Fred

Nice puzzle, but ABYSM?? C'mon now. That's really stretching it.

When you make a niche puzzle like this one, the trick is to make it as fun for people who know nothing about the niche topic as it is for the people who do. This puzzle failed on the former score for me, as I know nothing about Super Mario, and while I enjoyed 80% of the puzzle, I eventually got stuck and gave up - not wanting to look up arcane terms like "ONEUP" etc. Hope this puzzle was fun for others but it wasn't for me.

Didn't enjoy this puzzle at all. What's the joy in having to look up answers? (WALTHERPPK? LOME?). The Isle of Man clue is emblematic of my recent frustrations: yes, people of Gaelic origin live on the Isle of Man, but since many more live in Ireland and Scotland, you are left scrambling around to find a really obscure answer. If the clue fits 10% of the answer, it's not a good clue.

My brain is upside down - or possibly nwod edispu. Thanks for the egnellahc.

Kwong made a wonderful puzzle and I really enjoyed it, but I agree with the other commenters that the imprecise cluing kinda ruined it. We who love words think very precisely about what words are, so to see someone describe letters of the alphabet as "words" is really quite shocking. If the clue were "parse the solution into six PARTS," then it would have made perfect sense. I hold out hope that - given all the generous feedback - the editing will improve.

I guess if you like Star Trek, you enjoyed that puzzle. I don't, so I didn't.

Just intercepted this WhatsApp conversation: J_MART: Hey! I just made this great puzzle but I'm concerned about the last cross. MAXIMUM is a good word and ABYSS is a good word, but how to make them cross? (other than the A). J_FAG: No problem! Just make the last S of ABYSS into an M. People will love it! J_MART: Got it! Thanks for the tip. :-)

Really challenging puzzle! - doubled my usual time. But I enjoyed it. Thanks and good to see you back, Will.

Ugh! Defeated by a BRO ("A jockish sort"?? - what do bros have to do with sports??) and BOO, which could mean almost anything. So unsatisfying to spend almost 90 minutes on this puzzle and have to give up because of two nondescript words that were badly clued.

Ever since I took my degree in classics from Oxford, I have been looking for a challenge. I found it in John's puzzle, which has given me a reason to carry on! When I realized the central square repeated the word ICE, I was validated in my educational choice. "At last," I said to myself, "a clever kindred spirit!" Thank you, John, for helping me to see that life isn't so terrible, after all.

I can't decide whether throwing a single rebus square into a puzzle is fair or not. I wouldn't have spotted it without some help from Dr. Google. I wonder what others think.

What an amazing puzzle! Too bad I didn't get credit for solving it since I didn't understand that the rebus squares were meant to be "silent" on the names of the colors themselves (the colored lines were meant to be stand-ins for the words). Oh well! Broke my steak but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Thanks.

Haven't read any comments, the column, or Barry's helpful hints, but I'll just say it felt unfair to make us guess which of the "grades" to fill into rebus squares (or what looked like rebus squares). Fine puzzle otherwise.

Felt like a long Monday puzzle in terms of difficulty, or maybe I just know a lot about women's history? Hope so. Thanks for the diverting puzzle.

To complete this puzzle I had to know that the double rebus squares worked in EACH direction, which was too much of a stretch for me. Just glad I didn't spend too much time trying to figure it out. For me this was one of those puzzles that I admire more in the construction than in the solution - like it was probably more fun to make than it was to solve, unfortunately.

LIMP (for "Milquetoast") and LAYS (for "Courses") also work. Oh well. Thanks for a fun puzzle.

Great puzzle - except for the SE corner, which was impossible. SAMESIES?? Are you kidding? I've never heard anyone use that word in my life. If you put a bunch of suspect clues - and answers - in one corner, you'll ensure failure, which I achieved today.

Not a hard puzzle but such an amazing one! The ingenuity left my jaw on the floor. Thank you!

A tad frustrating to glom onto the theme (or trick) and still have such difficulty completing the NW corner, thanks to THREE informal phrases side by side. Got it eventually. Thanks for the nice puzzle but maybe two phrases are enough.

