Annie

The unofficial cookie of the NYT crossword becomes the official cookie of this puzzle.

Loved it. No sports, no foreign words, only one college abbreviation and it was an easy one, and very few proper nouns.

Dang that was a good puzzle!!! I got to brush off my old minesweeper skills. I once had to delete minesweeper off my PC because I was spending hours every day avoiding my college class work. Now I avoid my work work and my life’s work doing NYT crosswords.

Brilliant. Ignore all the complainers because complainers gonna complain. I knew from the moment of opening this puzzle and realizing what was happening that it was going to be fun, and I was correct. I loved this. I got the I easily, and the T after awhile when I remembered the mystery of the clue that was only a hyphen and went back to look for it. For the X, I didn’t know what the heck, and I was examining the two spots that had 4x4 grids for riddles, and then I went and read all the rules for the actual game four square before I figured out it was simpler than that. I had D for the E for the longest time. Thank you for this!!

Fun! I was breezing through it, but I got very bogged down in the upper right corner.

Very fun and very tight. Clever theme. No foreign languages, sports, or college abbreviations, very few proper nouns, and no “words” that are a bit of a stretch that I recall. Super impressive!!!

Fun! I saw the pattern in the circles and got all of them before figuring out the hint clue, at which point I mentally slapped my forehead because I’ve been to Bend.

I appreciate that you could have clued SCAD as College in Savannah, but you chose not to do a college abbreviation, Those always irk me, because I’m not going to memorize hundreds of college abbreviations, as they have no other application in life. This puzzle was an incredible feat! Nicely done!

This puzzle is absolutely crawling with ants! I haven't seen anyone mention it, but I think the black pairs of squares on the interior also represent ants. This was in my top ten most fun puzzles ever

Interesting reading the comments and so far seeing the majority did not enjoy the theme or did not think it helped. I enjoyed it! It even helped me answer most of the themed clues. My only gripe—and it’s a minor one—is with uva and sigep: I can’t think of a more boring type of trivia than memorizing college abbreviation nonsense. But I get that sometimes that’s the only fill that works. Thanks for the great puzzle.

Phish-monger was the very last answer I got. I kept thinking it was about the band, so I kept thinking jam artist? No that doesn’t fit.

Delightful. I figured out what was going on early on, and it was super fun.

I thought it was fun. I was grumbling about all the sports stuff and proper nouns, but I actually ended up getting everything with only a couple of lookups.

Woof. The only answer I got without looking anything up to get a toehold was austenites.

Fun and breezy! I guessed the theme from the SF answer, and it helped me fill in the other two.

Geez Louise! I gotta take a French class to do the crossword? Y’all could have clued most of these differently. End rant. It was still a blast.