Dave Munger

I'm sitting there trying to think of ANY element with a "J" in its name. Clearly the number has to be the lowest possible four-letter word. FOUR? Then I see from the crosses that it's N_NE. Really? NINE? I guess they must all be up there among the obscure ones like lawrencium and nobellium. But what is RECIAT and what does it have to do with varnish? Finally, after WAY too much checking of all the other answers, it comes to me. How many brain cells were involved in this process? NONE.

I tied my longest streak! 232! I know I'm not really supposed to celebrate until I beat the streak (and I know many of my fellow puzzlers have MUCH longer streaks) but this felt like quite an accomplishment. I'd like to thank my parents, and my wife, for putting up with me on those Saturday mornings when I ask her to wait just a few more minutes before breakfast until I finish that nasty puzzle, and my friends, who put up with endless rehashes of punny puzzle themes, and most of all the puzzle constructors and editors, who offer up such delightful challenges day after day and week after week! Here's hoping I can extend this streak to 233... and beyond!

I'm just not seeing this puzzle as a rebus puzzle. It is a tricky Thursday puzzle to be sure, but even though the puzzle accepts a rebus as an answer, the puzzle theme wasn't asking for a rebus, it was asking you to view the U as a pocket. It even told you what was in the pocket. I had fun with it, and I liked the creative spirit that led to a new type of wordplay.

Funny that lots of folks found this one too easy. It wasn't that easy for me! Seemed about right for a Saturday! Nice puzzle :)

It's interesting to me how many respondents are pooh-poohing the Wicked theme as if the film / Broadway show / book are not worth remembering. It was the top grossing musical film adaptation in history, and the Broadway show was the second-highest grossing in history. Surely it is a significant cultural phenomenon even if musicals aren't your thing. I personally don't like super-hero movies but I do know the basic idea of The Avengers even though I have seen none of the films. If a puzzle theme isn't part of your particular area of interest, why not take it as a challenge and maybe learn something new?

Surprised that more people got stuck on "420" than "mullion." I guess everyone has their weaknesses!

I was curious about the gamy vs gamey debate so I looked up both variants on the Google ngram viewer. Since 1800, in general "gamy" has been more commonly used, but very recently (after 2000) "gamey" has taken the lead. This corresponds well with my (age 58) impression of "gamy" being the "correct" spelling. Amok / amuck is similar, with "amuck" being more common from 1860 to the late 1940s, when "amok" gradually came into greater use. "Amok" took a commanding lead in the mid-1980s and now is by far the more common spelling.

Whew! That was a workout, but I got it done -- the streak is at 365!!! Woohoo! I loved SAFETY SCHOOL, IT'S MY TREAT, and ART FORGER for the devilish twists. I still don't know how to spell the word that sounds like "chot-shki" though. Glad I managed to piece that together from the crosses... This puzzle took me about twice my usual time for a Friday, but it was the ultimate icing on the cake for a year of puzzling. I'm planning a 2-week trip that may be mostly off-grid for next March, so I don't think I'll hit 730, but who knows, maybe Nepal is more wired than I think....

I don't get why so many people don't like proper names in puzzle answers. This one had proper names in the clues. What's the difference? Either you know that person / fact / definition or you don't. I'd argue that some proper names are more familiar than some words. I actually l like learning about people in puzzles. Yes, I, like many middle-aged solvers, have a gap in my knowledge of 2000s popular music, but I don't mind learning about it now. Like many of my nerdy colleagues, I don't follow American football, but it's probably a good idea to know a few of the major stars in the sport. This puzzle was a little tougher than the average Friday for me, and that's okay too! Cheers!

Some of the complaints about idioms and abbreviations "these days" (supposedly due to crossword-construction apps) made me wonder if we haven't always had these in crosswords, so I took a look at Tuesday, November 23, 1993 (the oldest Tuesday in the archive) to see whether the puzzles were any better back then. Obviously a somewhat random sample, but we have: RST (Alphabetic run) OHS (Words of wonderment) OOH (Cry of delight [in the same puzzle as OHS, for shame!]) OSE (Sugary suffix) ABELL (Sound as _____) GOTTA (Must, slangily) PPPS (Third addendum to a letter) Even EBSEN made an appearance, just as it did today. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Not another REBUS puzzle! ;)

I, too, had never heard of DONEZO. I decided to look it up in Urban Dictionary and saw that the entry was created in 2004. So the term has been with us for over 20 years. Not a huge number of votes for it, though, with 387 on the first definition. Compare to, say "cray cray" with over 2700 votes. But still, I'd say it's a legit neologism for crossword purposes. ("Legit," btw, has just over 1,000 votes [and "btw" has over 5,000]).

I am SOO close to my longest streak (13 days away! 😬), so I really wanted to get this puzzle. It was definitely a doozie, but I think a fair one. NE and SW were last to fall. I stuck with ACAI for way too long and while ISM was the only suffix that fit, I didn't see the connection to "plural" until after I finished the puzzle and came here. Finally guessed CHESSBOXER correctly even though I've never heard of it and am repulsed by the concept, and eventually everything fell into place. If I do end up beating my longest streak, I'll definitely feel like I earned it after today!

A follow-up to my post the other day about streaks. I was out of cell-phone range for 5 days and when I returned, I completed the missing puzzles in order. But alas, the streak was broken. I emailed the NYT Games support staff and they fixed it. The streak is back on! Now 328 and counting! For the record it looks like you can miss up to 3 days and your streak won't be broken as long as you complete the missing puzzles in order. Any more than that and you'll need to contact support. Either way I had an epic hike in the Grand Tetons, and if the price of the trip had been a broken streak, it would have been worth it!

