Daily-Solver

I'm surprised about all the complaints thus far. I thought the clues were all really good. Despite not knowing 24K album I was able to figure out the answer via with the 2 set tennis match and the Fab Four Beatles clues. The clue for Arroz was very timely as I was in Rosarito Beach last night, and I specifically remember one of the items on the dinner menu listed as being served with arroz. Favorite clue was definitely 53D: ear covering....I confidently put muff in after already gotten the U In the across. When things didn't pan out it took me forever to figure out Husk, and then I silently praised the constructor's great misdirect.

I won't use the Internet to solve. 20 minutes into this puzzle and I had nothing. 30 minutes in I finally had a few toehold, but they were dispersed: 9D,17A, 34A, and 49D. I felt confident that my steak was about to come to an end.... And then 45D came to me, and all of a sudden TakingHeads popped into my head which allowed a good chunk of solving of the bottom half very quickly. Then 6D and 7D came to me... And then MovieTickets popped into my head. The next things I knew I had completed the puzzle, and I did so in only 45 minutes (a meter 15 minutes after getting my first toe holds), and 25% faster than my Saturday average. Galaxy Quest certainly has the right perspective on things: Never Give Up, Never Surrender. :)

Favorite clue: 8D: it's a Straight Shot. I was sitting there with KA at the end, preceded by a possible D for cads. And I was thinking to myself, nothing the on dka. When I finally solved it I grinned. Nicely done Tracy!

I congratulate the constructor on the extremely creative up down theme. That said, I found all the trivia/naticks really tough: Lorca, Neuer, Clint, Danica, Duran, Miz instead of Mis. So many of them, I was surprised when I got my gold star on the first try (I was confident I was going to have guessed one of them incorrectly... They were all educated guesses based on the crosses). A little less naticks would've made this Sunday more enjoyable for me personally. Favorite aha moments: when for 21D I crossed out ST_ (thinking it was Sta or Stn) and put SFO. Also figuring out Strap Hangers and Parts Company.

I loved the elegant theme and the yellow lines forming an A that popped up on my phone after I solved it. Also, the constructor's notes in the column were great... I'm looking very forward to playing his wife's puzzle on Wednesday.

For everyone unfamiliar with Grok, I learned that word nearly 4 decades ago when I read Stranger in a Strange Land. The word was invented by the author for that book, and somehow over the decades it made yes way into English speech, probably due to all of us engineering geeks who loved that book. 😀

Weird sensation when completing this puzzle. It started out feeling very difficult. Somewhere along the way something clicked and I was able to start it and eventually solve it. When some I thought my time was going to be well below my average, but when I looked at the timer results I was stoked to see that I actually crushed it...finishin the puzzle it in just over half of my normal time.

A really fun puzzle. Very impressed with the theme. I loved how Mallet was spelled out in the shape of a mallet, hitting the mole right on the head. Some things game me trouble: sideslip/lisle (unfamiliar with both), plosive, pia, the clue for factor (I fell for the trap of 11,111 being the numbers eleven & one hundred eleven, instead of being a single number of eleven thousand one hundred eleven.), but I still walked away smiling. 😁

When I started this I thought I had no chance of finishing. It seemed like it took me 10 minutes to find a couple of answers that I felt confident enough to write in. From those I had a short spurt where I got a fourth to a third of the puzzle filled in, but them I hit a wall. To that I closed my eyes and fell asleep. To my surprise, when I awoke my brain started coming up with answers to the clues, and in the end I finished in 38 Minutes, which for me is about 15 minutes faster than my average Friday. What a difference walking away can make.

A very satisfying solve! It took me forever to get any toeholds, and when I did they were all sparsely distributed across the puzzle. It was really tough all the way through, and I quite frankly couldn't believe that I was able to solve it without Googling anything.

LINE should have been accepted. We know the answer is dashed line, but given that the strikethrough option is unavailable on my phone's keyboard input as a formatting option, regular LINE should Jane been accepted.

