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Suggestion: Until things get worked out in the editing department, don’t do puzzles as gimmicky as this. The puzzle itself actually had some terrific cluing and hats off to the constructors: three months ago this might have been a gem. But me, I just followed (I think? How would I know?) the “instructions” and am still apparently not done. Do I want to spend more time on it? This feels more like troubleshooting my WiFi than doing a crossword puzzle. Maybe it’s time for me just to let go and drop my streak.

I was pretty horrified when I saw the puzzle’s theme, not being someone who pays attention to Pixar movies. And then realized it was not only that but a rebus. But apparently I have enough rudimentary Pixar knowledge that those fills were very much accessible, and it was pretty fun. OERTER/RESET/THROE, on the other hand: ouch, it took me a long time to get that.

I have never in my life (finishing my sixth decade) heard a human being say EXACTO except when referring to a knife. EXACTIMUNDO (sp?), that’s different.

Is there a way for me to put a hold on my streak until Will Shortz comes back? I don’t mind hard puzzles, when they’re fun. I think it might be better for me to just move to a different puzzle universe.

Cruel, cruel puzzle. Don’t fool me into thinking it’s Saturday on a Friday morning. Actually, please do. This one was tough but outstanding.

Great puzzle, and really cool theme. I see a lot of NIT picking about this and that, and I’m kind of surprised for a lot of them. There was a time in the US when it seemed like there could be more TCBY shops than people: it was the subject of jokes. And no complaints about THREEPIO? I’m not a Star Wars fan, but I still got the answer fairly quickly, but how to spell it? That had me scratching my head, although frankly I was itchy because I was wearing a hair NeT… Anyway that cost me about five minutes at the end, which was a buzzkill.

More like a Saturday than a Friday to me. But more like the Saturdays of a few months ago, rather than what we’ve been seeing in recent months, which have been more like Fridays and Saturdays on other planets.

I’ll be honest, I kind of hated this puzzle while I was doing it. But I didn’t see the true essence of the theme until the very end, and I have to admit, that’s pretty good. Does the CIA really make people take polygraph tests? That’s like making a hydrographer pass a divining rod test.

Maybe five or six years ago, due to some kind of device mixup, I completed most of a Sunday puzzle but it came up blank in the app, even going back to the original device. So I redid it, and of course, it was pretty easy second time through, and I set a personal record, which gave me a number that seemed at the time a record I could never break. But then the pandemic came along, and I started doing the puzzles daily, and a few times I’ve come within a minute or so of that record. This being the time of year when my weekly calendar isn’t very important, I started today’s puzzle not thinking it was Sunday, and I was zipping through it. I thought wow, this is easy for a Saturday, a misconception enabled by it being themeless (or close to themeless? I’ll read the column). I entered my last fill, and shoot, an error somewhere that it took me a couple of minutes to find and correct (oaRED instead of BORNE — I knew it was wrong but forgot that I had left a bad entry in place). I looked at the time and thought that despite the error, a fine time for a Saturday puzzle,.. And then, wait a minute, it’s Sunday! I broke my unbreakable personal best! So I feel like my personal best is now legitimate.

I’ve heard of TwoDOLLARWORDS but TENDOLLARWORDS? Inflation has gotten so bad that I can no longer afford to be a grandiloquent stuffed shirt.

Not letting people enter as a rebus? Seriously? Thanks editors for giving this otherwise terrific puzzle a sour note ending.

Oh no, Jeff Chen is advising newbies in his dark arts of crossword cruelty? Great. Saturdays are going to lose their weekend status! Seriously, this was really good. I worked on it this morning, and got the SW corner but the rest looked like a scene from Fargo. Then a busy day, and just returned to it now. To my surprise, the reset did the trick, and while it wasn’t exactly a breeze I made traction and was able to finish it and come in below my daily average. Really, a terrific Saturday, challenging and satifsying, and congratulations to Carolyn Davies Lynch on an outstanding debut, and Jeff Chen too!