Wow, that took WAY longer than a normal Monday. Mainly because I apparently don't know how to spell the name of the Star Wars heroine. Rae? REa? Oh, REY! My New Hope is that I will remember that spelling for the next time it comes along!

Learned something from this week's puzzles. I'm back from a five-day hiking trip in the Grand Tetons with no cell service. Previously if I missed a day I could always just make sure to do the day I missed first and then the current puzzle and the streak would remain intact. However, this doesn't work when you are gone for 5 days. My best guesstimate based on this trip and the pattern of blue and gold stars that resulted from solving all the puzzles I missed in order is that it only works for three days. So for now the streak ends at 309. I do plan on emailing <a href="mailto:NYTGames@nytimes.com">NYTGames@nytimes.com</a> to see if they can reinstate my streak. If not, I still had an epic trip and look forward to starting a new streak!

I guessed AMSCRAY right away but told myself that couldn't possibly be it, until there was no other choice. Then I came here and really enjoyed seeing the fallout. Personally I thought the clue / answer combo was brilliant! Also, is XWstats broken for everybody or just me?

Stayed with IRK waaay too long for 5D. Once I fixed that one, everything fell together quite nicely. Fun Friday!

Seems to me that the puzzle could have been made a bit more challenging by removing the circles / shaded boxes. As it stands, once you get the theme you can just fill all those in and whip through the puzzle. Not so easy when you don't know where to invoke the theme! I know the anti-rebus folks would have been up in arms, but that always makes for a fun comments section, so double bonus!

Today I learned that esophagus, fallopian, and INTESTINE all have the same number of letters!

Wow! Got a Monday PR today, 3:53. At this point it comes down to filling in nearly everything on the first try with no typos. I wouldn't say it was any easier than the usual Monday, just good luck for me and not making any mistakes.

I must be the only person who didn't think the LIEs were supposed to be in the black squares. I solved the revealer, then figured there must be a rebus in EELIER, then had the "aha" moment and figured out what the SPIKEs were, and finished it fairly easily from there. But yeah, MEEPLE did have me scratching my head for a while.....

I out-dumbed the Simpsons rope-a-dope. It's been years since I watched the show and years since I thought about pop stars named Simpson so I just left that one for the crosses.

Got the theme. Needed the theme! Middle of the puzzle was the toughest bit for me. TIL the difference between a HINNY and a mule!

It's been a while since a Saturday puzzle has really put a scare in me. This one was absolutely brutal! It brought me back to my early days of puzzling when I'd tentatively fill in the last letter of the puzzle and was shocked to find that I'd actually solved it! I stumbled on the same words everyone else seemed to stumble on but I felt the puzzle was fair overall. Thank goodness for that one year of college Italian to point me in the right direction on MENO MOSSO or I never would have finished!

I was amused to check XWstats and see that I completed this puzzle 0.3% faster than my average time (4 seconds). I was also 3 seconds off the median solver's time. Sooo close to being perfectly average!

Ah, I should have had DAVIDSON COLLEGE right away. It's less than a mile from my house! But we have a bit of an inferiority complex here and I thought "No way that's making the NYT crossword puzzle"!

Interesting reading the discussion. I'm clearly not like the average solver -- I found yesterday pretty tough and today on the easy side. I got enough of the theme to bumble my way through but had to come here after I solved the puzzle to really "get it." That didn't bother me though -- overall it was a fun puzzle, and the streak lives on!

I'm a little surprised that more folks were tripped up by PWNED than SWAK, but I guess that just reflects my personal experience. Not a gamer but somehow I knew PWNED. Never, ever used or heard of SWAK. Fun Friday!

Fun puzzle! Just a query: Am I the only one who hears / uses BASSACKWARDS much more frequently than ASSBACKWARDS?

Southwest was tough for me. Ended up just guessing and getting it right but still never heard of ATE for "Did amazingly" and didn't see how ATONCE could be the answer for "Like, yesterday." I *finally* got it while writing this comment -- sometimes people will answer "when do you need it?" with "like, yesterday." But would appreciate it if anyone can explain ATE for 48D I'd appreciate it!

I got ITSALLDOWNHILLFROMHERE early on, and, well, it was all downhill from there! Fun Sunday!

Apparently I’m the only person who didn’t really have a problem with HUNTER HAYES (I mean really, even though I’ve never heard of him, the name just *sounds* country), but also was nearly flummoxed by the NW corner. I guess I need to pay more attention to drug ads instead of instinctively fast-forwarding through them!

I came here looking for the answer to how MINI = "Far from floor reaching" and then figured it out for myself as I read through the comments. Mini skirt. Nice! This was a tasty Saturday. Tough, and just barely possible. I loved it!

Just a general comment on solve times. I almost always finish faster than my average solve time. I think this is because when a puzzle is particularly problematic it takes a LOT longer to solve. So my solve times for a given day (hypothetically) could be 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, and 50. The average solve time for that day is therefore 100/6 = 16 minutes and 40 seconds. Then the next week I solve it again in 10 minutes and think it's "easy" because I beat my average by over 6 minutes. More useful would be to know our MEDIAN solve times for each day -- that would give a better sense of when a puzzle is "easy."

Took a while to get things going for a Monday but eventually was able to piece it together. Nice to have to work for it this early in the week!

Am I the only one who spelled it LOOKEE on the first go-around? Between that and my nonexistent German-language skills it took me quite a while to solve this one. I kept thinking the problem was up in the NE with SSRI / SOIL (since I have no clue about antidepressants and kept telling myself that a "plot" should have SOIL in it already) but I had that one right all along...