I had gu for the last two letters of Cute Sound. I thought the answer was going to be "Goo Gu"... Like they were getting cute with the spelling of Googoo. Alas, I finally got the crosses to come up with LongU. Yeah, I guess my answer was to far out there. Lol

I apparently have too little brain power and too much grit... It took me 78 minutes of grinding to solve this without any Internet help. Ouch! The worst was getting started, and then the southeast corner was a bear to finish on the end.

Very fun theme and puzzle. Just the right amount of difficulty for an enjoyable Wednesday.

I liked this Saturday. My only huge struggle was my final square of the puzzle, which was 31 and took me minutes to figure out. I am not a baseball FAN, and thus I never heard of the slang term of fanning to arrive a player out. I was thinking Bans for strike outs, not Fans. But, Bit did not make sense for Meet... whereas Fit was a plausible match (does this fit your needs /does this meet your needs) and voila I got my star to keep my steak alive.

I loved the aha moment of figuring out the (105A) Got Online clue....I was clueless forever, or so it seemed, and then it hit me.

I found this Sunday to be really difficult. I didn't care for so many obscure names in one puzzle. Crispus, Babur, Nyx. Jayson Tatum was also unknown to me, but hopefully to the Average Joe he is not.

I am surprised to see so many "this was easy"comments. I really struggled on the left half of the puzzle. I kept thinking it would be "beware dragons". Also, cereal bars didn't come naturally to me, nor did Karate (soccer was on the brain). Came in right at my average for a Saturday, which is a slow 1 hour.

Glad to see so many others pulled this one. For me on the other hand, it felt like a slog, esp. the middle west area where LaoTse and Twps crossed Sauterne.

This brought back memories from several decades ago. I had forgotten that back then I had played a game called Mine Sweeper. I was able to 'deduce' that the word MINE would be an everywhere rebus when I 'determine'd that 'deduce' wouldn't work for last four acrosses of 48D. So MINEsweeper reveal came to me naturally in 62A .... But it wasn't until I finished the puzzle and the graphics popped up that I recalled that I used to play this game addictively back in the Windows 95 era. My one trip up that almost stopped me from getting a clean shove was that I put AGE as the answer to 3D.... Took me a while to find mistake and realize that AGO would give me prOminently for the across. Was a happy solve when I found that.

Felt like a Saturday to me the whole way through. Only finished the last four squares by handing puzzle to my wife who knew the answer of lordJiM and GaS, and time was 50% longer than normal Wednesday.

For 36A I was super confident that it was OLE. That delayed me significantly. Eventually I figured out it was GOL, and then I was finally able to solve the rest of this tough Wednesday

A better clue should have been given for 25 across IMHO. Because IMHO the center of Kennedy is "an N" or "nne".

I enjoyed solving 75-80% of the puzzle, but I could not solve the SW corner as someone who refuses to Google for answers. I am unfamiliar with both Angelo Dundee and the author Franzen (and the Corrections novel). The only thing I could come up with for certain was Acela. My thoughts, none of which would pan out, were: "Wow" for 36A (OMG was correct),for 55A I tried Eight, InTen, and Dozen but not helped me out (Octet was correct). I could only come up with Craved for 46A (longed was correct). For 60A Fools, Asses, and Goofs came to mind but didn't help me (dodos was coorect). For 41A I presumed it was something that ended in an "s" link "ends", but never came up with anything good (fora was correct). If I had been familiar with Franzen or Angelo, maybe I would have stood a chance....but without that knowledge my short streak cometh to an end. :(

Felt more like a Friday to me. I really struggled through it. "Quit"Staring really hosed me, because I had put "Stop"staring in the answer and had zero doubt it was correct. That messed me up for a good long time as I attempted to get the NE corner to no avail. Only after relented and switched to the NW corner and got enough of the fill to see that David Copperfield was an answer, did it reveal that Stop must be wrong. After that I was able to finally solve this beast .

