Mtmetz

Haven’t done today’s puzzle yet, in fact just did Monday’s masterpiece and left a late comment. As I went through all 278 comments (which as others have noted was a joy in itself) I realized that, unless I missed it, I don’t think anyone mentioned another feat of Mr. Newton’s construction (and perhaps the editors judgment): All those O’s and not a single OREO to be seen, and on a Monday!

I loved this puzzle, and Caitlyn's comments about the constructor, not least because I got a rare PB on a Saturday. The puzzle just flowed for me and there it was. Was it easy? Probably for many. Am I getting better? Also likely. But I looked back at my solve for Mr. Logan's last puzzle where my time was 3X today. I don't think I'm getting *that* better in that short period of time!

Sincere condolences, Deb. It's clear his memory is a blessing, which is how it should be. As others have said, we are all the better for his influence on you. Thanks for that.

Ella Mai...sorry, I don't think so. Not my son's father's R+B. So much auto-tune! DEEP SIGH... Better Friday clue: Middle month en printemps

Under my average Tuesday by 2 minutes. Liked it, knew most of the trivia, respect the complex theme. Thanks Paul! Just putting that in as a small counter to the nattering nabobs of negativism!

Had fun with this until I didn't. I got that the theme had something to do with a lot of Ks, but the song title just killed me. Spent many, many minutes trying various combination of rebuses (rebi?) TWO, FOUR, ONE (a short tennis match could be one set if the players agreed to it, right?), along with the plausible MANIC and MATIC. Can someone explain why rebuses shouldn't work in the crossword? I understand that the song title uses numbers, but this is a cross WORD, so I didn't think of the possibility of using actual numbers initially. And then, even after I put in the actual numbers, still didn't get the happy music until I changed EDGE to EDGY. Dispiriting. Looking forward to tomorrow...

Great puzzle, perfect for a Friday with sparkling wit and crunchy but gettable clues if one follows Deb's sage advice (we'll miss it when she's gone!). And could two constructors be any nicer? Collaborative, elementary educators, Minnesota...I'm guessing the ice cream affinity is the "lie." Maybe lactose intolerance or vegan? Thanks Jess and Adrian!

Nice Friday. I was DEKEd by JINK for a while...

Great puzzle. I started out thinking "Is today Thursday?" but as soon as I got SATURN the rest of the starred clues were easily filled in. Still took me longer than average, which was a plus! Thanks Bryan, congratulations and come back soon!

Very late to this party, but I just have to post for the record (NYT, after all) that Monday was my birthday (a big one) and this puzzle was a wonderful gift. More layers to the story: Sunday I played 9 holes with the mother of my child, and 3-putted 5 greens (Sotto and others not in the know, that’s a bad thing). Monday, after climbing a local butte for a spectacular view of 9 snow-covered Cascade peaks, we retreated to the golf course for an hour of putting practice. Later, when I filled out this delightful grid, I was filled with wonder at the gifts these puzzles give us, often so unexpectedly. Finished off the day with a wonderful performance of Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini” by the Oregon Symphony featuring Macedonian soloist Simon Trpceski (now that’s a name for a Saturday crossword). Thanks, Mr. Newton, for a wonderful puzzle on a birthday I won't soon forget!

Late to the commentariat after taking advantage of a sunny day to put up the outdoor decorations. I missed a personal best by 18 seconds, but don’t even care because this puzzle was so delightful, as expected. I want my own personal Robyn Weintraub to make a puzzle like this for me every day for the next four years. I might make it through the ordeal.

Nice puzzle with some clever cluing, but perhaps somewhat easy for a Saturday especially for one educated in the sciences. I may have had no idea (until yesterday) about the etymology and all the variations of ISIS (thanks, Sam Lyons!), but today ISOMERS, BORON, (transfer)RNA and PULSAR (not QUASAR) were gimmes for me so maybe that helped. I thought there were a few inelegant/not so much in-the-language clue/answers: BATH SET, MADE A STOP, DETECTIVE BUREAU. And JORTS? Jumper shorts? Jodhpur shorts? Jym shorts? Please enlighten me. Still, I enjoyed the puzzle and still time for protest. Thanks, Alex!

