John

Congratulations on your debut Mr Brody. NYT Sunday crossword puzzles with anagrams always remind me of a lazy Sunday morning over 40 years ago when I was a student in New York. I had just moved into a shared apartment, and a couple of my roommates were working on the Sunday puzzle, which had an anagram theme much like today’s. After I (politely, of course) suggested a couple of (incorrect, I should add) answers to clues they were discussing, they asked me to join in the solve. It was start of some great friendships and I’ve been doing the NYT crossword ever since.

Really liked this one. When there are long answers I like to chuck in initial answers and see what sticks. Only my initial 1 across worked out for me today. Also, wolverines and otters, who knew ? Well, at least I didn’t!

A nice solid puzzle this morning. I’m always surprised when people comment (complain?) that they don’t know a word. PAEAN being today’s example. A quick search of recent news stories shows the word being used by many media outlets in all sorts of stories, including pieces on the arts, food and even gaming (although apparently none from the NYT!). After this puzzle, we’ll all be seeing it pop up all over the place.

Really enjoyed the puzzle this morning — great cluing and clever answers (or perhaps the other way round!). My only gripe is that for me it was way too easy for a Saturday. Finished in half my average Saturday time — or perhaps a more meaningful measure, I finished the puzzle before my coffee!

For me any puzzle that has KHAN as an answer as in “The Wrath of” or the original Star Trek series is a good puzzle. Solved it a bit faster than my average for Saturday but not by much. The south west corner fell last especially when I worked out it was EXOTICA not ErOTICA! What was I thinking?

Now that was a real treat. A hard Saturday puzzle to start the weekend off right. Thank you.

While the construction and use of theme were admirable, I felt the puzzle overall was a bit too easy. (I got ELM on my first pass and the theme fell in place from there.) For me the best Thursday puzzles are when I go from “what the heck is going on” to “oh, I now get it, what a clever puzzle!”. And yes I know I’ll be regretting my comment when we get some quadruple rebus monster next Thursday!!

I really enjoyed this one even though it took me ten minutes more than my average. At least for me, the last few Saturdays have been a bit on the too easy side. So thank you Mr Lieberman for helping me blow away the cobwebs on this Saturday morning!

Fun Tuesday puzzle with the added treat of inspiring my playlist for the rest of the day. And yes, I do have music from each on my phone. Funnily though, I owned albums from each band in the day on the medium of the time: EW&F on vinyl and 8 track (look it up kids), TMBG and RHCP on cassette and GD on CD.

Fairly easy for a Friday, at least for me. The long clues came quickly. My only hold up was on 35 down, as I, thinking myself clever, had initially started 35 across (JOB) with an S rather than a J.

Good Saturday puzzle. I had a bit of slow start but then finished in good time when I deleted some off the answers from my first pass that I “knew” were absolutely, positively correct: 16 across - SLUSH, 18 across HINDU, 19 across MARS CANALS (which I was especially proud of), and 52 across ROMA. As with writing, in crossword solving sometimes you need to “kill your darlings.”

I thought this was a solid Tuesday puzzle. I was not bothered about the SW corner despite not knowing GOHAM (note to self: try phrase next gym visit), ESME (I was just missing the M, but it’s a fairly popular name here so an easy guess) or BRODY (but I thought it had to be GO something given the clue). What’s this about some baseball tournament? Is it now a real World Series because you’re letting the Canadians play? Cue snarky responses!