puzzle but a joy nonetheless. Can someone please explain how 'Every Day, Say' translate to ALOT? Been racking my brains over this one.