Bonus themer to CATCH: Steelhead TROUT, my favorite gamefish and near obsession. While steelhead are derived from rainbow trout and share the same biologic name (Oncorynchus mykiss), they have adapted to the same life cycle as salmon, spawning in fresh water rivers of the Pacific and spending a year or two there before migrating as 6" smolts to the ocean. Most spend two or three years feeding and growing to 6-8 pounds and then return to their natal river to repeat the cycle. Unlike Pacific salmon which die after spawning, around 15% can survive the spawn and then go back to the ocean for another cycle. Some even spawn 3-4 times, coming back progressively larger, which make them an attractive gamefish. Most anglers realize that these fish are "too valuable to catch only once" and so practice catch-and-release. Although hatchery steelhead are delicious, you should never buy wild steelhead as they are increasingly endangered. The four H's (lost Habitat, over-Harvest, Hydropower dams and Hatchery fish which compete with wild fish) have lead to declines in numbers. Farmed steelhead and salmon are also not as sustainable as some would lead you to believe, because of the immense damage the fish farms do to the estuaries and their inhabitants where the net pen farms are anchored. Obviously I liked the puzzle! I would have had a PB Monday but I had NSA and SAABS which took me 4 minutes to sort out. My son was a big fan of Pokemon so the themer was a gimme.

Great puzzle and great constructor notes. (The picture also caught my eye; thanks Sam!) As the husband of a middle school librarian, I loved seeing the YA books. Mr. Cappel's last puzzle, a debut on 3/11/25, was a Tuesday and was also great. This one felt more like a Tuesday to me, but he's on his way to the cycle. Good luck and keep them coming!

After a very quick Friday, my prediction of a Saturday slog was demolished by a new Saturday PB. I am not getting that much better at this. Sorry for all the excellent solvers who must be very frustrated at the change in the weekend puzzles. This was a nice puzzle, and a poignant constructor's note. Thanks Adrian and sorry for your loss.

It seems that for me that the Friday and Saturday puzzles were switched again, no doubt to the dismay of those who like "a proper Saturday challenge." Which I understand and mostly agree with. My Friday was fine until I could not sort out, ironically, the NW with LIEU, SIAM and OMBRE. Today, it was a smooth solve from beginning to end with pleasant surprises all along the way. Sometimes it's OK to have it a little easier, especially after a struggle the previous day. Thanks, Mr. Musa!

Another 5 minutes of flyspecking on a relatively easy (for me) puzzle that was not really a good Thursday placement. As usual, that's on the editors, not on the constructor. I loved the theme and learned that the common CROW is AMERICAN, and the SNIPE is, well, COMMON. My error also taught me something. After thinking a minute, I put in ALS for "Bad ending?" and immediately thought, "That's incredibly insensitive! How could they?!" Of course, they wouldn't and I should have realized that and thought some more. TALK seemed to work for "Do it!" so there was that. Still well under my average. The mavens must be pretty frustrated this week.

I haven't been through the entire comments section, but I haven't seen a clarification to Deb's contention that in epee "any contact a competitor makes with an opponent's suit...results in a point." The contact must be with the blunted tip of the weapon. The epee suite has the largest contact area for scoring but contact with any part of the blade which is not the tip will not score. Small but significant nit. In saber, the side of the blade can score (and hurt like heck!).

As usual on Monday, I tried to do this puzzle using only the Downs. I was quickly thwarted, and I wonder if the constructor deliberately made the down clues hard. Generally, a great Monday puzzle with a nice theme and a broad spectrum of clues to please all solvers.

Great photo, Caitlin. Block heels are not great for stevedores, though. Pretty breezy puzzle for KAC. Thank goodness my son was born in the time of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"--gave me an opening to crack the whole thing open.

My kind of puzzle! It took a fair amount of concentration to not be looking for answers beginning with M each time. And the contortions that MM went to to fit two Ms in each clue seemed to add additional difficulty to the puzzle. Still, finished well below average time, but had a great time doing it. Thanks, Mac!