I'm afraid I didn't enjoy this puzzle very much, and in the end I was unable to crack the code - defeated by MOI. The imprecision of the newly formed words (by turning the dials) also confounded me. On the whole I thought it was a clever try and if The Times ever has another puzzle like this one, I will do better.

The clues in today's puzzle really clicked with me, and I enjoyed it immensely. Interesting that SNEAK ATTACKS fit in the space of SNIDE REMARKS, as did SOLID in the space of LEGIT. Thanks for a really fun puzzle.

Nice puzzle but ATRA is not a "pharmacy brand." Gillette is the brand - Atra is a defunct line of razors once produced by Gillette. I should know b/c I used an Atra razor for almost 40 years til I could no longer get blades since they are no longer made (I'm now a satisfied user of a fine Harry's razor). That's really poor clueing, since it could refer to the name of any item sold in a pharmacy. STIMBOY also seems a bit farfetched. I could find hardly any info about it.

Nice puzzle but I really must object to the NW corner. IZZATSO is a real stretch, DONCHATHINK? (I could come up with more). Also there's something about a clue like "Global protection" that draws nothing but a blank in my mind. A good clue has something to grab onto, but there's nothing at all to grab onto there.

Nice to see Will back editing the puzzle!

Amazing puzzle! I solved it w/o getting the theme but finally got it afterward. Thank you for the interesting challenge.

I haven't read the comments to see if others had the same experience, but the app said the puzzle was complete even though one of the circled squares was empty! And the solved puzzle shows those squares as empty, so I can't see the actual solution. Or are you just being clever? Nice puzzle otherwise. Thanks.

Nice puzzle, but I could find only one of the four rebuses. It was a bit too hard w/o any hints about which squares were the rebuses. Oh well.

I once tried watching an episode of Friends and thought it was so stupid that I abandoned it after five minutes. Yet I could still solve this puzzle. Now *THAT* is genius!

After last Friday's débâcle, I was very happy to complete this puzzle in a reasonable time, though the KENS / KILOS / DESERTERS / MORTALS cross almost defeated me. I was happy to stumble upon KENS first, and the rest then came to me. Hope the new puzzle editor is finding his stride. Thanks for a fun puzzle.

I was doing so well til I realized I knew nothing about astronomy (PARSEC, ORRERY) or video games (RESPAWN). Even the Times's own editor doesn't recognize those last two words. Oh well.

Nice puzzle, but the NE corner defeated me completely. Never ever would have gotten FISTS from "Bumped things."

Thanks for the challenging but fun puzzle. Just wanted to say that CONFABULATE has a much more specific definition than "shoot the breeze." It means "to make up stuff," as Alzheimer's patients tend to do. A fabulist is someone who makes up (often unbelievable) stories. When we shoot the breeze, we don't usually make up crazy stories - at least the people I know don't.

The BASETWO / AMUST cross defeated me, and somehow I wasn't able to get a nice rhythm going. Maybe I need time to get used to Joel's editing? Thanks for a fun puzzle otherwise.

I don't usually attempt the Monday or Tuesday puzzles, since they are too easy. But I attempted this one since I felt so burned by the Fri, Sat, and Sun puzzles - I wanted to get my confidence back. I still got it, as Ralph Malph said, but there's a big difference between the "meh" feeling of finishing a Monday puzzle in ten minutes and the deep satisfaction of finishing a really challenging Friday puzzle in 35 minutes. Here's hoping the new puzzle editor finds The Magic Threshold as the week goes on.

What fun! Thank you.

Was I the only one who so so so wanted "Sharp wind?" to be FART? Next time!

Macronutrient grouping? Say what?? Defeated by the NW corner.

I thought every clue was just about fair except for "Classic pickup lines." The word "lines" is misleading and unfair. Otherwise I enjoyed the puzzle for the most part - a real challenge.

I'm sure I'm the 831st person to get hung up on HEIRESS. Seems like a petty distinction - a disappointing way to be defeated by this puzzle. Nice otherwise.