Bee

A great debut but I'll admit I found myself miffed more often than not - without specific knowledge I couldn't get whole quadrants which led to a sort of sprawling frustration.

Maybe I'm just in a Friday Fog but this one felt tough for me, but then the long clues always do. 36 minutes and I needed *a lot* of help, but once I was on the right track things flowed a bit more. I could stop "ew-ing" and start being "elated" by the clues. Once it was over I was tickled by the cleverness, but I sure was stuck for a while there.

A breezy Tuesday but still fun! Some clever cluing. I was able to get the theme clues without understanding the revealer, YMMV if you like that sort of thing. The only one that really threw me was ENDUE

Great Wednesday puzzle! Took me a solid 33 minutes, but had a blast the whole way through. LANDLUBBER and SPIDERWEB in particular tickled me. Clever enough to pique my interest, but manageable with some thought.

Oof I guess others found this breezier than this FELLOW. Admittedly, I'm weak with FIGURES OF SPEECH that are multi-word clues. I needed a little help with coco de mer, amongst others, and was all over the grid. 50 minutes later finally backpedaled my way into the final piece of the puzzle, a tough one, IN A GOOD WAY.

A delightful Monday! What a wonderful way to start the week. I love when a theme comes together

Loved this one! It came together easily with lots of fun cluing - some of it was new to me like EIGHT IN A PECK, which took me an embarrassingly long time. Always happy to see the birds! As a very new player, in my FIRSTYEAR, you might say - can someone explain the (*)'s to me in the theme clues? Was it just to indicate that they're themers? Please don't SCOLD me for my grammar, lest I SMOOSH you.