My favorite elevator music of all time was in the Blues Brothers movie when, after a long, frantic car chase that destroyed dozens of police cars and ended at Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago, Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi ran into a City Hall elevator. The entire frenzied vibe instantly changed as the occupants looked awkwardly around (as one does) and Joabim’s “The Girl From Ipanema” played quietly in the background. I still laugh just thinking about it.

Loved the puzzle and it completes a100-day streak since my hip replacement after a fracture (minus the first couple narcotic-infused post-op days). Quite a BASH after I was run into while skiing at Whistler in March. Surgery left my bone-SPURred, cartilage-free femoral head in the *bucket*, which has the same number of letters as BREAST. Fortunately it wasn't a SPIRALled fracture. I usually haven't bothered with streaks, but the forced inactivity started this one and then I decided to continue. This past weekend, I was late getting to the Friday puzzle and did it in order on Saturday, before starting the Saturday one, and was rewarded with a blue star, which I think breaks the streak. In the past, I have sometimes waited two days before completing puzzles and always got the gold star as long as the puzzles were done in order. This was my understanding after reading many discussions about this in the commentariat in the past. I inquired of the NYT Games staff, and a nice woman wrote me "... for a puzzle to count toward your streak, it must have been solved on the day of its publication before midnight without having used in-app help...It doesn't count if it 's within 24 hours unfortunately." I followed up with her but haven't heard back. I didn't know about the constraint of not seeking help from "in-app" resources, which I never look at until after completing the puzzle. Others might be interested or have some insight. FWIW I'm doing very well thanks to modern surgery!

Of course, to “scroll sites” is to SURF. Everyone knows that. And a flying fox is actually a type of SQUIRREL! Snd there are many crosses that work with those clever answers! Boy did those slow me down in the center/NE…oh well, TIL. Nice puzzle, Mr. Adams—thanks!

Great Friday puzzle. Loved the long answers and the diabolical clues, but I agree with the constructor: MAA? SIG? BOO! I kept trying to make RISES into RILES and SEMITE into LEVITE, but I couldn't think of a barnyard animal that says VAA. Maybe a sheep with a speech impediment? And who knew that the Ivies were so prejudiced against the Akkadians and Phoenicians? TIL!

Sam: One of the world's great fishing writers, John Gierach, published a collection of essays titled "Standing In A River Waving A Stick." Clearly, he was making a little joke about how others might perceive the fly fisher, but his advice in the book was spot on: "The solution to any problem-- work, love, money, whatever -- is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be." I'll be chasing steelhead in Oregon and B.C. this fall. The trips will be long ones...

Loved every one of the 57 minutes it took me to solve, mostly because of the diabolical SW. Great one Kelvin, looking forward to many more!

I agree with all the commenters who noted and enjoyed the increased difficulty of the week's puzzles, especially the themeless. I found today's puzzle much easier than yesterday's which surprised me given the constructor. But, he is an editor also and so maybe was playing make-up after yesterday to keep the new paradigm on track. And for the experts, maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe the occasional hard-week bone thrown to the puzzledogs will be the way they keep both old and new solvers engaged, with a kind of sinewave of comments switching from "too easy" to "too hard" depending on the week

This was definitely wavelength puzzle for me, so I really enjoyed it. French, music, basketball, theater, beer, booty: check, check, check, check, check and check. Half my Friday average and less than half the time Thursday took after I got stuck in the SW. I was sure the comments would be loaded with "another easy Friday" etc. so I'm heading into the weekend quite smug. No doubt Saturday will crush me!

For me, LOATH and GEST should each have an E on the end, but the crosses said otherwise. TIL adjective vs. verb for the L words. M-W has a nice discussion of the DISTINCT-ion. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loath" target="_blank">https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loath</a> I guess one is never too old to learn!

Great puzzle. Tricky clues, superb wordplay. And the constructor notes are HAI-cute! Thanks ladies!

Thursdays aren't what they used to be--two weeks in a row with a personal best. This was a fine puzzle but too easy for a Thursday, more like a Tuesday. As usual, not the fault of the constructor. The "trick" was really not a factor: the theme phrases were so straightforward that it was unnecessary to appreciate the theme to fill in the blanks. Those of us who enjoy a tricky puzzle on Thursday will have to wait patiently for another week *heavy sigh*