Huh, the SCUSE post was supposed to be a reply to Anton. SCUSA/E! What a great puzzle. A small part of me wants to hate it because I struggled with it in multiple places and I blew way past my average time. But this was just brilliant.

Thursday and Friday were slam-dunks, so I was afraid of what was to come Saturday and Sunday. And not disappointed with what was delivered. Very chewy. TIme for some dental floss.

Best theme ever! And the pre-entered answers: {chef’s kiss}

Felt more like a Saturday, full of diversions and dead ends, and few gimmes. Progress was slow but steady so it didn’t feel like it went over my Friday average: I was surprised to look up and see the time when I finished. Contender for Friday of the year.

Really terrific puzzle. Straightforward theme (it didn’t need a revealer IMO) and good clueing. And my only complaint about NYT Xword rebuses — undocumented rules for how to fill them — did not apply here! So I didn’t have to waste time at the end trying this and that way to fill them, an unnecessary task that turns a fun puzzle into a slog.

Wow, a very tough Saturday, following a tough Friday! Just how I like ‘em!

I thought this was tough — in a good way. A lot of stuff I’ve never heard of, mixed with ambiguous fills: superUSERS, patty, or abbey for that matter, WHAT THE HaY… clever cluing abounded.

I’ve never been so surprised to get the happy music after filling in the last square.

I guess I can pat myself on the back going 4 minutes over my average today, having started the uncorrected version of the puzzle and only now being aware of the theme. I got stuck in the NE and S central — I’m unfamiliar with the phrase RACKANDRUIN and I struggled with hitANDRUN and eatANDRUN before figuring out the crosses in both to finish successfully. So the puzzle was solveable with the error, just a lot harder with a bit of “what is wrong with me, not being able to figure out this theme?” A bit of a scare, since this solve puts my streak at 500!

My only complaint about a Friday puzzle that feels like a Saturday is that it’s NOT SATURDAY. (Great puzzle though)

I believe “SCUSE” (plural of scusa) is basically saying “apologies.” I usually say SCUSE. Not that I didn’t first enter SCUSI.

So many cruel diversions in this one for me: leoTARD, federALBANK, flusH and OttawA for example. And then there were the ones where I THOUGHT I had been diverted, removed it, only to find that I was right the first time: FUJI, PALES. In summary, this was the Platonic ideal (colloquially, anyway) of Saturday puzzles.

The theme was very literal and straightforward, but overall this one felt like a Wednesday. And yesterday’s felt like a Tuesday.

Beat my Sunday record by > 2 minutes, completing a record week totaling -83:20 compared to my average times.

Would have been a PB, if not for entering MAcC and cORY. I wish I had an excuse for it taking me five minutes to find that. Oh well!

I’ve been AARP eligible for a good while, and my parents were born in the 1920s. I’ve never known or heard SOANDSO to mean anything but “unnamed person” — certainly SOANDSO could be a no-goodnik, but I never considered the term to be connected to it. So it’s something new to me. Maybe it’s a regionalism?

Would have been a personal best for me, if not for the NW where I just flat out misspelled OPpoSUM combined with THisISPOINTLESS, and got stuck on thinking “do” meant hairstyle. Still, less than half of my average time, and a fun, smooth (as CC put it) solve.

Three words: what a slog.

Tough, but I defeated it. I got in to a bit of a groove in the bottom half, which was fun, but the top half was just a slog pure and simple. It’s not usually the case, but sometimes I have to talk myself into feeling good after finishing a hard puzzle, and this is one of those. Not that I am asking for easier puzzles.

Before I waste time on this: If I enter ONE, EVIF and TEN for the rebus entries, will that work? If it does then I have an error somewhere. Thanks!

Worst puzzle I’ve seen in years. So much obscurata. I fought through it and finished, but I was amazed when I hit the final square and was finished, not believing that MINIMAP was an actual answer to a crossword puzzle. And not a very good one for that clue. I haven’t bothered to go back and check out what the theme was - I prefer to just go away and pretend this happened.