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.

The entire upper half was superbly done and CRASH BLOSSOMS was a nice TIL moment. BILL instead of SPAM was a fun misdirect too. But CRASH BLOSSOMS crossed with OLGA, PULIS and LILITH was way too Naticky for me and ended up being a super frustrating solving experience.

Perfect throwback to pre-2020 Friday puzzles in terms of the difficulty level. Overall I found it quite tough but fair. More of these please!

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.

Loved the puns. UNITED WE STAND made me giggle out loud. Also- US AGAINST THE WORLD was strangely prescient.

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

Easy for a Thursday but 10/10 for the theme. Loved the idea.

Didn't understand how 'Gukesh Dommaraju, upon becoming world chess champion in 2024' translates to TEEN. Gukesh was already a teenager before he becomes the chess champion and is still a teenager - so where does the 'upon becoming' bit come into the picture? Just seemed like a very awkwardly worded clue.

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.

Loved it. Felt a lot like pre 2020 Friday/Saturday puzzles. I felt like I was going to be stuck forever in multiple places and suddenly everything just seemed to fall into place (which still doesn't happen with pre 2020 puzzles for me sadly). More such Friday puzzles please.

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.

Wow must've been quite a feat of construction making all the crossings work. Kudos!

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

Clever clever clever. Easily my favourite Wednesday of the year.

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.

I often have mixed feelings about Sam Ezersky's constructions but today was absolutely brilliant with some superb misdirects. Starting last Sunday, this has been one of the more challenging (and fun) weeks in recent memory and though it's unlikely, I'd like to think it's based on all the 'too easy for an end of week puzzle, where are the difficult puzzles like the old days' feedback we've been giving on this forum over the past several months.

Fun fact: Nauru is the only country in the world with no official capital city. Yaren district is more of a de facto administrative centre.

The crossing of TOY POODLE, POOL NOODLE and ARE WE COOL was incredibly satisfying. As was the clue for TSA PRE. Thank you for an excellent Saturday puzzle.

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.

Fully concur with the constructor notes- definitely in the Robyn Weintraub school of puzzle construction and there can be no greater compliment than that. I enjoyed the solve but do have one minor nit to pick with the editing- several clues/fill were rather US-centric (more than usual I felt) and I assume some overseas solvers may struggle with those.

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.

Really liked the theme. And nice to see the Midi make a reappearance!

Solid, solid workout. Tough but fair just like yesterday. Lots of terms/names I didn't know - POCO A POCO, LIANE Moriarty, ENHALO and so on but the crossings definitely helped. Also had no idea what a C-SPOT or a CARDSHARK was or even what a 'bone' is American slang for so had to do a couple of alphabet runs in the NW corner.

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.

Easy but fun solve. TIL it's ARMIE Hammer and not Arnie. And the clue for SAMOA made me smile :)

Excellent Friday puzzle. Lots of TIL moments and I needed a fair bit of luck on some of the crossings. Not to get too political but I had SHADY and SLIMY for 25A but those didn't seem to work.

One of the toughest Sundays from the past year and quite a feat of construction! Needed the column to figure out that rebuses were involved. I did find some crossings a bit Naticky - RAPP and RASTA, ANI and NIETO, HELEN, CLEF and FAE all needed a lot of guess work since I'd never heard of most of these.

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

Cute theme. And my fastest Sunday by a mile. Not sure if it was just too easy (I'm tired of complaining about the editing yet again) or whether I was just on the same wavelength today.

Superb, superb puzzle. Loved all the debuts. Had no idea what Laudanum was but knew the word thanks to the Asterix comics so thank you Goscinny and Uderzo!

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.