Adin
Denver
Denver
Really enjoyed the circled letter trick
@John Carson personally I think embracing the spirit of puns means not holding them to a very high standard
morning shower propaganda
Felt extremely easy then almost hopeless then it was over. Surprisingly intense & demanding solve given that it didn't actually take that long
@Barry Ancona difficulty seemed fine to me, especially by recent standards
brier got me. thought madaira might be wrong but was pretty sure briar was right so didn't find the error quick and mostly quite easy to enter all squares but that one correctly. yet I did not complete the puzzle unaided so in that sense it was not easy at all. sundays usually feel like a bit of a slog, maybe due to solving on a small screen
@Doug riders also receive ratings
good grid/fill. let's have some harder clues for the hardest puzzle of the week, please
@Steve L significantly harder for me. tough to pin down puzzle difficulty
Rough one for those of us with gaps in our Spice Girls and Joplin knowledge
fun puzzle for me with several clues I enjoyed. somehow managed to spell hat tree with 3 Es (hat treee) and didn't catch it until I had rechecked all acrosses and most downs. I once believed I had a good grasp of four letter words in English. perhaps not. perhaps one day treee could find a place in our language, a tree of a more exuberant variety
@Steve L from a quick scan of the list on Wikipedia it looks like most of the planet's largest deserts are classified as tropical or subtropical. a desert on earth is quite likely to be a hot spot, and some of the planet's hottest places are deserts. clue seems fine to me
@Grant J you'll get a better sense for puzzle variability once you've been solving a little longer ;) Agreed, difficulty seems less well calibrated than in even the recent past
TRIM does seem like a stretch. Decent puzzle though all the same. In-flight magazine theme was a tough act to follow
Man I could've sworn São Paulo had 3 Os
I solved rebus style and then had to go back and delete. Definitely weird to not be able to enter full answers. Enjoyed the puzzle but wonder if it's worth it to do the outside the grid thing with the current limitations of the app
Not saying it's a bad puzzle, to be clear. There was a lot to like. Just unlucky with the trivia this time and I love to complain :)
@Schroedman significantly harder Across than Down in this puzzle I thought
Filled with doubt at both the outset and the conclusion yet it was all over rather quickly. Enjoyed the fill & cluing. Fewer wrong guesses than usual
It would appear 19-Down is too uncivil for the comment section haha Really enjoyed that entry while solving, cool to read it was a focal point in the construction
BENNY, CERTS, CONTE got me. Lunch isn't really a place I guess so BENCH makes more sense. Would've been nice to solve unassisted. Oh well. Good puzzle imo! Difficulty felt better calibrated than other recent late week puzzles
@Kachi heck yeah haha way to persevere. I lack the patience to thoroughly check for errors these days
@Adi did you check the rebus? There is an extra C I believe
never heard of gest before so spent a while there looking for an error turns out evers/slip was my undoing. I had everb/blip which in retrospect was pretty dumb. slip works better with the clue and everb is a real stretch for a name that might belong to a human being some fun clues and long entries without too much weird stuff/trivia, though I did notice it in places. nice puzzle overall
Rot in hell really took me by surprise haha
@john ezra now that you bring them so vividly back to mind, I think tees might be referring to shirts
Really high quality fill overall in both yesterday's and today's puzzles. As a rectangle-dweller, however, I refuse to consider Utah a hexagon.
found it pretty challenging, good times
@Eddie in your solve or are you seeking a broader sort of salvation?
PIAMATERS crossing STPAULIS and SWANN got me. Maybe eventually could've guessed my way to the solve but there were enough other parts of the puzzle I wasn't sure about that I decided to just reveal wrong squares. It does seem like my errors are often concentrated in the section I finish last so maybe I'll persevere a bit longer next time. In retrospect St. Paul & Swann are more likely names than any of the alternatives
@Patrick J. not this again. same thing w rbis a couple puzzles back
first acrosses on my first pass were reminiscent of the hard Fridays of yore. I like when the grid stays mostly empty for a while. lower hanging fruit in the downs and higher numbered clues. Tahoe runner crossing dwarf planet got me. thought of a mat as a runner of sorts in the footwell of a Chevy Tahoe. Teres seemed plausible. my MacBook is too old to update anymore, though I'm sure there was plenty of media coverage of Tahoe when "liquid glass" was coming in for scorn. fair play. enjoyed the puzzle. hawt grid design and no entries that bothered me all that much. a few fun ones even.
@Naud could it possibly be BECAME in the 2nd Spice Girls clue?
Loved the jank animation haha fun puz
@Barry Ancona that's assuming they solve accurately in numeric order
I really despise those ads so that early clue marred the solving experience for me a little bit. good puzz tho props to the constructor
@Anna in this case I believe the grid art is simply the black squares depicting a roman numeral II
otoe! as the prophechy foretold
Full spans could've been clued harder, fun though!
@Shan I was also sure MELC was wrong but turns out it was actually BECAME crossing AHYOUHAVENOIDEA. Glad I cheated tbh, don't think it would've been that fun to fix that
@Charles Nelson Reilly I liked the puzzle but agree odd cluing for LAY
Great puzzle, and the constructor note made me appreciate it all the more
acuter and arear were a little rough but arguably worth it for the theme