Cap’n Dan Mathews

Inane.

This reverts to the old style NYT puzzles which require literature majors and such to know critical answers. I thought Shortz put a stop to that.

I liked this one, clever use of the word moon and its letters in rebus indicating waxing and waning.

PGP, that’s pretty good puzzle. At first tried zillion but that didn’t work and then the down answer became evident, judges robes.

I liked it. No froufrou, no inane rebuses, just interesting clues and answers, like “adulting.”

Not a bad puzzle, and for once my guesses paid off.

Well, after all that, I guess I got what used to be known as a “gentleman’s C.” It’s the spelling, why is it always the spelling?

A point of order please. All the comments directed at the puzzle author should instead be directed at Joel Fagliano who approved this before publication. Ella Dershowitz merely submitted it for review.

Meh. This is to Shortz, you should consider offering two Sunday puzzles, e.g. a regular Sunday style one and one for crossword geeks (absolutely no offense here). Or do like others and disclose the degree of difficulty or such. As others have posted, got into this, and gave up trying to read the author’s mind, and wasted time doing so.

Filled it, but no cigar, and in a line by line checkup, turned out I misspelled squeak. Why does it always have to be spelling? Did enjoy replacing the dubwas.

Pretty good, this one.

Cleverly done, liked the after solving graphic too.

Pretty good one. Got stumped, so I peeked at the answer and there it was. Why does it always have to be spelling?

Had to get a bit of help with Ludovico, but overall a pretty good Saturday puzzle. And “plum” was easy, heard it all the time in the south, not to mention in some Westerns at the movie house.

Hmmmm. Too cute by a half.

I lliikkeedd this one!

Way, way too tedious. Had to break my streak, but had other things to tend to today.

Couldn’t do the Saturday so went to the monthly bonus which had it seemed like over half clues relating to music ever heard of. If you want to run something like the latter, do it some other way than a general knowledge game site. Listening, Shortz?

Sunday, Sept 1 , was ridiculous, the cute numbers called for are really aren’t cute at all. No more from this puzzle maker please.

Got it, wordless and the connections too. About connections, you can group four which are related, but like in school, it isn’t the answer they are looking for and you’ve blown a turn. The authors of such should think about that and make it less annoying on occasion.

Hmmm. You can and should do better Shortz. After running through it and finding typos, went straight to the answer “key”.

Well, my current streak ended today. Sometimes the NYT lets too cute by a half puzzles get through, and most of them are better than this one.