Allen

What a fun idea and brilliantly executed! Left a smile on my face.

Proudly got REGULAR JOE and FIRSTWORDS on my first go around. Quickly followed by CATWALK and OREOPIE leading to SADKEANU. So was feeling pretty good... little did I know. The rest was a beast! A hard puzzle! But I’m not complaining :)

Like many, several initial entries were wrong which made this hard, in a good way. It forces me to be flexible. Being a neurologist has been helpful in the past, but not today. I wanted proprioception or a variant to work so badly. While KINESTHESIA is technically wrong (it’s awareness of joint *movement). I think the clue is appropriate enough for a lay audience. Great puzzle!

Wow, this was hard! Almost every one of my earlier fills was wrong, which required a lot of flexibility on my part. That said, I throughly enjoyed solving this puzzle with New World Symphony on in the background. Cheers.

Great for Trekkies. For me, so many 3 and 4 letter words which wasn’t my favorite.

What a clever puzzle! And congrats on your NYT debut! To everyone complaining that this took longer than their average Tuesday time, I say OOH BABY, it’s going to be okay.

Just to be a little pedantic (because today is THE day and I’m moody), but a high-pitched bark is a YIP or YAP. Otherwise just say a bark, there’s no need to elaborate further.

MONITOR not MONSTER doubled my solve time. Also, thought it worked with the theme… monster under the bed anyone? Great puzzle. I loved the REBUS hint

What a brilliant puzzle! The theme was very clever, as was the fill. I am proud to say I got SKIPAD immediately. Otherwise, solving was an exercise in flexibility. Many of my initial guesses were very wrong and I spent a fair amount of time arguing with myself and finally deleting what I was previously confident in (e.g. NOTEPAD, PRIMES leading to SASSON, COLD instead of BONY). My time was 30 minutes longer than my Thursday average and I loved every minute of it.

I loved this puzzle! As soon as I saw all the spanners, I was concerned it would be bogged down by obscure proper nouns. But was delighted to find lively fill and clues — what an achievement. I didn’t know FAIRISLESWEATER or ARMAGEDDONCHESS. But was able to puzzle them out with crosses. I stared at ARM AGED for far too long. Accepting that BEAST was wrong finally made it come together.

I also glossed over the “features of the clues”, funny how that happens. Was able to solve theme answers recognizing the phrases with enough crosses. Unfortunately SPOONERISM was my last word to solve, crossed with TALESE. I’m always left feeling disappointed when I miss a clever Thursday gimmick. But that’s on me, not on the author. Kudos!

Oh! Once you update the app it shows the circles. I was so stuck

All I know about super heros I learned from crosswords. Fun puzzle!

Am I missing something? Isn’t having an answer in a clue a big no-no? clue 2D: Racehorse’s gait clue 38A: Horse-drawn party vehicle? 31A: HORSEANDBUNNY. I was so sure this wasn’t allowed I refused to enter HO until the very end. I’m genuinely shocked this was allowed and that it hasn’t been commented on yet (that I see). A very fun puzzle. Just shocked by the clueing.