For me, this was the hardest Saturday that I've ever completed. I refuse to use anything to help me other than a dictionary (ie no Google or other searches on the Internet). It took me forever because I had so many things that I thought the answers might be, but I could never get enough of the cruises to work, so I had to cross them out and redo. Examples. 8d Shh instead of TMI; 18a Hindi/Hindu instead of Incan. 6d I tried Meet(as in track meet) and Beer (as in beer run). I thought 13A started with Lego, while 3d was Egret.... Finally figured out all the right words, but it took me forever. Not saying that it should have taken so long .. It just did. Doh

Cute puzzle and I liked the cluing, but unable to solve because I never heard of: Mukbangs and Iga Swiatek, and thus the G at their intersection was a letter I never would have tried. Still a good puzzle tho.

I enjoyed this puzzle immensely. The spins on the Shakespeare quotes were artistically genius and well executed. I also loved the Wayne's world clue which had me stumped for a while because I had accidentally spelled Palm's old PDA as Trio instead of Treo. TIL at least a few things: 1) the saying In A Trice, 2) that Mozart is featured on Euros (very cool), and 3) the name and background of Wally Schirra.

A very enjoyable Saturday.... At least until my struggle to get the final 25% of it. Lol. I had the bottom half and the northeast filled out, but then hit an absolute wall, so after starting at it for 10 minutes I went to sleep. I woke up this morning with fresh eyes and almost gave up, but then I decided to change 29A from SLYLY to COYLY. Doing so go me Econ, w then Vamped (which was a new definition to me), then OhSnap, then FriendOf. And then and only then did I realize that my [not so] clever guess of USTA for 1D was wrong, because now 17A was looking like Craigslist would fit if I just got rid of the T in USTA. And at that point the rest of the puzzle finally dropped, although after I got my gold star I had to look up Annee in 20A to find out what the heck the answer meant.... It's hard to be a monoglot when playing the NYT. :)

I was flying through this puzzle towards the top, but then. Things started getting tougher and tougher. The SW quadrant of this puzzle I found absolutely brutal... I probably spend 20-30 minutes on that section before I finally cracked it. It was Towers and Reek and the S in the bottom left corner that gave me a toe hold to figure out Sloppy Kiss, and go from there. I felt that the question mark in the 43A clue should not have been present; conversely I felt that a question mark should have been present in the 36D clue. Amazed myself that I finally solved this without any hints or lookups; I was very close to calling Uncle on this one. 😃

Great puzzle!!! I especially loved the double misdirect of 44D and 44A: MAD and MATS fits perfectly. Only after I solved the rebus was I able to realize that HBO AND HA"LL"S also for perfectly. Well done Mr. Bodily. Looking forward to your next puzzle.

It's still Sunday in California. But I guess I now know what I am supposed to do tomorrow.... And the cow isn't as fun as doing the crossword. :)

A very enjoyable Friday. Even though I didn't know a lot of the answers I was able to deduce them once I got enough of the crosses. Examples: Smurf, autodidact, Tau, Ronin, Cleo. My brain was apparently working well tonight, as I got the music in about 60% of my average time.

I loved the clues/word-play in this puzzle. Just a handful of the many clues that I applaud are the clues for: RentMoney, Meteor, Womb (I originally had Walk, as in for baseball), Boa, and Gen. Thanks for creating such a fun one.

Very difficult for me, taking me 68 minutes to complete. The cluing for EndAt (58A) was really poor: although the clue and answer are in the same ballpark they are a bit incongruous IMHO. 34D also I found brutal. "YesMilady" would make perfect sense to me, but dropping the"i" made it seem nonsensical to me. But, given enough time and head banging I was finally able to solve this toughie. Favorite clue was 21A, and tho took me forever to figure out, it out a smile on my face when I did. Strangest word I'd never heard of: hegiras (42A): even after getting all of the acrosses correctly, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out which acrosses were wrong, because hegiras didn't even look like a real word to me. Eventually I consulted the dictionary to find to my great surprise that hegiras is actually a word. Lol.

I found the Eastern portion of the puzzle quite difficult today. Having the proper nouns of Phil, Ezer, and Dede made it tough, as did Colonies (I had cleaned the trick, but it didn't help me as I have never heard of the Costa Rican "Colon"before. As to that who "is it" as a natural for to "isn't", and that Eastern bit took me forever becauseI refuse to do lookups on the Internet